Contents
Important information for Charon-PAR software upgrades:
- 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.
Charon-PAR Software Packaging and Installation
The Charon-PAR software can be provided in different formats. At the time of writing, the following software packaging was available:
- 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 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.
Installing Charon-PAR from RPM Installation Packages
Charon-PAR RPM Software Packages Overview
Charon-PAR is provided as a set of RPM-packages. This set is different for versions before 3.0.10 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.shcharon-par-<version>.el8.shcharon-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:
$ 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
charon-par-debuginfo-3.0.11-22700.54a67939.el8.x86_64.rpm
EULA.txt
xhpterm-free-3.0.11-22700.54a67939.el8.x86_64.rpm
xhpterm-free-debuginfo-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.
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
| Package | Description |
|---|---|
| Charon-PAR legal end-user license agreement | |
charon-license-<version>.x86_64.rpm | Mandatory 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.rpm | 32-bit package for CentOS/RHEL/Oracle Linux 7.x; requires 32-bit glibc package |
aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64.rpm | 64-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.rpm | HASP license management utilities and libraries. |
| Charon-PAR emulator | |
charon-par-<version>.<linux-version>.x86_64.rpm | Charon-PAR emulator executable, template configuration files for the different supported hardware models, PuTTY configurations, etc. |
| Charon-PAR utilities | |
charon-mtd-<version>. | Charon-PAR tape utility for Linux |
xhpterm-free-<version>. | Terminal emulation for block mode applications |
| Additional Packages | |
charon-license-certs-<version>.x86_64.rpm | Sample 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.depot | Optional HP-UX package to enable the power save feature in HP-UX running in an emulator. |
| debuginfo packages | Only to be used for troubleshooting purposes if requested to do so by Stromasys support. |
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).
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, e.g. 3.0.11-22700.54a67939
- <linux-version> - major version of the Linux host operating system, i.e., el7, el8, or el9
| Package | Description |
|---|---|
| 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.rpm | 64-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.rpm | Charon-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.rpm | Charon-PAR tape utility for Linux |
xhpterm-free-<version>.<linux-version>.x86_64.rpm | Terminal emulation for block mode applications |
| Additional Packages | |
Charon_Idle_0.02.depot | Optional HP-UX package to enable the power save feature in HP-UX running in an emulator. |
| debuginfo packages | Only to be used for troubleshooting purposes if requested to do so by Stromasys support. |
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.
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 Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Package manager (uses repositories, takes care of dependencies, etc.) |
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> |
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):
# 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 : 1/1 Running scriptlet: aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64 1/1 Installing : aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64 1/1 Running scriptlet: aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64 1/1 Created 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 Installed: aksusbd-8.13-1.x86_64 Complete!
Installing the Charon-PAR RPM Packages
To install the Charon-PAR packages perform the following steps:
| Step | Command | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Log in as the privileged user on the system ("root"). | |
| 2 | Go to the directory in which the rpm packages were stored. | # |
| 3 | Install the Charon-PAR emulator and utilities packages. | #
|
The following shows a sample installation of the Charon-PAR emulator package on CentOS 8:
# dnf install charon-par-3.0.0-21400.ed1d4d8.el8.x86_64.rpm Last metadata expiration check: 1:27:20 ago on Wed 29 Jul 2020 07:39:18 PM CEST. Dependencies resolved. ================================================================================ Package Arch Version Repository Size ================================================================================ Installing: charon-par x86_64 3.0.0-21400.ed1d4d8.el8 @commandline 6.0 M Transaction Summary ================================================================================ Install 1 Package Total size: 6.0 M Installed size: 32 M Is this ok [y/N]: y Downloading Packages: Running transaction check Transaction check succeeded. Running transaction test Transaction test succeeded. Running transaction Preparing : 1/1 Running scriptlet: charon-par-3.0.0-21400.ed1d4d8.el8.x86_64 1/1 Installing : charon-par-3.0.0-21400.ed1d4d8.el8.x86_64 1/1 Running scriptlet: charon-par-3.0.0-21400.ed1d4d8.el8.x86_64 1/1 Verifying : charon-par-3.0.0-21400.ed1d4d8.el8.x86_64 1/1 Installed products updated. Installed: charon-par-3.0.0-21400.ed1d4d8.el8.x86_64 Complete!
Location of Charon-PAR Files
Charon-PAR is installed under /opt/charon.
- /opt/charon/bin: executable of emulator and utilities
- /opt/charon/cfg: template configuration files for emulated systems and PuTTY session definitions (to connect to the emulated console).
- /opt/charon/doc: license agreement and Release Notes (WHATSNEW file)
To add the installation path to your PATH variable, become the root user and create the file /etc/profile.d/charon.sh with the following content:
PATH=$PATH:/opt/charon/bin; export PATH
The updated PATH variable will become active after the next login. You can also execute this command directly: # . /etc/profile.d/charon.sh
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:
| Step | Command | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Log in as the privileged user on the system ("root"). | |
| 2 | If 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. | # Up-to-date information can be found on the following page: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL |
| 3 | Install 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: Select and load the default settings. Click on Save. Exit PuTTY. |
| 5 | Copy the Charon-PAR profiles to the PuTTY sessions directory of the root user (depending on where you stored you session data). |
or
|
Please note:
- 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.
Charon-PAR Cloud-specific Marketplace Image Overview
Cloud-specific marketplace images can be used to launch a Charon-PAR host instance in a cloud instead of installing the RPM packages on a Linux instance in the cloud. Marketplace images contain the following software:
- 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 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.
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:
- Protect remote access to the Sentinel Admin Control center: see Security Settings for Sentinel Admin Control Center in the HASP Licensing handbook under Licensing Documentation.
- Enable access and error logging for the license driver: see Enabling logging in Sentinel Admin Control Center