Developer VM

SolarNetwork Developer Virtual Machine Guide

This guide describes how to set up a SolarNetwork development virtual machine (VM) using VirtualBox and Vagrant. This is a convenient way to get started with SolarNetwork development, as all the required software will be available in the VM. The VM features:

1. Ubuntu host with minimal X window manager
2. Postgres server for SolarNet development
3. VerneMQ server for SolarQueue development (SolarNode ⇌ SolarNet MQTT integration)
4. pgAdmin Postgres GUI
5. Eclipse IDE
6. Firefox web browser
7. Cloned SolarNetwork git repositories
8. Basic developer configuration

Requirements

The VM requires VirtualBox and is initially set up using Vagrant. Install both of these before continuing. The VM will be allocated 2GB of RAM by default, but you may want to configure more if your system has enough RAM. The VM will also be allocated a 20 GB disk image (although only a few GB will be used at the start), so you must have that much disk space available.

Additionally, the Vagrant disksize plugin is required. Once you have Vagrant installed, simply run

vagrant plugin install vagrant-disksize

to install the plugin.

Virtual Machine setup

Download the solarnetwork-dev repository, or clone it via https://github.com/SolarNetwork/solarnetwork-dev.git. Once downloaded or cloned, perform the following:

cd solarnetwork-dev/vagrant/solarnet-dev
vagrant up

Vagrant will download the VM image and then start configuring the SolarNetwork environment.

⚠️ Note This process can take a fair amount of time, as the OS image itself must be downloaded as well several hundred MB of software packages. Please be patient. It could be a good time to grab a ☕...

You should see output similar to this:

Bringing machine 'solarnet' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
==> solarnet: Importing base box 'ubuntu/jammy64'...
==> solarnet: Matching MAC address for NAT networking...
==> solarnet: Checking if box 'ubuntu/jammy64' is up to date...
==> solarnet: Setting the name of the VM: SolarNet Dev
...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SolarNetwork development environment setup complete. Please reboot the virtual
machine like:

vagrant reload

Then log into the VM as solardev:solardev and Eclipse will launch automatically.
Right-click on the desktop to access a menu of other options.

!! NOTE: If X fails to start on tty1, login on tty2 (Alt-F2) and run `startx`
!! to start X and have Eclipse launch automatically.

Follow the instructions to restart the VM:

vagrant reload

More details on the Vagrant setup are available on the project's README.

Tweak swap

The VM image will have a 1GB swap file configured. You might need to enable more swap memory, if your VM is not configured at least 2GB or so. To change the swap file to 2GB, starting again from the solarnetwork-dev directory, execute:

vagrant ssh
sudo swapoff /swapfile
sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile

VM tuning

If you have sufficient RAM and CPU cores on your host machine, you might make the development machine a bit snappier by allocating more RAM and/or CPU cores to the VM. Allocating more RAM is especially useful; 2GB makes Eclipse run much more smoothly, and 3GB even more so. You can tweak any of the VM settings you like, you just need to shut down the VM first. An easy way to do this is to run vagrant halt, and once the VM is shut down open VirtualBox directly and modify the VM's settings. By default VirtualBox stores your machine files in ~/VirtualBox VMs.

Note that future use of vagrant up might reset the memory configuration of the VM back to the default. You can avoid that by simply opening VirtualBox directly and starting the VM there.

Log in to VM

Switch over to the VM in VirtualBox, and log in as solardev with the password solardev. You should end up with a screen like this:

Click on the Workbench big-arrow icon to dismiss the welcome screen.

Note if you get an error about X refusing to start, try this approach instead:

1. Switch to the tty2 virtual console by pressing Alt+F2.
2. Log in as solardev with the password solardev.
3. At the shell prompt, type startx to launch the display environment.

Prepare screen resolution

The default screen size might be pretty small to work with when you eventually log in. Minimize Eclipse, then you can open up a shell by right-clicking on the desktop and choose Shells > bash. Then run xrandr -q to get a list of available screen resolutions:

Screen 0: minimum 64 x 64, current 800 x 600, maximum 32766 x 32766
VGA-0 connected 800x600+0+0 0mm x 0mm
   800x600       60.00*+  60.00*
   2560x1600     60.00
   2560x1440     60.00
   2048x1536     60.00
   1920x1600     60.00
   1920x1080     60.00
   1600x1200     60.00
   1680x1050     60.00
   1400x1050     60.00
   1280x1024     60.00
   1024x768      60.00
   640x480       60.00

You can tell X to switch to one of those resolutions by executing

xrandr --size 1400x1050

(using whatever resolution you like). You can that change permanent by editing .fluxbox/startup and adding that same line to the start of that file, right after the #!/bin/sh line. That might lead to unusually large fonts in some places, however, so an alternative is to use vagrant ssh from your host environment to log in as an administrator, and then create a 10-monitor.conf configuration file:

sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf

with content like this:

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier             "Monitor0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier             "Device0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier             "Screen0"
    Device                 "Device0"
    Monitor                "Monitor0"
    SubSection             "Display"
        Modes              "1400x1050" # Use one of the sizes returned by xrandr
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Just replace the Modes line with the size you want from the xrandr output.

