Linux binary packages

Supported distributions

Binary installation packages are available for the following Linux distributions:

  1. Fedora 16 and higher
    FrePPLe is included in the official repositories.
    ../_images/fedorainstall.png
  2. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
    Starting from release 2.1 a 64-bit binary package can be downloaded.
  3. Ubuntu LTS
    A 64-bit binary package for Ubuntu 12 is provided in release 2.1.
    From release 2.2 onwards we provide binaries for Ubuntu 14.

Other Linux distributions aren’t really a problem, but you’ll need to build the frePPLe package from the source .deb or .rpm files, as described on the next page. The build process is completely standardized.

Installation and configuration

The binary package installs the solver engine executables as well as the user interface. The user interface is installed as a WSGI application deployed on the Apache web server with the mod_wsgi module.

Here are the steps to get a fully working environment.

  1. Install the database

    PostgreSQL is the preferred database for frePPLe.

    Install postgreSQL, create a new database and a new user. It is recommended to use the UTF-8 encoding for your database.

    For optimal performance the default memory allocation parameters will need to be increased from their defaults. The appropriate settings depend on the model size, the number of concurrent users and the available memory on the server. The most important parameter is “shared_buffers” (which normally requires changing the Linux kernel parameter shmmax as well).

    For the user that will run the user interface application (normally “www-data” on debian and “apache” on rhel) you need to create a file .pgpass in their home directory. This allows them to connect without entering a password.

    See the Django documentation at http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/databases/ for more details.

    This step can be skipped if you want to use SQLite as the database.

  2. Create the database and database user

    A database needs to be created for the default database, and one for each of the what-if scenarios you want to configure.

    A single user can be used as the owner of these database.

    This step can be skipped if you want to use SQLite as the database.

  3. Install the Python database drivers

    You’ll need to install the python-psycopg2 package for PostgreSQL.

    This step can be skipped if you want to use SQLite as the database.

  4. Install Django

    Since frePPle requires some patches to the standard Django package, you can’t install the binary package that comes with your Linux distribution. Instead, download the source from http://www.djangoproject.com and expand it in a local folder. Next, dowload and apply frePPLe’s django patch and install the package.

    The shell commands for these steps are:

    wget https://www.djangoproject.com/download/1.6/tarball/
    tar xvfz Django-1.6.tar.gz
    cd Django-1.6
    patch -p0 < frepple_directory/contrib/django/django.patch
    python setup.py install
    
  5. Install OpenPyXL

    This python package allows us to read and write Excel spreadsheet files. It is best to install it from PyPi using pip.

    pip install openpyxl
    

    Most linux distributions don’t install pip by default, so you’ll need to install that first. See below for the commands for this on Ubuntu and RHEL.

  6. Install the frepple binary package

    On Fedora:

    yum install frepple
    

    On Debian based distributions:

    dpkg -i frepple_*.deb
    apt-get -f -y -q install
    

    On RHEL:

    yum --nogpgcheck localinstall  *.rpm
    
  7. Configure frePPLe

    The previous step installed a number of configuration files, which you now need to review and edit:

    1. /etc/frepple/djangosettings.py
      Edit the “TIMEZONE” variable to your local setting.
      Edit the “DATABASES” with your database parameters.
      Change “SECRET_KEY” to some arbitrary value – important for security reasons.
    2. /etc/frepple/license.xml
      No license file is required for the community edition.
      If you are using the Enterprise Edition, replace this file with the
      license file you received from us.
    3. /etc/frepple/init.xml
      Comment out the lines loading modules you are not using.
    4. /etc/httpd/conf.d/z_frepple.conf
      For a standard deployment this file doesn’t need modification.
      It only needs review if you have specific requirements for the setup of
      the Apache web server.
  8. Create the database schema

    Your database is still empty now. The command below will create all objects in the database schema and load some standard parameters.

    frepplectl syncdb
    
  9. Optionally, load the demo dataset

    On a first installation, you may choose to install the demo dataset.

    frepplectl loaddata demo
    
  10. Update apache web server (Ubuntu only)

On Ubuntu the following statements are required to complete the deployment on the Apache web server.

sudo a2enmod expires
sudo a2enmod wsgi
sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo a2ensite default-ssl
sudo a2ensite frepple
sudo service apache2 restart
  1. Verify the installation

    If all went well you can now point your browser to http://localhost.

    An administrative user account is created by default: admin, with password admin.

    Try the following as a mini-test of the installation:

    1. Open the screen “input/demand” to see demand inputs.
    2. Open the screen “admin/execute” and generate a plan.
    3. Use the same “admin/execute” screen to copy the default data in a new scenario.
    4. Open the screen “output/resource report” to see the planned load on the resources.

    If these steps all give the expected results, you’re up and running!

Tip

For security reasons it is recommended to change the password of the admin user.

