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  • Upgrading to this Charon-PAR from an older version requires a license update (independent of license type used). Please contact your VAR or Stromasys representative to plan the update.
  • Applicable to HASP licenses only: Charon-PAR version 3.0 and higher is incompatible with licenses of earlier versions. Earlier product versions are incompatible with licenses for Charon-PAR 3.0 and higher. Charon-PAR/PA3 licenses for version 3.0 are not backward compatible for emulators running with version 2.x.

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  • A set of RPM packages for installations on all supported platforms and environments.
  • A marketplace AMI containing the base operating system and the preinstalled Charon-PAR software. At the time of writing, this format was planned for AWS (starting with Charon-PAR 3.0.6). and Azure. Please contact your Stromasys representative for details about availability on AWS and other cloud platforms. The Appendix of this document contains basic information about setting up a cloud instance.
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Installing Charon-PAR from RPM Installation Packages

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Charon-PAR is provided as a set of RPM-packages. The following table lists the required installation packages (the placeholder <version> denotes the version of the package, for example, This set is different for versions before 3.0.6):

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Please note: the VE license server RPM package is not part of the Charon-PAR set of RPM packages. Stromasys or your Stromasys VAR will provide you with the software or a download link.

Important if there is more than one emulator product installed on the same Charon host system: the Charon-PAR version 3.0 and higher emulator kits contain the haspvlib library and the hasp_srm_view and hasp_update utilities. This means that there may be installation conflicts with other Charon emulator products on the same host systems. Such conflicts can be overcome either by not installing the conflicting modules of the other products (if possible), or by forcing the installation of the Charon-PAR kit. Please refer to the documentation of your host system (man rpm) in such cases and ensure that this will not negatively influence any other installed products. If you use the --force option for an installation, please uninstall older packages of the same product before.

Obtaining the Charon-PAR software:

The software can be downloaded from the Stromasys fileserver. If required, please contact your Stromasys representative or your VAR partner. They will provide the download information or the software packages to you.

Additional requirements for a successful installation:

  • The packages above have installation dependencies that are normally satisfied automatically from the standard software repositories when installing packages with yum or dnf. If the standard repositories are not available, please refer to How to install the glibc.i686 package without an Internet connection. The document explains - among other points - how to create a local repository.
  • Additional packages may be required to be installed on the host operating system. They will be discussed in the sections where they are relevant.
  • If additionally required packages are not available in the standard repositories of the host operating system, additional repositories can be installed using, for example, the EPEL repository (more information: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL).

Additional requirements for initial emulator setup:

  • For the installation of a Charon-PAR/PA3 emulated system, a preinstalled MPE/iX 7.5 disk image (mpe75a.dsk.bz2) is required. This will be provided by Stromasys.
  • For the installation of a Charon-PAR/PA9 emulated system, a HP-UX ISO is required. It must be provided by the customer.

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Charon-PAR RPM Installation Command Overview

The following table provides an overview of the installation commands for the supported host operating systems. For details, please refer to the relevant man-pages on Linux. The table only lists command-line installation options for Linux. There are also graphical installation tools. To describe all of them is outside the scope of this document.

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# yum install <package-name>

On Linux 8.x, replace yum with dnf. if a filename is specified, locally stored RPM packages can be installed.

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Sentinel Runtime RPM Installation

This package is a prerequisite for the Charon-PAR emulator package. So it must be installed. However, the runtime software installed is only needed for HASP licensing. It is not relevant for VE licensing.

Important points:

  • The aksusbd package version 7.63 requires the 32-bit glibc-library. On supported Linux distributions, this library is available through the standard repositories. The relevant package is glibc.i686 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS.
  • Normally, the aksusbd package installation with yum or dnf installs the 32-bit glibc and other dependency automatically (provided package repositories are available). Red Hat Enterprise must be registered to access the Red Hat repositories, or the installation CD must be mounted. Should the Charon host system not have access to the Internet, please refer to How to install the glibc.i686 package without an Internet connection for further information.
  • When installing the aksusbd package version 8.13 in some CentOS 7.x environments it was observed that the aksusbd service did not start automatically after a new installation or an upgrade. The following error was displayed during the installation: Failed to restart aksusbd.service: Access denied. If this happens, uninstall the aksusbd package and reboot the system. After rebooting the system, re-install the package. The cause of this sporadic problem has not yet been identified.

The aksusbd package installs the programs aksusbd and hasplmd in /usr/sbin.

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The example below shows the installation of the aksusbd package with automatic installation of the 32-bit glibc library and its dependencies:

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10 and version 3.0.10 and later.

