Installing the Charon-SSP Manager

Owned by W.Erber
Last updated: May 13, 2022

Contents

Overview

The Charon-SSP Manager is the main interface for managing the emulated SPARC systems running on a Charon-SSP cloud host. Therefore, the Charon-SSP Manager must be installed on every system that will be used to manage the Charon instances running on the Charon-SSP cloud host. Configuring and managing Charon-SSP instances from the command-line is also possible, but outside the scope of this Getting Started Guide. Please refer to the general Charon-SSP User's Guide for information about using the command-line.

Typically, for the management of a remote Charon host, the Charon Manager is installed on a system on customer premises, and uses an encrypted connection to manage the Charon host in the cloud. The Charon Manager can also be installed on the Charon host itself and be accessed via X11-Forwarding across an SSH connection. The latter currently requires additional package installation (via standard or local repository) on the Charon host.

Stromasys provides Charon-SSP Manager installation packages for the following operating systems:

  • Linux distributions and versions:
    • Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and CentOS: 7.x or higher (64-bit versions only). Please note that as of 1 January 2022 CentOS 8 is EOL. For new deployments, it is recommended to use a non-EOL alternative. For existing installations, the possible negative impacts of staying with an EOL host operating system should be carefully evaluated.
    • Rocky Linux version 8.x (64-bit) or higher
    • Ubuntu 17 or higher (64-bit)
  • Microsoft Windows: versions 7, 8, 10, and (starting with Charon-SSP 5.6.1) version 11

Restriction: the Charon-SSP Manager is not supported on Linux hosts using Wayland when they run in a VMware instance with 3D-graphics. The Manager will show erratic behavior in such cases.

Installation Packages

Installation packages are available in RPM or Debian package formats for Linux and as a ZIP-file for Microsoft Windows.

Please note: starting with SSP version 5.6.1, the RPM packages are distributed in an self-extracting archive. The archive required for the Charon-SSP Manager is charon-gui-<version>.sh.  It also contains the Charon-SSP Agent which must be installed on the Charon host system to be managed by the Charon Manager. The archive must be unpacked on a Linux system (even if you need the kit for Microsoft Windows).

Use the following command to unpack the RPM packages:

  • Go to the directory containing the self-extracting archive.
  • Run the script: # sh charon-gui-<version>.sh
  • Read the end-user agreement and accept it.
  • The RPM packages will be extracted in a subdirectory (charon-gui-<version>) of your current working directory.

Names of the Charon-Manager installation packages:

  • RPM package: charon-manager-ssp-<version>.rpm
  • Ubuntu package: charon-manager-ssp-<version>.deb

  • Microsoft Windows package: charon-manager-ssp-<version>.zip


There are different ways to obtain the Charon-SSP Manager installation packages. They are briefly described below:

a) For installation on a management system on customer premises if using a prepackaged cloud marketplace image:

The packages are included in the Charon-SSP cloud-specific image (in /charon/storage). Once a new instance has been launched, you can download the Charon-SSP Manager archive from the running instance:

  • Connect to the public IP address of the instance via SFTP using the private key assigned during launch and the user charon:
    $ sftp -i <path-to-private-key> charon@<public-ip-of-cloud-instance>
  • Download the required package:
    sftp> get charon-gui-<version>.sh

b) For installation on a Charon host where a conventional RPM installation was performed: Stromasys will provide you with a download link.
The Charon Manager packages are also included in the Charon agent RPM and available in /opt/charon-agent/ssp-agent/bin/ once the agent has been installed.

Charon-Manager Installation on Linux

Prerequisites

The Charon Manager can be installed on the Charon host itself or on a remote management system. For the Charon Manager to work, the Charon Agent must have been installed on the Charon host system. The Charon Manager communicates with the Agent to configure and manage the emulator instances.

When the Charon Manager is installed on a Linux host with a graphical user environment, the prerequisites are often already fulfilled. However, when installing the Charon Manager on the Charon-SSP host in the cloud or on a Linux server without graphics (for example, to display it via a remote X11-connection) instead of on a local management system, additional packages may have to be installed that normally are already available in a workstation environment.

