Installing ThingsBoard CE on CentOS / RHEL

This article from ThingsBoard, has a new section called Configure MQTT port. It has been made some cuts.

Tip

In this article, We use ThingsBoard CE V3.0.1, a PostgreSQL database, and the In Memory Message Queue Service. To use other versions of ThingsBoard, other databases, or other message queue services, refer to here.

Prerequisites

This guide describes how to install ThingsBoard on RHEL/CentOS 7/8. Hardware requirements depend on chosen database and amount of devices connected to the system. To run ThingsBoard and PostgreSQL on a single machine you will need at least 1Gb of RAM. To run ThingsBoard and Cassandra on a single machine you will need at least 8Gb of RAM.

Before continue to installation execute the following commands in order to install necessary tools:

For CentOS 7:

# Install wget
sudo yum install -y nano wget
# Add latest EPEL release for CentOS 7
sudo yum install -y https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

For CentOS 8:

# Install wget
sudo yum install -y nano wget
# Add latest EPEL release for CentOS 8
sudo yum install -y https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

Step 1. Install Java 8 (OpenJDK)

ThingsBoard service is running on Java 8. Follow this instructions to install OpenJDK 8:

sudo yum install java-1.8.0-openjdk

Please don’t forget to configure your operating system to use OpenJDK 8 by default. You can configure which version is the default using the following command:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

You can check the installation using the following command:

java -version

Expected command output is:

openjdk version "1.8.0_xxx"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (...)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build ...)

Step 2. ThingsBoard service installation

Download installation package:

wget https://github.com/thingsboard/thingsboard/releases/download/v3.0.1/thingsboard-3.0.1.rpm

Install ThingsBoard as a service:

sudo rpm -Uvh thingsboard-3.0.1.rpm

Step 3. Configure ThingsBoard database

ThingsBoard is able to use SQL or hybrid database approach. See corresponding architecture page for more details.

PostgreSQL
(recommended for < 5K msg/sec)

Tip

ThingsBoard team recommends to use PostgreSQL for development and production environments with reasonable load (< 5000 msg/sec). Many cloud vendors support managed PostgreSQL servers which is a cost-effective solution for most of ThingsBoard instances.

PostgreSQL Installation

Instructions listed below will help you to install PostgreSQL:

# Update your system
sudo yum update

For CentOS 7:

# Install the repository RPM (for CentOS 7):
sudo yum -y install https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/reporpms/EL-7-x86_64/pgdg-redhat-repo-latest.noarch.rpm
# Install packages
sudo yum -y install epel-release yum-utils
sudo yum-config-manager --enable pgdg12
sudo yum install postgresql12-server postgresql12
# Initialize your PostgreSQL DB
sudo /usr/pgsql-12/bin/postgresql-12-setup initdb
sudo systemctl start postgresql-12
# Optional: Configure PostgreSQL to start on boot
sudo systemctl enable --now postgresql-12

For CentOS 8:

# Install the repository RPM (for CentOS 8):
sudo yum -y install https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/reporpms/EL-8-x86_64/pgdg-redhat-repo-latest.noarch.rpm
# Install packages
sudo dnf -qy module disable postgresql
sudo dnf -y install postgresql12 postgresql12-server
# Initialize your PostgreSQL DB
sudo /usr/pgsql-12/bin/postgresql-12-setup initdb
sudo systemctl start postgresql-12
# Optional: Configure PostgreSQL to start on boot
sudo systemctl enable --now postgresql-12

Once PostgreSQL is installed you may want to create a new user or set the password for the the main user. The instructions below will help to set the password for main postgresql user:

sudo su - postgres
psql
\password
\q

Then, press “Ctrl+D” to return to main user console.

After configuring the password, edit the pg_hba.conf to use MD5 authentication with the postgres user.