Eclipse setup

When Eclipse first launches, it won't have any projects configured. You need to perform some one-time initial setup tasks to get everything working.

Import team project set

A Team Project Set will have been created for you that contains all the SolarNetwork projects. Import this now by selecting File > Import... > Team > Team Project Set.

Click Next > and in the dialog that follows, enter a File path of /home/solardev/workspace/SolarNetworkTeamProjectSet.psf (or use the Browse... button to select this file), and then click Finished. This will import all the projects into Eclipse.

Once the import completes, you should have all the SolarNetwork projects available in your Eclipse workspace. Eclipse will compile all projects, which can take a couple of minutes.

⚠️ Note you may see some projects reporting compile errors when importing the projects the first time. If that is the case, often selecting Project > Clean... > Clean all projects can sort things out. Some errors can be ignored (you can configure Eclipse to ignore those if desired).

Refresh SolarNet project to pull in child projects

The solarnet project is built with Gradle. It will have been imported in Eclipse, but not its children projects. To do that, right-click on the project and choose Gradle > Refresh Gradle Project:

⚠️ Note this can take a fair amount of time, as many dependencies will need to be downloaded. Please be patient. You will need to wait for the refresh to complete before continuing. Perhaps it is time for another ☕...

Launch SolarUser

SolarUser is the application that provides a web-based UI to manage SolarNetwork accounts and their associated SolarNode devices and data. You must launch SolarUser first so it can generate some initial TLS certificate infrastructure. Launch the SolarUser app by going to Run > Run Configurations... > SolarUserApp and clicking the Run button. Wait for the app to start up.

Launch SolarIn

SolarIn is the application that SolarNode connects to to post data to and receive instructions from. SolarIn must be running to set up your first SolarNode. Launch the SolarIn app by going to Run > Run Configurations... > SolarInApp and clicking the Run button. Wait a few moments for the app to start up.

Create development SolarNet account

Now that SolarUser and SolarIn are running, you can create a development SolarNet account in SolarUser so you can then add a development SolarNode. Open a browser window (click the little earth icon in Eclipse) and visit http://localhost:9081/solaruser/. You should see a page like this:

⚠️ Note if no browser opens when you click on the icon in Eclipse, try going to the Window > Preferences > General > Web Browser and make the "Use internal web browser" option active, like shown below, and try again:

Click on the Login link, then click the "goto the User Registration page" link to register as a new user. Fill in the form and submit it.

When you submit the registration, SolarNet will send a confirmation email to the address provided with a confirmation URL in the message body. The development environment is set up to simply log outbound email messages, so look in the Eclipse console and you should see the confirmation URL there. Is will take the form of

http://localhost:9081/solaruser/register/confirm.do?...

Copy that entire URL, and paste it into the browser to visit it. That will complete the registration process, and you should then log in. That will land you on the My Nodes page:

Invite new SolarNode

Now you are ready to set up your development SolarNode. Start by clicking on the Invite New SolarNode button on the My Nodes page you landed on after logging in. Fill in and submit the form that appears:

Once submitted an invitation will be generated, like this:

Now select and copy the entire invitation code. You will need to paste that into the SolarNode setup screen in the next section.

Launch SolarNode

To launch the SolarNode platform go to Run > Run Configurations... > OSGi Framework > SolarNode and click Run.

After a few minutes, the SolarNode platform should finish starting up, and you'll see many log messages printed to the Eclipse console, including some errors.

Associate development SolarNode

Now you are ready to associate your development SolarNode with your development SolarNet account. Open a new browser window and visit http://localhost:8080. You should land on an association form like this, where you can paste the entire invitation code you generated in SolarUser:

After pasting in the invitation code click the Verify button. You will be guided through the association process. Note the host will be shown as solarnetworkdev.net, which the VM has configured to map to 127.0.0.1 (e.g. localhost).

⚠️ Be sure to enter a certificate password when asked, so SolarNet can generate the node's certificate for you.

When the association is complete, you should see a screen like this (your node ID might differ):

⚠️ A random password will have been generated for you to log into SolarNode. For development it can be useful to immediately change it to a simple password like solar so you do not have to remember the random password. You can use the change password now link on the completion page to quickly change the password.

Run SolarQuery, SolarJobs apps

The SolarQuery application exposes web APIs for accessing the data posted by your SolarNodes. Launch the SolarQuery app by going to Run > Run Configurations... > SolarQueryApp and clicking the Run button. Wait a few moments for the app to start up.

⚠️ Note that SolarQuery is configured to listen on port 9082, so the base URL to the SolarQuery API is http://localhost:9082/solarquery.

