flex.bi Enterprise installation guide on CentOS 8

These are instructions for flex.bi Enterprise 6.0 and later. For earlier version please contact flex.bi support.

On this page:

System Requirements

Information about system requirements for flex.bi Enterprise installation can be found here: Requirements.

Our default setup

We have chosen Linux CentOS 8 as our default server platform and MySQL/MariaDB as a database engine, so these instruction apply for this specific setup.

However, flex.bi Enterprise can also be installed on older CentOS, Redhat versions as well as other distributions of Linux, by adjusting the available software, it's versions and installation methods. For example using rpm or apt-get or yum instead of dnf or PostgreSQP instead of MySQL.

Versions mentioned here are current as of 2021.03.24 - they might of course change in the future.

Software Installation

The following are instructions for flex.bi Enterprise and the required software installation on Centos 8 operating system.

Java installation

Run the following command to install Java JDK 11:
```
sudo dnf install java-11-openjdk-devel
```
Run the following command, to test if the result matches the version you installed
```
java -version
```

Install MySQL server

The CentOS 8 AppStream repository only contain MySQL 8.0 packages, so, to install MySQL 5.7, we need to do some prep-work.

Disable MySQL default AppStream repository.
```
sudo yum install mariadb-server
```

Create a new repository file..

sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/mysql-community.repo

Create a new repository file..

sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/mysql-community.repo

Paste the following dat into the new repo file.

[mysql57-community]
name=MySQL 5.7 Community Server
baseurl=http://repo.mysql.com/yum/mysql-5.7-community/el/7/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

[mysql-connectors-community]
name=MySQL Connectors Community
baseurl=http://repo.mysql.com/yum/mysql-connectors-community/el/7/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

[mysql-tools-community]
name=MySQL Tools Community
baseurl=http://repo.mysql.com/yum/mysql-tools-community/el/7/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Disable MySQL 8 repository.

sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/mysql-community.repo

Enable repository for MySQL 5.7.

sudo dnf config-manager --enable mysql57-community

Install MySQL 5.7.
```
sudo dnf install mysql-community-server
```

flex.bi Enterprise installation

For security reasons we recommend creating dedicated flexbi user. Run the following command to achieve that:
```
sudo useradd flexbi
```
Move the flex.bi Enterprise installation .zip archive file to /home/flexbi directory on your server.
Run the following command to unzip the .zip archive file (file name in the example can differ from the actual file depending on the software version):
```
unzip flexbi_private_6.0.zip
```
After the unzip process finishes, you should have a new /home/flexbi/flexbi_private directory containing the following folders:
```
app
bin
config
examples
lib
log
public
spec
tmp
```
Run the following commands, to ensure that the flex.bi folder and its contents are owned by the user flexbi:
```
chown -R flexbi:flexbi flexbi_private
```

MySQL connector installation

Download the MySQL JDBC driver version 5.1.
Move the downloaded .zip archive to /home/flexbi directory on your server and then run the following command to unzip the archive (file name in the example can differ from the actual file depending on the software version):
```
unzip mysql-connector-java-5.1.49.zip
```
Copy the .jar file from the newly created folder to the /home/flexbi/flexbi_private/lib directory (if it doesn't exist, create it). Run the following command to achieve that (file name in the example can differ from the actual name depending on the software version):
```
cp mysql-connector-java-5.1.49/mysql-connector-java-5.1.49-bin.jar flexbi_private/lib/
```

Setup and configuration

MySQL Server configuration

If you have large amount of records, we suggest to adjust the database engine performance by editing /etc/my.conf file using appropriate values.
The following is an example of a good performance configuration that you can insert under the [mysqld] part of the configuration file:
```
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 1024M
innodb_log_file_size = 256M
query_cache_size= 16M
query_cache_type = 1
max_connections = 200
```
If you change the log file size after starting the MySQL server, you have to delete id_logfile0 and id_logfile1 file from /var/lib/mysql directory.

Adjust the innodb_buffer_pool_size to a level that you can actually afford on your server, taking into account Java and other application memory need
Run the following command to start MySQL Server and ensure that it will be automatically started during server startup:
```
systemctl enable --now mysqld
```
Run the following command, to get the automatically generated MySQL Server root user password:
```
sudo grep 'A temporary password' /var/log/mysqld.log |tail -1
```
Make note of the password shown on screen.
Start MySQL Secure Installation to change the root password, Disallow root login remotely, remove anonymous users and remove test database.
```
sudo mysql_secure_installation
```
Connect to MySQL Database as root user, using the new password.
```
mysql -u root -p
```

Run the following commands, to create a flex.bi user named flexbi_private: (Exchange secret with the actual password you want to use.)