Edit pg_hba.conf file:

sudo nano /var/lib/pgsql/12/data/pg_hba.conf

Locate the following lines:

# IPv4 local connections:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            ident

Replace ident with md5:

host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            md5

Finally, you should restart the PostgreSQL service to initialize the new configuration:

sudo systemctl restart postgresql-12.service

Connect to the database to create thingsboard DB:

psql -U postgres -d postgres -h 127.0.0.1 -W

Execute create database statement:

CREATE DATABASE thingsboard;
\q

ThingsBoard Configuration

Edit ThingsBoard configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/thingsboard/conf/thingsboard.conf

Add the following lines to the configuration file. Don’t forget to replace “PUT_YOUR_POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD_HERE” with your real postgres user password:

# DB Configuration
export DATABASE_ENTITIES_TYPE=sql
export DATABASE_TS_TYPE=sql
export SPRING_JPA_DATABASE_PLATFORM=org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect
export SPRING_DRIVER_CLASS_NAME=org.postgresql.Driver
export SPRING_DATASOURCE_URL=jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/thingsboard
export SPRING_DATASOURCE_USERNAME=postgres
export SPRING_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD=PUT_YOUR_POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD_HERE
export SPRING_DATASOURCE_MAXIMUM_POOL_SIZE=5
# Specify partitioning size for timestamp key-value storage. Allowed values: DAYS, MONTHS, YEARS, INDEFINITE.
export SQL_POSTGRES_TS_KV_PARTITIONING=MONTHS

Step 4. Choose ThingsBoard queue service

ThingsBoard is able to use various messaging systems/brokers for storing the messages and communication between ThingsBoard services. How to choose the right queue implementation?

• In Memory queue implementation is built-in and default. It is useful for development(PoC) environments and is not suitable for production deployments or any sort of cluster deployments.
• Kafka is recommended for production deployments. This queue is used on the most of ThingsBoard production environments now. It is useful for both on-prem and private cloud deployments. It is also useful if you like to stay independent from your cloud provider. However, some providers also have managed services for Kafka. See AWS MSK for example.
• RabbitMQ is recommended if you don’t have much load and you already have experience with this messaging system.
• AWS SQS is a fully managed message queuing service from AWS. Useful if you plan to deploy ThingsBoard on AWS.
• Google Pub/Sub is a fully managed message queuing service from Google. Useful if you plan to deploy ThingsBoard on Google Cloud.
• Azure Service Bus is a fully managed message queuing service from Azure. Useful if you plan to deploy ThingsBoard on Azure.

See corresponding architecture page and rule engine page for more details.

In Memory
(built-in and default)

In Memory queue is built-in and enabled by default. No additional configuration steps required.

Step 5. [Optional] Memory update for slow machines (1GB of RAM)

Edit ThingsBoard configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/thingsboard/conf/thingsboard.conf

Add the following lines to the configuration file:

# Update ThingsBoard memory usage and restrict it to 256MB in /etc/thingsboard/conf/thingsboard.conf
export JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Xms256M -Xmx256M"

Step 6. Run installation script

Once ThingsBoard service is installed and DB configuration is updated, you can execute the following script:

# --loadDemo option will load demo data: users, devices, assets, rules, widgets.
sudo /usr/share/thingsboard/bin/install/install.sh --loadDemo

Step 7. Start ThingsBoard service

ThingsBoard UI is accessible on 8080 port by default. Make sure that your 8080 port is accessible via firewall. In order to open 8080 port execute the following command:

sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=8080/tcp --permanent
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Execute the following command to start ThingsBoard:

sudo service thingsboard start

Once started, you will be able to open Web UI using the following link:

http://localhost:8080/

The following default credentials are available if you have specified - loadDemo during execution of the installation script:

• Systen Administrator: sysadmin@thingsboard.org / sysadmin
• Tenant Administrator: tenant@thingsboard.org / tenant
• Customer User: customer@thingsboard.org / customer

You can always change passwords for each account in account profile page.

Tip

Please allow up to 90 seconds for the Web UI to start. This is applicable only for slow machines with 1-2 CPUs or 1-2 GB RAM.

Post-installation steps

Configure MQTT port

ThingsBoard MQTT is accessible on 1883 port by default. Make sure that your 1883 port is accessible via firewall. In order to open 1883 port execute the following command:

sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=1883/tcp --permanent
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Configure HAProxy to enable HTTPS

You may want to configure HTTPS access using HAProxy. This is possible in case you are hosting ThingsBoard in the cloud and have a valid DNS name assigned to your instance. Please follow this guide to install HAProxy and generate valid SSL certificate using Let’s Encrypt.

Troubleshooting

ThingsBoard logs are stored in the following directory:

/var/log/thingsboard

You can issue the following command in order to check if there are any errors on the backend side:

cat /var/log/thingsboard/thingsboard.log | grep ERROR