In particular, the Charon-SSP Manager requires the following packages:

  • libX11
  • xorg-x11-server-utils
  • gtk2
  • xorg-x11-xauth (only required for X11-Forwarding)

If you install the Charon Manager with the yum or dnf command, these packages (with the exception of xorg-x11-xauth) and any dependencies that these packages themselves may have, are resolved automatically if a package repository is available. The xorg-x11-xauth package must be installed separately (also with yum). If your server does not have access to the standard operating system repositories, refer to this document for instructions on setting up a local repositories.

Please note:

  • The exact list of additionally required packages depends on what is already installed on the server.
  • To install dependencies on Ubuntu, please refer to your Linux documentation.

Installation Steps on Linux

The following table describes the installation steps for Charon-SSP Manager:

Step                                                         Description
1

Installation on a Linux management system on customer premises (typical installation):

  1. Log in to the Linux management system as the root user (denoted by the # prompt).
  2. Copy the installation package to your local Linux management system (from one of the sources described above).

Installation on the Charon-SSP host system in the cloud (non-typical installation):

Log in and become the root user on the Charon host using the following commands:

$ ssh -i <path-to-private-key>  sshuser@<cloud-instance-ip>
# sudo -i

Please note: if the Charon host was not installed using a prepackaged marketplace image, the username may be different and the installation package will have to be copied to the Charon host in a separate step.

2

Go to the directory where the package has been stored:

# cd <package-location>

3

Unpacking the shell archive:


  1. Run the script: # sh charon-gui-<version>.sh
  2. Read the end-user agreement and accept it.
  3. The RPM packages will be extracted in a subdirectory (charon-gui-<version>) of your current working directory
4Installing the package:

Assuming you are in the subdirectory containing the RPM file, use the following commands for supported Linux systems with RPM package management:

Linux 7.x:                      # yum install <filename-of-package> 

Linux 8.x and higher: # dnf install<filename-of-package>

(For an installation on the cloud host system, check if xorg-x11-xauth is already installed if X11-Forwarding is planned.)


For systems with Debian package management (Ubuntu):
    # dpkg -i <filename-of-package>


Installation Steps on Microsoft Windows

The Charon-SSP Manager for Windows software is shipped as a zipped archive package which is contained in the charon-gui-<version>.sh archive. After unpacking the archive on a Linux system, copy the ZIP file to your Microsoft Windows system and use the following instructions to complete the installation.

  1. Right-click on the zip archive charon-manager-ssp-{version}.zip and select Extract All.

  2. A window titled Extract Compressed (Zipped) Folders opens. In this window:

    1. Click on the Show extracted files when complete checkbox.

    2. Click on the Extract button.

  3. A new Windows Explorer window opens showing the extracted packages.
  4. Double-click on the setup.exe executable to begin the installation.
  5. If you are presented with an Open File - Security Warning window, click on the Run button.

  6. You should now see the Charon-SSP Manager Setup Wizard. To proceed with the installation, click on the Next button. If the Windows Installer reports that Charon-SSP Manager for Windows is already installed, you must deinstall the currently installed software before you can install a different version. Normally, several versions can coexist.

  7. To accept the default installation options, simply click on Next without modifying any options. Alternatively, the following installation options can be adjusted:

    1. Click on Browse to select an alternative installation target.

    2. Click the appropriate radio button, Everyone or Just for Me, to specify system-wide or private installation respectively (the system-wide installation will prompt for the administrator password if you are not using the administrator account).

    3. To determine the approximate disk usage after the installation, click on the Disk Cost button.

    4. Once all options have been set, click on Next.

  8. Proceed with the installation by clicking on Next.
  9. Once the installation has completed, click on Close to exit the SSP-Manager Setup Wizard.

  10. The installation process creates:

    1. A Charon Manager icon on the desktop

    2. A Charon Manager entry in the Start menu (folder Stromasys)

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