Debian installation script

This section shows the completely automated installation script for installing and configuring frePPLe with a PostgreSQL database on a Debian server.

We use this script for our unit tests. You can use it as a guideline and inspiration for your own deployments.

# Bring the server up to date with the latest and greatest
sudo apt-get -y -q update
sudo apt-get -y -q upgrade

# Install PostgreSQL
sudo apt-get -y install postgresql-9.1 python-psycopg2
sudo su - postgres
psql template1 -c "create user frepple with password 'frepple'"
psql template1 -c "create database frepple encoding 'utf-8' owner frepple"
psql template1 -c "create database scenario1 encoding 'utf-8' owner frepple"
psql template1 -c "create database scenario2 encoding 'utf-8' owner frepple"
psql template1 -c "create database scenario3 encoding 'utf-8' owner frepple"
sed -i 's/peer$/md5/g' /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/pg_hba.conf
service postgresql restart
exit

# Install Django
wget -q -O Django-$DJANGORELEASE.tar.gz https://www.djangoproject.com/download/$DJANGORELEASE/tarball/
tar xfz Django-$DJANGORELEASE.tar.gz
cd ~/Django-$DJANGORELEASE
patch -p0 < frepple_directory/contrib/django/django.patch
sudo python setup.py install

# Install openpyxl
sudo apt-get -y install python-pip
sudo pip install openpyxl

# Install the frePPLe binary .deb package and the necessary dependencies.
# There are frepple, frepple-doc and frepple-dev debian package files.
# You only need to install the frepple debian package.
cd ~
sudo dpkg -i frepple_*.deb
sudo apt-get -f -y -q install

# Configure frepple
sudo sed -i "s/django.db.backends.sqlite3',$/django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',/g" /etc/frepple/djangosettings.py

# Configure apache web server
sudo a2enmod expires
sudo a2enmod wsgi
sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo a2ensite default-ssl
sudo a2ensite frepple
sudo service apache2 restart

# Create frepple database schema
frepplectl syncdb --noinput

# Make postgresql accessible for apache user without password
sudo sh -c 'echo "localhost:5432:frepple:frepple:frepple" > ~www-data/.pgpass'
sudo sh -c 'echo "localhost:5432:scenario1:frepple:frepple" >> ~www-data/.pgpass'
sudo sh -c 'echo "localhost:5432:scenario2:frepple:frepple" >> ~www-data/.pgpass'
sudo sh -c 'echo "localhost:5432:scenario3:frepple:frepple" >> ~www-data/.pgpass'
sudo chown www-data:www-data ~www-data/.pgpass
sudo chmod 0600 ~www-data/.pgpass

Red Hat installation script

This section shows the completely automated installation script for installing and configuring frePPLe with a PostgreSQL database on a RHEL 6 server.

We use this script for our unit tests. You can use it as a guideline and inspiration for your own deployments.

# Update and upgrade
sudo -S -n yum -y update

# Install the PostgreSQL database
sudo yum install postgresql postgresql-server python-psycopg2
sudo service postgresql initdb
sudo service postgresql start
sudo su - postgres
psql -dpostgres -c "create user frepple with password 'frepple'"
psql -dpostgres -c "create database frepple encoding 'utf-8' owner frepple"
psql -dpostgres -c "create database scenario1 encoding 'utf-8' owner frepple"
psql -dpostgres -c "create database scenario2 encoding 'utf-8' owner frepple"
psql -dpostgres -c "create database scenario3 encoding 'utf-8' owner frepple"
sed -i 's/peer$/md5/g' /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf

# Install django
wget -q -O Django-$DJANGORELEASE.tar.gz https://www.djangoproject.com/download/$DJANGORELEASE/tarball/
tar xfz Django-$DJANGORELEASE.tar.gz
cd ~/Django-$DJANGORELEASE
patch -p0 < ~/frepple-$RELEASE/contrib/django/django.patch
sudo -S -n python setup.py install

# Install openpyxl
# The sequence is a bit weird: we first enable the EPEL repository, then install pip, and
# finish by installing openpyxl itself.
sudo -S -n rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
sudo -S -n yum -y install yum-plugin-protectbase.noarch
sudo -S -n yum -y install python-pip
sudo pip install openpyxl

# Build frepple RPM
yum --nogpgcheck localinstall  *.rpm

# Make PostgreSQL accessible for apache user
sudo sh –c ‘echo “localhost:5432:frepple:frepple:frepple” > ~apache/.pgpass’
sudo sh –c ‘echo “localhost:5432:scenario1:frepple:frepple” >> ~apache/.pgpass’
sudo sh –c ‘echo “localhost:5432:scenario2:frepple:frepple” >> ~apache/.pgpass’
sudo sh –c ‘echo “localhost:5432:scenario3:frepple:frepple” >> ~apache/.pgpass’
sudo chown apache:apache ~apache/.pgpass
sudo chmod 0600 ~apache/.pgpass