3.4. LinOTP Server Installation – the tar.gz, virtualenv and pip way¶
LinOTP can also run on many other distributions using the virtualenv for python. “virtualenv is a tool to create isolated python environments.” 1 Currently, LinOTP has dependencies that require python 2.7.
This setup was run successfully on RedHat Enterprise Linux 7 and CentOS 7. But due to the isolated environment it could run an many other distributions.
First you need to create a directory where the whole LinOTP installation will
be located. We choose /opt/LINOTP. You might need to download the
virtualenv tool here 2
If you activated the EPEL repository 3 you may simply install the package:
yum install python-virtualenv
Create the virtualenv:
mkdir -p /opt/LINOTP
virtualenv --no-site-packages /opt/LINOTP
This will create an environment that does not use any python packages of your base linux installation.
Now enter this virtual environment:
cd /opt/LINOTP
source bin/activate
Note
You should update your pip before you proceed:
pip install --upgrade pip pip-tools
In fact this virtual environment is just a rewriting of several environment
variables. You can leave this virtual environment any time by issuing the
command deactivate. To be able to install all packages to this virtual
environment you first need to install the following packages in your
distribution using the required tool like apt-get, yum or yast…
python-dev or python-devel
swig
gcc
libssl-dev or openssl-devel
openldap-dev, libldap2-dev or openldap-devel
mysql-server and libmysqlclient-dev or mysql-devel if you want to use mysql as token database
On Ubuntu 13.10 (possibly other OS’s) you need to install libsasl2-dev as well
Depending on your distribution the names may vary.
Now we are going to install all LinOTP stuff:
pip install linotp
…will install the LinOTP base packages with the base useridresolver from the
python package index pypi.python.org. This public package index holds the same
packages online as you might download from the KeyIdentity customer portal. If
you prefer to install a manually downloaded linotp package you may as well
issue a command pip install linotp-<current-version>.tar.gz.
If you want to enroll tokens via QR Code like the Google Authenticator you need to either install:
pip install pil
Or on newer distributions you should install:
pip install pillow
pip install pillow-pil
pillow-pil may fail to install since as of April 2014 there only is an unstable
version available. If you want to install it anyway use the --pre option
for pip.
If you want to use the Audit module, you need to install:
pip install m2crypto
On some distributions (known with Ubuntu) m2crypto may fail to install. Then
you can install python-m2crypto in your distribution and copy the corresponding
files to /opt/LINOTP/lib/python2.7/site-packages.
To configure and activate the audit trail see Audit Trail Configuration.
Depending on where you want to store your token database you need to install database packages:
pip install pysqlite
pip install psycopg2
pip install MySQL-python
If you want to use SMS-Tokens you need to install the SMSProvider package:
pip install SMSProvider
You should update your pip environment with the help of the script
linotp-pip-update:
linotp-pip-update
At this very moment you got a full working LinOTP. To check which packages are installed in your virtual environment you can issue the command:
pip freeze
Note
In this example we assume that you copy all config files to
/etc/linotp2/. You could also use the directory /opt/LINOTP/etc/linotp2
where some example files already exist. On some systems you may find the files
under /usr/etc/linotp2/.
Warning
The pip installation does not update itself automatically. LinOTP
comes with a helper script linotp-pip-update which you can run to update
your virtualenv. Of course you first need to enter the virtualenv before you
can run the script.
3.4.1. Setup token database¶
You need to create the database, where the token information will be stored. This database can also be on a remote database server.
If you e.g. want to use mysql you could do it like this:
mysql -u root -p mysql
create database L2demo;
grant all privileges on L2demo.* to 'linotp'@'localhost' identified by 'mySecret';
flush privileges;
quit;
Note
The linotp package came with a config file /etc/linotp2/linotp.ini.example.
You need to copy this file to your preferred location like /etc/linotp2/linotp.ini.
