Install on Ubuntu

[ulrick65]

I see the Rpi support and I was wondering if someone could point me in the proper direction to get Nodelink installed on my Linux server (Ubuntu 18.04.3).

Thanks for the help.

[io_guy]

Following the guide should get you there. Raspbian and Ubuntu are both Debian.  

[Scyto]

If you have docker running you might want to look at my image https://github.com/scyto/NodeLink or look at the dockerfile.linux and shell script to see how I installed it.

[ulrick65]

11 hours ago, io_guy said:

Following the guide should get you there. Raspbian and Ubuntu are both Debian.  

Thanks...I will give it a whirl.

 

10 hours ago, Scyto said:

If you have docker running you might want to look at my image https://github.com/scyto/NodeLink or look at the dockerfile.linux and shell script to see how I installed it.

 

Thanks, I will have a look.  I never used Docker...I have thought about it learning and getting it going a few times, but just haven't done it.  I assume since you built the image, you use Docker often...in your opinion, should I consider looking into it?  If so, why?  I use my Linux server for a media server mostly, but do run a few other web based apps on it and just recently added Polyglot as I said.

 

Thanks.

[Scyto]

@ulrick65

All great questions, I started using docker on my synology NAS because a)they provide a UI (i am old school windows server person and like UI) and b)because when you run custom apps via SSH on a synology their support people get pissy (understandably).  So this was a way to run apps as discrete units that don't affect the OS.

What did i learn (in no real order):

• the synology UI misses so many docker features....
• that it is awesome that upgrades to the underlying OS don't change what happens in the docker - no pissing about with multiple python or perl versions on the host OS that cause conflicts etc because each app is in its own container with all needed dependencies
• that while this seems inefficient most containers are tiny and that really you only trade one management overhead for another (managing docker vs managing inter-relationship of apps running natively on the host) - so for example if you blow away the host so long as you kept the state you mapped into the container - you just repull the container image, map in your backed up state and boom you have the app running again (even if you moved from debian to windows)..
• ...ability to user docker desktop on windows to run linux.amd64 containers on windows - freaking awesome.  Uses hyperv but is turnkey)
• by default you hide docker container apps behined a virtual NAT so only the port you want exposed to your LAN is exposed
• If the app needs root in the container you can avoid having that app run on the host as root (YMMV as some apps need host root access and need to be run as privileged)
• the ability to use github, docker hub and docker hub autobuilds to auto build new version of the container when i change the config in github OR the underlying base image gets updated (still need to manually pull the image to update the container locally)  note this doesn't work when doing multi-arch builds (like the one 'tag (aka image)' i have that supports 3 linux archs and now windows - just figiured that out!)
• ability to user docker desktop on windows to run linux containers on windows - freaking awesome
• ability to use thinsg like portainer to manage across hosts with a UI - what can i say i like UI - but setting up can be complexy
• Linux (and thus docker) has too many ways to do the same one thing - so this is a rathole project like HA

here is my set of containers on my synology - let me know if you have more questions

(note most of that CPU and RAM usage is not from docker but from a windows server VM i run on the synology VMM app.)

(influxdb, grafana and unifipoller - oops not running - pull data from unifi network system and display pretty graphs; nginx is my secure reverse proxy for inbound ingress to my network,' portainer and agent are for managing with portainer and playing with things like docker swarm)

Next-up maybe a polyglot  container pre-loaded with a bunch of polyglot stuff, havent looked at polyglot since early v1 betas so need to refresh my knowledge - heck hadn't done anything to my ISY in maybe a year until the last firmware)

Edited October 24, 2019 by Scyto

[Scyto]

for ubuntu start here https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/ and obvioulsy try out on a machine that is not you production home theater machine

not sure what you run on the box for home media  but look at https://hub.docker.com/r/emby/embyserver and https://hub.docker.com/r/plexinc/pms-docker - though that last one is probably a little scary looking, start with simpler container first like the nodelink one (assuming my container works - lol)

 

Edited October 24, 2019 by Scyto

[ulrick65]

Thanks for the robust answers @Scyto I really appreciate it.

You may regret it, because it appears we have very similar use case, so if I jump off the cliff I may be looking to you for some parachutes quite often!

