Installing and Setting Up BI Server on ALT Linux

The page contains an example of installing and deleting BI server on ALT Linux 7. The supported versions of Linux are given in the Supported Versions of Linux OS article.

NOTE. BI server functionality is limited by the set of available operations and their implementation.

In this article:

Preparation

Setting Up User

Installing BI Server

Setting Up BI Server

Removing BI Server

Preparation

Execute preparatory actions before BI server installation:

  1. Make sure that the operating system is set up and hardware and software requirements are met for correct installation and full-functional work of the Prognoz Platform 9 web application.

  2. Set up DBMS back end.

  3. Using the Prognoz Platform desktop application on Windows OS, create a metadata repository, security subsystem service user and set up repository connection. Before setting up it is recommended to study the Installing Prognoz Platform 9 Desktop Application section.

  4. Install DBMS front end.

Working with Prognoz Platform 9 BI server requires installation of third-party packages that can be downloaded from the internet or from DVD repository or from built-in RPM packages. If an internet connection is provided via the proxy server, determine settings required for connection.

Setting Up User

This section is relevant if during or after OS installation an additional user is created in the system. If installation is executed under the root user (not safe), the su and sudo utilities need not to be used.

To add the user who can execute the commands using root super user permissions (root password was entered during installation of the distribution kit), execute the following operations:

  1. Log in to the system under the account created during installation.
  2. Open the terminal by selecting the main menu item Programs > Standard > Terminal. In the dialog box that opens execute the command of console login under root user:

su

Enter root user password.

  1. Edit /etc/sudoers file:

vi /etc/sudoers

After the strings:

## Allow root to run any commands anywhere

root    ALL=(ALL) ALL

Add a string:

<user name>    ALL=(ALL) ALL

Enter the working account name instead of the <user name>. Press F2 to confirm changes.

  1. Log in to the console by executing the command:

su <user name>

Or just close console window and reopen it.

Installing BI Server

To install a BI server RPM package, install additional packages. To install packages, execute the commands in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install glibc

sudo apt-get install lsb-core

sudo apt-get install xorg-xvfb

To install Apache, execute the command:

sudo apt-get install apache

After the required packages have been installed, install BI server:

  1. Copy an RPM package of the "foresight-pp9.0-biserver-9.0.*.rpm" type to the home directory. Hereinafter, 9.0 is a Prognoz Platform release version, for example, for Prognoz Platform 9.0, an RPM package is named as follows: foresight-pp9.0-biserver-9.0.*.rpm.

  2. Install BI server package (other utility can be used for package installation):

rpm -ihv foresight-pp9.0-biserver.*.rpm

After the installation a new Apache configuration instance is created for the BI server, the mpm_worker module is enabled, the pp9.0-biserver module is enabled to load mod_axis2, links of the apache2ctl-pp9.0 type are created in the directory /usr/local/sbin to manage the instance, the apache2-pp9.0 service is registered and added to autorun, Prognoz Platform files files are installed, the foresight-xvfb service is registered and added to autorun to start the virtual graphic display No. 987. The foresight-xvfb service is started automatically, and apache2-pp9.0 must be started by the command:

systemctl start httpd2-pp9.0.service

After installing to monitor BI server work and detecting various errors the user can enable logging of system messages. To do this, add and uncomment the following strings in the /etc/opt/foresight/pp9.0-biserver/envvars file:

## Uncomment line below to export extended log

# PP_LOG=1

Add the following strings in the files /etc/httpd2-pp9.0/conf/mods-avaible and /etc/httpd2-pp9.0/conf/mods-enabled:

Axis2LogFile "/opt/foresight/pp9.0-biserver/logs/axis2.log"

Axis2LogLevel info

Setting Up BI Server

  1. BI server uses settings specified in the settings.xml file. See its structure and make modifications if required.

NOTE. A file with settings is optional. If the file is absent, default parameter values are used.

  1. To get information about repositories to work with, BI server uses the registry.reg or Metabases.xml file. For details about setting up these files, see the Configuration and Setup article.

  2. Activate Prognoz Platform 9.

  3. All additional files used by BI server must have access permissions for an Apache HTTP Server user:

sudo chown -R apache:apache /opt/foresight/pp9.0-biserver

  1. After determining settings and granting permissions restart BI server service:

sudo systemctl restart httpd2-pp9.0

NOTE. In ALT Linux, commands may differ depending on the systemd or SysVinit initialization manager in use (systemctl or service).

  1. Check BI server performance.

The installed BI server will work in background as a separate Linux service. The Apache2 instance with BI server starts on the 88xx port, where xx corresponds to the minor version of the Prognoz Platform release.

After installing and setting up BI server, proceed to the web application back end installation.

Removing BI Server

To remove BI server files without removing configuration files, execute the command and confirm removal:

sudo apt-get remove pp9.0-biserver

All configuration files in the folders /etc/httpd-pp9.0 and /etc/opt/foresight/pp9.0-biserver, as well as new files that are not included into the setup package, are saved in these folders and /opt/foresight/pp9.0-biserver and can be used on the next package installation.