FastX 4 Installation

The purpose of this document is to give an in-depth understanding of how to install and configure FastX for use on your Linux system.  This guide will cover basic installation as well as more advanced topics such as installation in non standard locations.

System Requirements

  • Intel or AMD x86-64 processor
  • RHEL 8 or later (or equivalent Debian/Ubuntu etc)

Additional Requirements

These requirements can be modified by changing the default startup options.

  • /tmp directory with Read/Write access for all users
  • Clustering: Mounted $FX_CONFIG_DIR, $FX_VAR_DIR, $HOME directories

Installation Instructions

Basic Package

Download the registry setup script

Set up the repository:

sudo bash setup-fastx-server.sh

Install FastX

RHEL/Fedora: 
sudo dnf install -y fastx4-server
Debian/Ubuntu: 
sudo apt install -y fastx4-server

Optional: Add a License

Run the following command

sudo -u fastx /usr/lib/fastx/4/install/activate
License Server Info

Run the following script

/usr/lib/fastx/4/install/license-server

See Licensing for more information

Default Ports

  • TCP Port 3300 for http and https (https://hostname:3300)
  • TCP Port 22 for SSH
  • Optional TCP 3322 for advanced configurations

Memory Requirements for Sessions

A FastX session’s memory requirements are highly dependent on the applications running in the session.  As such provisioning requires some calculations based on your actual use case.  We provide the following examples to give you a better understanding of the system requirements when provisioning your systems.

  • FastX Xterm single window mode session 4K:  360 MB RAM
  • FastX Gnome single window mode session 4K:  1.1 Gig RAM

The load of the actual FastX session (running 0 apps) is about 15MB.

We also recommend a system with at least 8 logical CPU cores in order to maximize the CPU compression speed,

Advanced Installation Topics

Installing in an Alternate Location

On RPM based systems (RHEL/Fedora/CentOS/SuSE/etc), the FastX server can be installed in a location different from the default.
In the following example, the FastX server will be installed in /opt/fastx

rpm -i --prefix=/opt/fastx fastx4-server-*.rpm

NOTE: Debian packages (.deb) do not install to an alternate location. To install the FastX server in an alternate location, use the non-root instructions

Disabling Services

The following services are installed by default

  • fastx4 — web server
  • fastx4-sshd — sshd service for launching sessions without user logins
  • rlm — rlm license service
  • sudo — not a service, but adds fastx to the /etc/sudoers.d/fastx4 file

To disable services add the environment variable FASTX_INSTALL_DISABLE when installing

FASTX_INSTALL_DISABLE=sudo,fastx4-sshd dnf install -y fastx4-server

Alternate Configuration Locations

Default file locations can be specified as environment variables.

To specify custom locations, do the following BEFORE installing FastX

  1. Create a file /etc/sysconfig/fastx4
  2. Add the environment variable to the file: FX_LOCAL_DIR=/my/custom/location
  3. Save
  4. Install FastX

See FastX 4 Configuration for descriptions of Environment Variables

Non Root Installations

Click on link for more information

Resetting the Admin Account

Admins are defined by Linux User Groups.  If somehow you need to reset the admin account run the following command  

/usr/lib/fastx/4/tools/reset-admin

Note: The user who is running the FastX web service always has superadmin access.

Installing Third-Party Certificates

FastX ships with self-signed certificates to get the web server up and running with as little trouble as possible.  Once the system has been configured and is ready to go into production, it is time to add your own certificates from a trusted third party (VeriSign, Thawte, Comodo etc).  Acquiring the certificate is beyond the scope of this guide and typically the trusted third parties have instructions on how to do those.

Edit $FX_CONFIG_DIR/fastx.env

CERT_FILE=/path/to/your/valid.crt
KEY_FILE=/path/to/your/valid.key
CA_FILE=/path/to/your/valid/ca_bundle.crt

Restart the service: 

sudo systemctl restart fastx4