 

I have two Synology NAS boxes on my network and I use Unifi access point and an EdgeRouter (love that thing) with Cisco SG300 switches through the house.  I started with two HP NAS boxes running Windows Server (don't remember what exactly, but I am talking 15 years ago)...a whopping 1 TB of raid 5 space on those bad boys!  I then bought two used U3 rack mounted servers with 12 hard drive bays each.  I installed Ubuntu at that time and that's where I learned Linux (for as good as I am, not great mind you).  Those each had 6TB of Raid 5 in them...but were huge power hogs and way overkill for what a file server at your house 10 years ago (1000 watts 24/7).  I then bought a Synology and then another one and never looked back...they are fantastic pieces of hardware....with a total of 57 TB of available space, I am good for a while.  However, I did not like running apps on them because of many of the reasons you mention and I didn't like all the media players in the house hitting one of them, some transcoding going on, etc.  So I setup the stand alone Ubuntu server and use that for my needs.

I don't run docker as I said, all of my apps are running native on the server.  Sounds like I want to start to experiment with it though based on your successes.  I tend to like pretty graphs and such too...I also like the idea of nginx reverse proxy, I currently don't allow anything in (but would like to be able to some of it in the future maybe).

Thanks.

[io_guy]

You may want to play with Synology's docker.

I use it for Emby Server, Unifi Controller, NodeLink, and 17 other programs.  Saves having a separate linux computer.

[danbutter]

On 10/23/2019 at 10:51 PM, io_guy said:

Following the guide should get you there. Raspbian and Ubuntu are both Debian.  

Will it still work for version 11?

I'm trying to install on a debian 10 container and ran the install script and got this:

### Updating System - this may take several minutes
All packages are up to date.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

### Cleaning/Creating directories

### Installing .NET 5

### Downloading NodeLink

### Modifying startup script
sed: can't read /etc/rc.local: No such file or directory
sed: can't read /etc/rc.local: No such file or directory

### Starting NodeLink

### Install complete. Login to NodeLink at http://192.168.1.237:8090

root@nodelink:~# bash: line 45: /sbin/dotnet: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

 

[io_guy]

Nope.  It's a Pi install script and the .NET version is specific.

 

 

[danbutter]

1 hour ago, io_guy said:

Nope.  It's a Pi install script and the .NET version is specific.

 

 

Well I know what docker is, but barely and I can't get that to work.  I've tried....I'm just not knowledgeable enough.

Any way to install on a plain fresh install of debian?

 

Thanks

[io_guy]

What's your docker error?

 

Plain install is harder than docker:

wget https://packages.microsoft.com/config/debian/10/packages-microsoft-prod.deb -O packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apt-transport-https
sudo apt install dotnet-runtime-5.0

Then download NodeLink and run it.  You can find the NodeLink links in the Pi install script.  

You'll want to setup NodeLink as a systems service (so it reboots on startup), there's a post on how to do that.  

[danbutter]

Thanks for the info here. I kinda gave up on docker in a container since it is nested at that point and I couldn't get it to work anyway.

My server runs proxmox so I started a new container with debian 10. 
By default the container runs as root so I didn't need the sudo commands. 
I will however leave them here for anyone who tries to follow this later.
Likely nobody ever will, but you never know and these types of posts from others are the only way my house is as automated as it is today!
I did get it running by doing the following...

wget https://packages.microsoft.com/config/debian/10/packages-microsoft-prod.deb -O packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apt-transport-https
sudo apt install dotnet-runtime-5.0

wget http://automationshack.com/Files/NodeLink.dll
wget http://automationshack.com/Files/NodeLink.runtimeconfig.json

dotnet NodeLink.dll

I didn't find the post here to start as a service so to get it to start at boot I did something a little different. 
It may not be a recommended method, but it worked for me.
I did crontab -e and choose the editor I prefer...yours may not have a choice.  
Then I added a line that says @reboot dotnet NodeLink.dll and it works for me. 
Now once I get the config moved over I can retire my old Pi2 or make it into a snapclient or whatever.

Thanks for the great software and the help!

[inovermyhead]

Not at all @danbutter, following your directions, including the crontab restart line, I got Nodelink up and running on  Ubuntu VM on my TrueNas server!n    Many thanks.

@io_guy are you still adding devices to Nodelink?   I would love to have a way to control my Velux skylights via their KLF 200; they have published an API...  I do have a KLF200 for testing; however I'm not skilled enough to write a nodeserver.  Thanks

[io_guy]

I do add devices still (just added a crude internet weather starter) and will be adding OmniLogic pool control and MyQ this spring. 

But I have to say that KLF200 API is pretty much the most complicated I have seen in a while.  It can be done I just don't have the time to put into it these days.