Charon-PAR Versions 3.0.10 and Later

In version 3.0.10, Charon-PAR is provided as one self-extracting archive containing all the RPM packages:

charon-par-<version>.sh

Starting with version 3.0.11, Charon-PAR is provided as one self-extracting archive per Linux major version: one archive each for Linux 7.x, 8.x, and 9.x.

  • charon-par-<version>.el7.sh
  • charon-par-<version>.el8.sh
  • charon-par-<version>.el9.sh


To unpack the archive, perform the following steps:

  • Go to the directory where the package is stored.
  • Run the archive shell script: # sh <archive-name>
  • Accept the EULA. To successfully unpack the archive, the end-user license agreement must be accepted.
  • After this, the software packages making up the Charon-PAR kit will be extracted into a version-specific sub-directory of the current working directory of the user.

Example:

Code Block
languagetext
$ sh charon-par-3.0.11-22700-54a67939.el8.sh
Verifying archive integrity...  100%   MD5 checksums are OK. All good.
Uncompressing Stromasys product packages installer  100%  
End User License Agreement for : STROMASYS SOFTWARE.

NOTICE TO USER ("LICENSEE", “YOU” or “YOUR”): THIS AGREEMENT GOVERNS

<lines removed>

Please confirm EULA (yes/no) > yes
EULA accepted
gpg: AES256.CFB encrypted data
gpg: encrypted with 1 passphrase

$ ls charon-par-3.0.11-22700-54a67939
aksusbd-7.63-1.i386.rpm
aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64.rpm
Charon_Idle_0.02.depot
charon-license-1.2.0-1.x86_64.rpm
charon-license-certs-1.2.0-1.x86_64.rpm
charon-license-hasp-1.2.0-1.el8.x86_64.rpm
charon-mtd-4.11-20406.el8.x86_64.rpm
charon-par-3.0.11-22700.54a67939.el8.x86_64.rpm
EULA.txt
xhpterm-free-3.0.11-22700.54a67939.el8.x86_64.rpm


Please note that gzip, md5sum, cksum, gpg, tar, and openssl are required to successfully unpack the RPMs.

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The following table lists the installation packages available in the archives.

Placeholders:

  • <version> - version of the package, e.g. 3.0.11-22700.54a67939
  • <linux-version> - major version of the Linux host operating system, i.e., el7, el8, or el9
PackageDescription
Charon-PAR legal end-user license agreement
charon-license-<version>.x86_64.rpmMandatory package. End-user license agreement text will be installed in /opt/charon/doc.
Sentinel runtime environment and utilities. Required for licensing the Charon-PAR software using Sentinel HASP licenses.
aksusbd-7.63-1.i386.rpm32-bit package for CentOS/RHEL/Oracle Linux 7.x; requires 32-bit glibc package
aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64.rpm64-bit package for RHEL 7.7 and higher; RHEL/CentOS/Oracle/Rocky LInux 8. (see also https://docs.sentinel.thalesgroup.com/ldk/LDKdocs/rte/linux-rh-suse-centos.html)
charon-license-hasp-<version>.<linux-version>.x86_64.rpmHASP license management utilities and libraries.
Charon-PAR emulator
charon-par-<version>.<linux-version>.x86_64.rpmCharon-PAR emulator executable, template configuration files for the different supported hardware models, PuTTY configurations, etc.
Charon-PAR utilities
charon-mtd-<version>.<linux-version>.x86_64.rpmCharon-PAR tape utility for Linux
xhpterm-free-<version>.<linux-version>.x86_64.rpmTerminal emulation for block mode applications
Additional Packages
charon-license-certs-<version>.x86_64.rpmSample certificates for the new custom certificate feature of the VE license server. Support planned for Charon-PAR 3.0.11 and later.
Charon_Idle_0.02.depotOptional HP-UX package to enable the power save feature in HP-UX running in an emulator.

Please note: the VE license server RPM package is not part of the Charon-PAR set of RPM packages. Stromasys or your Stromasys VAR will provide you with the software or a download link. Prepackaged cloud marketplace images include the VE license server RPM (in /charon/storage).

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Charon-PAR Versions 3.0.9 and Older

The following table lists the available installation packages.
Support for RHEL 9.x and derivatives was added in Charon-PAR version 3.0.8.

Placeholders:

  • <version> - version of the package
  • <linux-version> - major version of the Linux host operating system, i.e., el7, el8, or el9
PackageDescription
Sentinel runtime environment. Required for licensing the Charon-PAR software using Sentinel HASP licenses.
aksusbd-7.63-1.i386.rpm

...