Change the following line accordingly:
sqlalchemy.url = mysql://linotp:mySecret@localhost/L2demo
You probably got no encryption key yet. So generate a new encryption key:
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/etc/linotp2/encKey bs=1 count=96
Note
You can use the tool linotp-create-enckey -f <linotp.ini file> to
create the encryption key.
Create the LinOTP log directory:
mkdir /var/log/linotp
Now you can create the database tables:
paster setup-app /etc/linotp2/linotp.ini
Check the ownership of the files
/etc/linotp2/encKey(only readable for owner)
/etc/linotp2/token.db(if used)
/var/log/linotp/and/var/log/linotp/linotp.log.
These files should be owned by the service account linotp.
Note
You can fix ownership and access rights using the tool
linotp-fix-access-rights -f <linotp.ini file> -u <linotp user>.
You can test this setup easily as described in Testing LinOTP Server installation.
3.4.2. LinOTP and the Apache web server¶
More information about setting up LinOTP with an Apache web server can be found in section Apache web server.
The configuration depends on the distribution you are using. Debian based
distributions split up the configuration in many different files for each site
while RedHat based distributions use one big httpd.conf file.
With Apache we want to use authentication to the management web UI. For starters we choose to do digest authentication and create a file accordingly:
htdigest /etc/linotp2/admins "LinOTP2 admin area" admin
The following modules need to be installed and activated:
mod_wsgi
mod_ssl
Note
On systems using SELinux like RedHat 6 you need to deactivate SELinux
to get LinOTP up and running. You may activate and reconfigure SELinux later
on. In /etc/sysconfig/selinux set permissive and reboot the machine.
On RedHat 6 based systems you need to create a directory, otherwise the WSGI module will fail with Service Temporarily Unavailable:
mkdir /var/run/wsgi
Now we can configure the Apache web server. LinOTP provides an example
configuration file, linotp2.conf, for a server based on Debian GNU/Linux.
It can be adapted to suit your distribution. See Apache web server for
a detailed explanation of the configuration.
The WSGI daemon process is configured to run as the user linotp. So you should have a matching system account or otherwise create it:
useradd -r linotp -d /opt/LINOTP
Copy the linotpapp.wsgi file from the local etc directory in your virtualenv
to /etc/linotp2 or adapt the WSGIScriptAlias in the Apache
configuration accordingly.
Check the permissions of the files
/etc/linotp2/linotp.ini-linotpshould have read access
/etc/linotp2/encKey-linotpshould have read access
/etc/linotp2/data/- This is a template directory,linotpshould have write access
/var/log/linotp/-linotpshould have write access
Note
You can add the user linotp and fix the access rights using the tool linotp-fix-access-rights -f <linotp.ini file> -u linotp.
You should now be able to restart the Apache web server and login to the management web UI
via https://<yourserver>/manage.
3.4.3. Further changes for RedHat and CentOS 6¶
You might want to adapt your firewall configuration in
/etc/sysconfig/iptables to allow port 443 to be accessed.
Moreover you should verify, that your services httpd and mysqld (if you
are using MySQL) are running after a reboot:
chkconfig mysqld on
chkconfig httpd on
3.4.4. Testing LinOTP Server installation¶
You are now ready to go. You might now want to start LinOTP temporarily from the command line:
paster serve /etc/linotp2/linotp.ini
LinOTP will now listen on the port you configured in the linotp.ini file.
If you have configured Apache to serve LinOTP, you just need to ensure that the
Apache web server is started. Point your browser to
http://<yourserverIP>:5001/manage and you will get the Management
Interface.
Warning
In the case of using paster serve, there is no authentication and encryption while talking to the LinOTP server. You should use this only for testing purposes! Please read the section LinOTP and the Apache web server and Apache web server on how to setup encryption and authentication.
3.4.5. Creating self signed SSL certificate¶
For testing purposes you can create a self signed certificate like this:
openssl req -new -x509 -key /etc/ssl/private/linotpserver.key \
-out /etc/ssl/certs/linotpserver.pem -days 365
You should adapt the access rights of the private key!