The SolarJobs application runs various maintenance jobs for SolarNetwork, like processing the raw data posted by SolarNodes into various aggregate rollups for faster query performance. Launch the SolarJobs app by going to Run > Run Configurations... > SolarJobsApp and clicking the Run button. Wait a few moments for the app to start up.

Checking SolarNet app status

All SolarNet applications provide a basic status/health URL that you can use to quickly check for issues. Those URLs are:

App	URL
SolarJobs	http://localhost:9080/solarjobs/ping
SolarUser	http://localhost:9081/solaruser/ping
SolarQuery	http://localhost:9082/solarquery/ping
SolarIn	http://localhost:9083/solarin/ping

Look for Overall: ALL_GOOD to quickly tell if all checks have passed.

These URLs can also produce JSON if invoked with an Accept: application/json request header, for example

curl -s http://localhost:9080/solarjobs/ping |python3 -m json.tool

{
    "success": true,
    "data": {
        "allGood": true,
        "date": "2023-01-25 03:21:08.624887553Z",
        "results": {
            "net.solarnetwork.central.scheduler.SimpleSchedulerManager": {
                "success": true,
                "message": "Scheduler is running as expected; 28 triggers configured.",
                "pingTestId": "net.solarnetwork.central.scheduler.SimpleSchedulerManager",
                "pingTestName": "Job Scheduler",
                "start": "2023-01-25 03:21:08.624891604Z",
                "end": "2023-01-25 03:21:08.625264949Z",
                "duration": 0
            },
            "net.solarnetwork.dao.jdbc.DataSourcePingTest-main": {
                "success": true,
                "message": "2023-01-25 03:21:08.629Z",
                "pingTestId": "net.solarnetwork.dao.jdbc.DataSourcePingTest-main",
                "pingTestName": "JDBC Pool DataSource Connection",
                "start": "2023-01-25 03:21:08.625267187Z",
                "end": "2023-01-25 03:21:08.630581181Z",
                "duration": 5
            }
        }
    }
}

You can quickly tell if all checks have passed when the data.allGood value is true.

Setup complete!

Congratulations, your SolarNetwork development environment is set up, and you have created your own development SolarNet server and SolarNode to work with. Your node probably started collecting mock data and uploading it to your development SolarNet service. You can visit the API Explorer in the VM (works best in Firefox, not the Eclipse internal browser) to explore the data posted by your node. Make sure the Host field has http://localhost:9081 to access the SolarUser API or http://localhost:9082 to access the SolarQuery API. For example, enter a service URL like /solarquery/api/v1/pub/datum/mostRecent?nodeId=1 to see the most recently collected data (change the nodeId=1 to match the ID if your development node if needed):

See the API Guide for more information on the available web services.

Installation summary

Here is a summary of what is installed in the virtual machine.

User accounts

• The solardev user account's home directory is /home/solardev and is the main development account for running Eclipse.
• The vagrant user account's home directory is /home/vagrant and can become root by running sudo su -. You can access this account by running vagrant ssh from the solarnetwork-dev/vagrant/solarnet-dev directory on your host machine.

Desktop menu

Right-click on the desktop to access a menu with shortcuts to the most useful development tools. Select Exit to shut down the OS GUI and either log out or return to the console command line.

Git repositories

All the SolarNetwork git repositories have been cloned into ~solardev/git:

/home/solardev/git/
├── solarnetwork-build
├── solarnetwork-central
├── solarnetwork-common
├── solarnetwork-external
└── solarnetwork-node

Eclipse

Eclipse is installed in ~solardev/eclipse, and set to automatically launch with the workspace location ~solardev/workspace when launching the OS GUI (when you run startx).

Firefox

Firefox is installed for web browsing.

Postgres database

Postgres 12 is installed with the following settings:

• Listening on the standard 5432 port for localhost access only
• Configuration is in /etc/postgresql/12/main
• Data directory is /var/lib/postgresql/12/main
• systemd service is postgresql@12-main (for example: systemctl status postgresql@12-main)
• solardev user has sudo access to run psql as the postgres superuser account by running sudo -u postgres - psql

The pgAdmin Postgres GUI administration tool is installed.

VerneMQ MQTT broker

VerneMQ 1.12.6.2 is installed with the following settings:

• Listening on the standard 1883 port for non-TLS access
• Configuration is in /etc/vernemq; the vmq.passwd and vmq.acl files control permissions
• Data directory is /var/lib/vernemq

Parting thoughts

If you only want to work on SolarNet development, you can streamline your workspace by closing all Eclipse projects except those under solarnet and solarnet-db-setup. Simply select the projects in Eclipse and choose Project > Close Project. See the SolarNet Development Guide for more information, keeping in mind the VM has already been configured with the various settings described there.

For SolarNode development, your development environment will start with all the available SolarNode projects enabled, which can slow your environment down. You can selectively close projects you know you don't need, such as the various net.solarnetwork.node.datum.* projects you are not working on. See the SolarNode Development Guide for more information, keeping in mind the VM has already been configured with the various settings described there.

That's it for this guide. Happy coding!