32-bit package for CentOS/RHEL/Oracle Linux 7.x; requires 32-bit glibc package
aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64.rpm64-bit package for RHEL 7.7 and higher; RHEL/CentOS/Oracle/Rocky LInux 8. (see also https://docs.sentinel.thalesgroup.com/ldk/LDKdocs/rte/linux-rh-suse-centos.html)
Charon-PAR emulator
charon-par-<version>.<linux-version>.x86_64.rpmCharon-PAR emulator executable, template configuration files for the different supported hardware models, PuTTY configurations, etc.
Charon-PAR utilities
charon-mtd-<version>.<linux-version>.x86_64.rpmCharon-PAR tape utility for Linux
xhpterm-free-<version>.<linux-version>.x86_64.rpmTerminal emulation for block mode applications
Additional Packages
Charon_Idle_0.02.depotOptional HP-UX package to enable the power save feature in HP-UX running in an emulator.

Please note: the VE license server RPM package is not part of the Charon-PAR set of RPM packages. Stromasys or your Stromasys VAR will provide you with the software or a download link. Prepackaged cloud marketplace images include the VE license server RPM (in /charon/storage).

Important if there is more than one emulator product installed on the same Charon host system: Charon-PAR versions 3.0 up to 3.0.9 contain the haspvlib library and the hasp_srm_view and hasp_update utilities. This means that there may be installation conflicts with other Charon emulator products on the same host systems. Such conflicts can be overcome either by not installing the conflicting modules of the other products (if possible), or by forcing the installation of the Charon-PAR kit. Please refer to the documentation of your host system (man rpm) in such cases and ensure that this will not negatively influence any other installed products. If you use the --force option for an installation, please uninstall older packages of the same product before

Additional Information

Obtaining the Charon-PAR software:

The software can be downloaded from the Stromasys fileserver. If required, please contact your Stromasys representative or your VAR partner. They will provide the download information or the software packages to you.

Charon-PAR cloud marketplace images can be obtained from the respective cloud marketplaces.

Additional requirements for a successful installation:

  • The packages above have installation dependencies that are normally satisfied automatically from the standard software repositories when installing packages with yum or dnf. If the standard repositories are not available, please refer to How to install the glibc.i686 package without an Internet connection. The document explains - among other points - how to create a local repository.
  • Additional packages may be required to be installed on the host operating system. They will be discussed in the sections where they are relevant.
  • If additionally required packages are not available in the standard repositories of the host operating system, additional repositories can be installed using, for example, the EPEL repository (more information: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL).

Additional requirements for initial emulator setup:

  • For the installation of a Charon-PAR/PA3 emulated system, a preinstalled MPE/iX 7.5 disk image (mpe75a.dsk.bz2) is required. This will be provided by Stromasys on demand.
  • For the installation of a Charon-PAR/PA9 emulated system, a HP-UX ISO is required. It must be provided by the customer.
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Charon-PAR RPM Installation Command Overview

The following table provides an overview of the installation commands for the supported host operating systems. For details, please refer to the relevant man-pages on Linux. The table only lists command-line installation options for Linux. There are also graphical installation tools. To describe all of them is outside the scope of this document.

Installation OptionDescription
Package manager (uses repositories, takes care of dependencies, etc.)

# yum install <package-name>

On Linux 8.x, replace yum with dnf. if a filename is specified, locally stored RPM packages can be installed.

Command to install individual local packages.# rpm -i </path/to/package>


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Sentinel Runtime RPM Installation

This package is mandatory for older Charon-PAR emulator versions. However, the runtime software installed is only needed for HASP licensing. It is not relevant for VE licensing. For later versions the installation is optional if HASP licensing is not used.

Important points:

  • The aksusbd package version 7.63 requires the 32-bit glibc-library. On supported Linux distributions, this library is available through the standard repositories. The relevant package is glibc.i686 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS. Unless version 7.63 is needed to solve a specific problem, aksusbd version 8.13 which does not have this limitation should be used.
  • Normally, the aksusbd package installation with yum or dnf installs the 32-bit glibc and other dependency automatically (provided package repositories are available). Red Hat Enterprise must be registered to access the Red Hat repositories, or the installation CD must be mounted. Should the Charon host system not have access to the Internet, please refer to How to install the glibc.i686 package without an Internet connection for further information.
  • When installing the aksusbd package version 8.13 in some CentOS 7.x environments it was observed that the aksusbd service did not start automatically after a new installation or an upgrade. The following error was displayed during the installation: Failed to restart aksusbd.service: Access denied. If this happens, uninstall the aksusbd package and reboot the system. After rebooting the system, re-install the package. The cause of this sporadic problem has not yet been identified.

