FastX Installation Guide

Attention: This article for FastX 3.3.

Purpose

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

FastX Server 

Hardware Requirements

  • Intel or AMD x86-64 processor
  • 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
    • We also recommend a system with at least 8 logical CPU cores in order to maximize the CPU compression speed,

Please see FastX Memory Usage for more information

Operating Systems

  • Red Hat Enterprise (including CentOS) 7, 8,  or later, 64-bit only. FastX version 3.0 is the latest version available for Red Hat 6.
  • Any Linux operating system equivalent to Red Hat 7 or later including Debian/Ubuntu style systems

Miscellaneous Requirements

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

  • Mounted $HOME directory (when using clustering)
  • /tmp directory with read/write access for all users

Default Ports

  • Port 3300 for http and https (https://hostname:3300)
  • Port 22 for SSH

Migrating from 3.1 and Earlier

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Installing FastX

Follow these instructions for administrators who have root privileges.  Systems can be RPM or Deb based. The following instructions assume an installation in the default /usr directory. 

Install the StarNet Repository

Download the setup script (setup-fastx-server.sh)
run it with bash as follows:
bash setup-fastx-server.sh

Installing FastX Server

On RHEL/Fedora/CentOS/etc based systems

yum install -y fastx-server

On a Debian/Ubuntu based systems

apt install -y fastx-server

The following is not needed after 3.3.19
Run the post install script (as root)
/usr/lib/fastx/3/install.sh

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 /your/base/dir

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.

Install the server (as root)

rpm -i --prefix=/your/base/dir fastx-server-*.rpm

The following is not needed after 3.3.19
Run the post install script (as root)

/your/base/dir/lib/fastx/3/install.sh

Custom Installations

The installation process (started by yum/rpm/apt can be modified by setting the following environment variables

FASTX_INSTALL_DISABLE

This environment variable may contain a comma-separated list of the following words:

  • rlm – Don’t enable or start the fastx-rlm (license server) service. Use this if you have a central license server.
  • sudo – Don’t create the file /etc/sudoers.d/fastx3.
  • fastx3 – Don’t enable or start the FastX web server (fastx3 service).
  • sshd – Don’t enable the FastX ssh session authentication service (fastx-sshd)

FASTX_INSTALL_LICENSE_SERVER

Set this to the hostname (or IP address) of your central license server.

File 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/fastx3
  2. Add the environment variable to the file
    • FX_LOCAL_DIR=/my/custom/location
  3. Save
  4. Install FastX

Below is a list of environment variables

FX_CONFIG_DIR

Default location: /etc/fastx
The location that contains the local configuration of the web server

FX_VAR_DIR

Default location: var/fastx

Top level directory containing licensing, and default location for $FX_LOCAL_DIR

FX_LOCAL_DIR

Default location: $FX_VAR_DIR/local

The local directory contains the FastX database, the server ID, and the public-private key for this FastX server. This directory must be unique (not shared) for each FastX server (including FastX cluster members)

Upgrading FastX

To upgrade FastX simply follow the installation instructions again with the new RPM Package.

** If you have a prerelease version of FastX you will need to uninstall FastX before upgrading to the newer version.

Uninstalling FastX

To uninstall, run the command
yum erase -y fastx-server

Non Root Installations

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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/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.

  1. Log in to the web interface as an administrator
  2. Click on the gear icon to bring up the System Section
  3. Choose Local System > WWW
  4. Add the paths to your cert, key and CA file
  5. Save
  6. Restart the FastX service

Granting Sudo Access to the FastX User

In order to avoid cases where double authentication is required in a cluster, or when using OpenID Connect administrators can set the fastx user account to try to sudo to the other user.  This is an optional option.  The method for allowing sudo access is documented in Security Considerations

Startup Options

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Configuring Multiple Systems for Clustering

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FastX 3.3.17 and Earlier

Silent and Automated Installs

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Registering

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