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Installing the Flow Bootstrap on Linux (Ubuntu Distributable)

From Flow 7.0, the Flow Bootstrap service/component can be installed and configured to run on Linux.

Note

  • The following guide had been tested on the Ubuntu Linux 64-bit distributable and would be the officially supported distributable for running Flow on Linux.

Useful Tools

In order to copy the Flow Bootstrap tar file across to your Linux node, we recommend using WINSCP.

Prerequisites

  • A Linux node running Ubuntu (Tested on version 22.0.4)
  • .NET Runtime 6.0 installed on the node
  • FlowBootstrap .tar file (internal - currently in release folder)
  • FlowBootsrap.Service file (internal - currently in release folder)

We recommend installing the ASP.NET Core Runtime to meet the abovementioned .NET prerequisite, using the following command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y aspnetcore-runtime-6.0

For a detailed description of the .NET installation process, or if the above command doesn't work on your installation, please refer to the articles listed below:

Create a folder location for the Flow Bootstrap tar file

Create a location where we will copy the Bootstrap tar file:

sudo mkdir -m 777 /media/Flow

Use WINSCP to copy the file across.

Extract the file by using the following command in the /media/Flow file location (NB. You will need to replace the filename FlowBootstrap.tar with the full name of the downloaded tar file, which includes the Build Number):

tar -xvf FlowBootstrap.tar

Screenshot

Create a folder for the platform files

As new platforms are deployed, the bootstrap will need to unpack all the relevant files for the Platform to function properly. The location used for this is /var/lib/Flow Software.

Create the directory by running: (A space is escaped by a \ character)

sudo mkdir -m 777 /var/lib/Flow\ Software

 

Run the Boostrap as a Daemon

Copy the FlowBootstrap.Service file to the directory /etc/systemd/system/

Screenshot

The content of the file is as follow: (ensure that the location you extracted the .tar file matches the location specified below)

[Unit]

Description=Flow Bootstrap console application

[Service]

Type=notify

ExecStart="/media/Flow/Flow Bootstrap Daemon"

[Install]

WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload the daemon serving by executing:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Start the Flow Bootstrap service:

sudo systemctl start FlowBootstrap.service

Enable the service to run automatically:

sudo systemctl enable FlowBootstrap.service

Service can be stopped by:

sudo systemctl stop FlowBootstrap.service

Status of the service can be seen by executing:

sudo systemctl status FlowBootstrap.service

 

File location required for the Flow Historian Simulator

In order to run the Flow Simulator on Linux, please create the following file location:

sudo mkdir -m 777 /usr/share/Flow\ Software