The aksusbd package installs the programs aksusbd and hasplmd in /usr/sbin.


The example below shows the installation of the aksusbd package (version 8.13):

Code Block
languagetext
# dnf install aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64.rpm 
Last metadata expiration check: 0:59:01 ago on Mi 18 Mai 2022 15:16:11 CEST.
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package          Architecture    Version           Repository             Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 aksusbd          x86_64          8.13-1            @commandline          7.1 M

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  1 Package

Total size: 7.1 M
Installed size: 14 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Preparing        :                                                        1/51 
  InstallingRunning scriptlet: glibcaksusbd-28.1713-292.el7.i6861.x86_64                                  1/1 
  2/5Installing    Updating   : nss-softokn-freebl-3.44.0-8.el7_7aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64                     3/5    Installing : aksusbd-7.63-1.i386       1/1 
  Running      scriptlet: aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64                         4/5  Starting aksusbd (via systemctl):  [  OK1/1 
]Created 
<lines removed>

Installed:
  aksusbd.i386 0:7.63-1         symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/aksusbd.service → /etc/systemd/system/aksusbd.service.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/hasplmd.service → /etc/systemd/system/hasplmd.service.

  Verifying              : aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64                                  1/1 
Dependency
Installed:
  glibc.i686 0:2.17-292.el7aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64       nss-softokn-freebl.i686 0:3.44.0-8.el7_7        Dependency Updated:   nss-softokn-freebl.x86_64 0:3.44.0-8.el7_7                                    

Complete!


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...


StepCommand
1Log in as the privileged user on the system ("root").
2Go to the directory in which the rpm packages were stored.

cd <path-to-kits-dir>

3

Install the Charon-PAR emulator and utilities packages.

# yum install charon*.rpm xhpterm*.rpm (Linux 7.x)

# dnf install charon*.rpm xhpterm*.rpm (Linux 8.x and 9.x)

or

# rpm -i *.rpm


The following shows a sample installation of the Charon-PAR emulator package on CentOS 8:

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Post-Installation Tasks

Installing PuTTY

A recommended post-installation task is the installation of PuTTY to connect to the emulated console. The associated package is part of the EPEL repository. 

PuTTY installation steps CentOS/Red Hat:


StepCommand
1Log in as the privileged user on the system ("root").
2If the additional repository has not yet been installed, install it. The rpm package to install the EPEL repository is included in the extras repository of Red Hat and CentOS.

yum --enablerepo=extras install epel-release


Up-to-date information can be found on the following page: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL

3Install PuTTY.yum install putty
4

If you used PuTTY before, you will have a .putty or .config/putty directory under your home directory already.

If the PuTTY configuration directory does not already exist, create the .config/putty directory in the home directory of the root user.

Start PuTTY: # putty

Select and load the default settings.

Click on Save.

Exit PuTTY.

5Copy the Charon-PAR profiles to the PuTTY sessions directory of the root user (depending on where you stored you session data).

cp /opt/charon/cfg/PAR* /root/.putty/sessions

or

# cp /opt/charon/cfg/PAR* /root/.config/putty/sessions

Please note: in

  • In some versions of CentOS/RHEL 8 PuTTY was not included in the EPEL repository. In such cases, the version from RHEL/CentOS 7 could be used.
  • If you want to use PuTTY from a different user, perform the profile copy action above for the user in question as well.
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Charon-PAR Cloud-specific Marketplace Image Overview

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  • The underlying Linux operating system.
  • The preinstalled Charon emulator product.
  • Utilities required by the emulator product.
  • Additional management utilities (Linux Toolkit).

For further information, please refer to the cloud-specific Getting Started Guide of your productthe Appendix, the Virtual Environment (VE) License Server Documentation, and the documentation of your cloud provider for additional information.

At the time of writing, such a marketplace image was planned for AWS. Please contact your Stromasys representative with any questions regarding availability.

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Installing the Linux Toolkit (Optional)

This is not a mandatory, but a recommended step. The toolkit is included in Charon-PAR cloud marketplace images.

The Linux Toolkit support the management of emulator related tasks, such as

  • License Management
  • Starting and stopping the emulator
  • Log file monitoring
  • Alert management
  • Information collection to facilitate product support

Stromasys will provide you with a download link for the Linux Toolkit.

Please refer to Charon-PAR Linux Toolkit for further information.

Sentinel HASP License Driver Post-Installation Tasks

Not required for VE licenses.

The following post-installation tasks are strongly recommended to improve security and to enable additional trouble-shooting options:


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