Install ESF

ESF is provided using a RPM or DEB Linux package. Visit the ESF download page to find the correct installation file for the target system.

Installer types

Several installers can be found on such page, and they fall into one of the following categories:

  1. specific device profiles, like esf-boltgate-10-12-7.3.0-1.cortexa8hf_neon.rpm;
  2. generic profiles, like esf-generic-x86_64-7.3.0.rpm; and
  3. profiles with suffix nn, like esf-boltgate-20-31-nn-7.2.2-1.corei7_64.rpm

Profiles of types (1) and (2) ship an ESF version with networking functionalities. In particular, the installers of kind (1) use Kura Networking for leveraging network interface configurations and are made for a specific Eurotech device.

Installers of type (2) can be installed on targets with NetworkManager; a commonly available tool for managing Linux networking. ESF leverages this tool for networking functionalities. Refer to the Generic Profiles section for further information.

Installers of type (3) with the suffix nn are No Networking profiles that do not bundle the ESF Network Manager: all the network configurations need to be done outside of ESF. Functionalities missing in NN profiles compared to the full ESF profiles:

  • Networking interfaces management
  • Firewall configuration management
  • Network Threat management

For more information about generic profiles, please refer to the dedicated section.

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Note

It is recommended to use a specific device profile if it is available for the target gateway

Installation procedure

Once the installation package has been copied to the target system, ESF can be installed with the following command:

sudo dnf install esf-*.rpm
sudo reboot
sudo apt install ./esf-*.deb
sudo reboot

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Check the gateway-specific page if more detailed installation instructions or additional preliminary steps are needed for your device.

The dnf tool is responsible to verify the installer signature and install ESF with all the needed dependencies. Please refer to this page for more details about installer signature verification.

The apt tool will perform all the required actions for verify and install the package on the system. Please refer to this page for more details about installer sign verification.

Once the target device has finished rebooting, verify that ESF is running as expected.

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On already deployed devices, the rpm install may require the installation of the ESF RPM GPG key used to sign and verify the ESF RPM.

The ESF RPM Key comes pre-installed in EL 27.1.0 and EL 30.0.0.

The Key is available here. To install in the target device, run the following command: rpm --import <key>

ESF on Raspberry Pi

Eurotech provides ESF installers tailored for RaspberryPiOS (32 and 64bit) and for Ubuntu 20 (RaspberryPi). This can be used as a prototyping platform for testing and evaluation purposes and is not supported officially.

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The provided installation instructions have been tested with a Raspberry Pi connected via ethernet.

The installation can be completed via WI-FI but, at the following reboot, ESF will disable as default policy the WI-Fi interface. It can be later re-enabled via the ESF administration web UI.

Raspberry PI OS 32/64bits

The ESF installers for Raspberry PI are available both with and without networking (generic profiles).

Once the installation package has been copied to the target system, ESF can be installed with the following command:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install ./esf-raspberry-pi_<version>_armhf.deb

sudo reboot
sudo apt install -y wget apt-transport-https gnupg
sudo wget -O - https://packages.adoptium.net/artifactory/api/gpg/key/public | sudo apt-key add -
sudo echo "deb https://packages.adoptium.net/artifactory/deb $(awk -F= '/^VERSION_CODENAME/{print$2}' /etc/os-release) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/adoptium.list
sudo apt update

sudo apt install ./esf-raspberry-pi_<version>_arm64.deb

sudo reboot

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ESF on RaspberryPi 3 64 bit

ESF requires Java 8 to run, but the jdk is not available for the 64-bit version of Raspberry OS (bullseye).

Currently, due to a bug in the current version of the recommended distribution (Temurin), installation of ESF fails on RaspberryPi 3 and 3+.

RaspberryPi 4 and later are not affected by the problem.

Raspbian Lite & Desktop

The previous instructions are applicable for both Raspberry Pi OS Lite and Raspberry Pi OS with desktop.
In case of installation in "Raspberry Pi OS with desktop and recommended software", the following commands need to be applied to install ESF:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install java-1.8.0-openjdk-armhf
sudo update-java-alternatives --set java-1.8.0-openjdk-armhf

sudo apt install ./esf-raspberry-pi_<version>_armhf.deb
sudo reboot

Ubuntu 20.04 64bits

The ESF installer for Ubuntu 20.04 on Raspberry PI is available only in the form without networking (generic aarch64 profile).

Once the installation package has been copied to the target system, ESF can be installed with the following command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install openjdk-8-jdk

sudo apt install ./esf-generic-nn_<version>_arm64.deb
sudo reboot

WLAN Softblock

On Raspbian, it could happen that ‘wlan’ interface is “soft blocked” by default and needs to be enabled. To see if it is blocked run:

rfkill list

and unblock it with:

sudo rfkill unblock wlan

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Raspberry Pi issues when passing DNS over WLAN AP

On ESF 7.2.0, the DNS configuration pass to clients connected to a WiFi access point is not supported. Clients should manually setup their DNS configuration.


What’s Next

Once the installation step is completed and the gateway is rebooted, users can access the ESF Web UI to start customising their IoT deployment