Installation

Requirements for tape access

To access tapes, Phobos uses the Linear Tape File System tool, especially version >= 2.4.

LTFS RPM can be found on IBM Fix Central: ltfs 2.4

You can also retrieve its sources on Github: https://github.com/LinearTapeFileSystem/ltfs

If you want to build RPMs from these sources, you can find packaging resources (i.e. spec file) for LTFS here: https://github.com/piste2750/rpm-ltfs

Finally, if you are on CentOS 8, you can check the Ocean repository to download the RPM: [https://ocean.eupex.eu/](https://ocean.eupex.eu/)

Note: since LTFS 2.4, lin_tape driver is no longer needed to access tapes. LTFS now uses the standard linux tape driver (st).

Phobos installation

To install Phobos and its requirements, there are two ways, depending on the platform.

CentOS 8

Using the Ocean repository mentioned above (https://ocean.eupex.eu/), you can download the Phobos RPM, then your package manager of choice. For instance, with yum:

yum localinstall phobos-*

Other platforms

For other platforms, you will have to compile the sources. To do this, check the Developer Quickstart to know the dependencies to retrieve and commands to execute.

However, Phobos has only been tested and used for the CentOS 7 and 8 distributions, so you may have to modify the configuration and packages.

Database setup (on RHEL7/CentOS7)

As part of its internal functioning, Phobos uses a PostgreSQL database, specifically a version >= 9.4. To install it, from EPEL or any version compatible with Postgres 9.4):

yum install postgresql94-server postgresql94-contrib

Then, you must initialize the postgresql directories:

/usr/pgsql-9.4/bin/postgresql94-setup initdb

Edit the file /var/lib/pgsql/9.4/data/pg_hba.conf to authorize access from Phobos host (localhost in this example):

# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all             all                                     trust
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            md5
# IPv6 local connections:
host    all             all             ::1/128                 md5

Start the database server:

systemctl start postgresql-9.4.service

Finally, you must create a Phobos database and tables as postgres user (the password for SQL phobos user will be prompted for unless provided with -p):

sudo -u postgres phobos_db setup_db -s 

By default, the created database will have the name phobos. To change this, use the command but with a -d:

sudo -u postgres phobos_db setup_db -s -d "<other database name>"

When all of this is done, you are ready to use Phobos !