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Install the server

temBoard is designed with three distinct components:

  • repository - a Postgres database to store users, instances list and monitoring data.
  • UI - the main web interface.
  • agent - a standalone daemon attached to a single Postgres cluster to manage.

The following diagram illustrates the global architecture of temBoard.

temBoard architecture

This document guides you to quickly setup all these components together.

Prerequisites

temBoard UI requires:

  • Python 3.6+.
  • openssl
  • bash, sudo and psql for setup script.

Prepare repository

Before installing temBoard UI, ensure you have a running PostgreSQL 9.6+ cluster. The auto-configuration script works well with a local Postgres cluster, running as UNIX user postgres. If it’s not the case, post-inst script will fail gracefully and let you handle the configuration later.

Note

To ensure browsing of the web interface is fast enough, please note work_mem parameter PostgreSQL cluster hosting the repository should be set to at least 16MB.

A simple way to check if auto configuration should work is to run:

# sudo -u postgres psql

If this fails, don’t worry. You will have to run auto-configuration script with proper parameters, once temBoard package is installed.

Installation

temBoard RPM are published on Dalibo Labs YUM repository. temBoard supports RHEL / CentOS 7 & 8. Start by enabling Dalibo Labs YUM repository.

$ sudo yum install -y epel-release
$ sudo yum install -y https://yum.dalibo.org/labs/dalibo-labs-4-1.noarch.rpm

Warning

Do NOT use temBoard rpm from PGDG. They are known to be broken.

With the YUM repository configured, you can install temBoard UI with:

$ sudo yum install temboard
$ temboard --version

Offline install

Some production infrastructure are offline for security reasons. In this situation, the temboard package and its dependencies can be dowloaded with the following commands :

$ sudo yum install yum-utils
$ yumdownloader --resolve --destdir /tmp/temboard-packages temboard

Then the downloaded packages can be transfered to the production server and installed with

$ yum --disablerepo=* localinstall *.rpm

temBoard debs are published on Dalibo Labs APT repository. temBoard supports Debian bookworm, bullseye and buster. Start by enabling Dalibo Labs APT repository.

# echo deb http://apt.dalibo.org/labs $(lsb_release -cs)-dalibo main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dalibo-labs.list
# curl https://apt.dalibo.org/labs/debian-dalibo.asc | apt-key add -
# apt update

You can now install temBoard with:

# apt install temboard
# temboard --version

temBoard UI wheel and source tarball are published on PyPI. Installing from PyPI requires Python2.7, pip and wheel. It’s better to have a recent version of pip.

Due to the binary strategy of psycopg2 project, you have to choose how to install psycopg2: either from source (using psycopg2 package) or from binary (using psycopg2-binary package). You can also use distribution package instead.

$ sudo pip install temboard psycopg2-binary
$ temboard --version

temBoard installation prefix

temBoard installation prefix may differ from one system to another, e.g. /usr or /usr/local. Please adapt the documentation to match this system prefix.

Now run manually the auto configuration script:

$ sudo /usr/local/share/temboard/auto_configure.sh

Post installation

If postinst auto-configuration fails, you can still relaunch it with proper parameters. Call the script /usr/share/temboard/auto_configure.sh with libpq-style envvars (eg. sudo PGPORT=5433 /usr/share/temboard/auto_configure.sh).

The postinst script creates Postgres role, database and tables, as well as self-signed SSL certificate, UNIX user, configuration file and systemd unit. A few steps are left to the administrator.

The configuration file /etc/temboard/temboard.conf should suit most people. See Configuration and customize if default port or directories don’t match your local needs, or increase security by changing the certificate and the cookie secret key.

Default admin user

By default, temBoard is set up with a dumb admin user with password admin. This is totally unsecured. It is strongly recommended to change default password! See below.

First, start temboard using systemctl enable --now temboard.

You may need to open port using :

$ sudo firewall-cmd --add-port 8888/tcp --permanent
$ sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Adapt to your setup. Then point your browser to https://temboard_server_host:8888, log in as admin:admin and change the password.

Using firewall

To increase security, you may protect temBoard using a firewall rule, until the quickstart admin is secured.

Install agents

Once the UI is up and running, you can proceed to agent installation and setup on each host you want to manage. See the dedicated agent installation documentation for this.

Then, when all instances show up in temBoard, go further with the How to.