CREATE USER 'flexbi_private'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'secret';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `flexbi_private%`.* TO 'flexbi_private'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'secret';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

flex.bi Enterprise configuration

Configure the eazybi.toml file:
- Run the following command, to copy the eazybi.toml.sample file in the /config folder to a new file named eazybi.toml:
```
cp eazybi.toml.sample eazybi.toml
```
- In a text editor of your choice, open the newly created eazybi.toml file and make the necessary configurations:
  - Licence parameters
    - Change the name to the organisation name (it must be exactly the same as the name that you sent it to flex.bi, because the enabler is tied to this name)
  - General parameters, for example, specify:
    - If you wish to allow users to register themselves or only invite them
    - If you would like to allow public accounts or not etc.
  - Default URL parameters
    - Specify host and port that you will use to access flex.bi, for example, bi.company.com:8080
  - Mailer parameters
    - You can set up the name and address used for outgoing e-mails from this private instance, for example, like this:
      [mailer] from = "My private flex.bi <flexbi@mydomain.com>"
      In the code example above, you should use your dedicated e-mail address instead of flexbi@mydomain.com.
  - SMTP parameters
    - Specify your SMTP server parameters, in order to be able to send invitations, dashboards and error messages
Add a systemd initialization script for flex.bi server:

Create a new file named flexbi.service in the /etc/systemd/system directory using a text editor or copy the provided example file from the flex.bi server package folder bin/systemd. Configure the file like this (adjust the configuration to your particular case):

# Sample init script for flex.bi
[Unit]
Description=flex.bi reporting service
After=syslog.target network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
# Run the service as this user and group
User=flexbi
Group=flexbi
TimeoutSec=30
# Remember to change /home/flexbi/flexbi_private to the actual home directory of flex.bi in all places
WorkingDirectory=/home/flexbi/flexbi_private
Environment="RAILS_ENV=production"
Environment="EAZYBI_HOME=/home/flexbi/flexbi_private"
Environment="EAZYBI_PREFIX=/flexbi"
Environment="RUBYOPT=-W0"
# Adjust to available memory
Environment="JAVA_OPTS=-Xmx1024m -Xms256m -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -Djava.awt.headless=true -Dorg.eclipse.jetty.LEVEL=OFF -Djava.io.tmpdir=/home/flexbi/flexbi_private/tmp"

# Default configuration
ExecStart=/usr/bin/java $JAVA_OPTS -Dwarbler.host=localhost -Dwarbler.port=8080 -jar flexbi_private.jar


Restart=on-failure
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=flexbi
#LimitNOFILE=10000
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Check and adjust the necessary parameters, such as user, group and working directory, in the example, as they can differ from your setup.
If you have changed the configuration after the flex.bi service has been started, run the following code:
systemctl daemon-reload
If you don't use any proxy web server to route web requests to flex.bi, you need to enable public access, because by default flex.bi will answer requests only from localhost. In order to do that, in the flexbi.service file, add a comment symbol (#) before this line:
```
ExecStart=/usr/bin/java $JAVA_OPTS "${JAVA_TMPDIR}" -jar flexbi_private.jar -e production "$@"
```
and remove the comment symbol (#) from this line:
```
# ExecStart=/usr/bin/java $JAVA_OPTS "${JAVA_TMPDIR}" -jar flexbi_private.jar -e production -b 0.0.0.0  "$@"
```

- Run the following command to ensure flex.bi service is started during system startup:
```
systemctl enable flexbi.service
```

Firewall

Open the port 8080 in your firewall to allow remote access to the flex.bi server:
- Run the following command to open the port 8080:
```
firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=8080/tcp
```
- Run the following command to reload the firewall:
```
firewall-cmd --reload
```
- Run the following command to check if the port is open:
```
firewall-cmd --list-ports
```

Google Chrome

If you have installed and configured PhantomJS for previous flex.bi enterprise versions then remove PhantomJS settings from the eazybi.toml file by deleting the following lines:
```
[phantomjs]location = "..."
```

Run the following command to enable Google YUM repository:

cat << EOF > /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo
[google-chrome]
name=google-chrome - \$basearch
baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/\$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
EOF

Run the following command to install the package:
```
yum install google-chrome-stable
```
After you have installed Google Chrome, please restart flex.bi enterprise. During the startup, flex.bi will detect installed Google Chrome and will start to use it for PDF exports.

For additional information regarding Google Chrome installation please see Google Chrome installation instructions.

We recommend to set up a web server running as reverse proxy to have SSL support for you site. For more information and instructions see this setup manual.

Make sure there is enough (and any for that matter) swap space available and set the swappiness setting to 1. See this manual for CentOS.

Run the flex.bi server

Finally, now you can start the flex.bi service using this code:

systemctl start flexbi

Configure the database connection in the wizard that should open once you connect for the first time using the database parameters from above.

There are many tutorials on how to use systemd out there, such as this one from Digital Ocean.

Troubleshooting

In case of any issues, inspect the log files and contact our support.