<?xml version="1.0" encoding="latin1" ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">
<chapter>
<header>
<copyright>
<year>1997</year><year>2009</year>
<holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the
Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/.
Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See
the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations
under the License.
</legalnotice>
<title>Embedded Solaris</title>
<prepared>Fredrik Tillman</prepared>
<responsible></responsible>
<docno>ETX/B/SFP/TILLMAN:96-001</docno>
<approved></approved>
<checked></checked>
<date>2000-10-17</date>
<rev>B</rev>
<file>embedded_solaris.xml</file>
</header>
<p>This chapter describes the OS specific parts of OTP which relate
to Solaris.
</p>
<section>
<title>Memory Usage</title>
<p>Solaris takes about 17 Mbyte of RAM on a system with 64 Mbyte of
total RAM. This leaves about 47 Mbyte for the applications. If
the system utilizes swapping, these figures cannot be improved
because unnecessary daemon processes are swapped out. However,
if swapping is disabled, or if the swap space is of limited
resource in the system, it becomes necessary to kill off
unnecessary daemon processes.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Disk Space Usage</title>
<p>The disk space required by Solaris can be minimized by using the
Core User support installation. It requires about 80 Mbyte of
disk space. This installs only the minimum software required to
boot and run Solaris. The disk space can be further reduced by
deleting unnecessary individual files. However, unless disk
space is a critical resource the effort required and the risks
involved may not be justified.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Installation</title>
<p>This section is about installing an embedded system.
The following topics are considered,
</p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Creation of user and installation directory,</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Installation of embedded system,</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Configuration for automatic start at reboot,</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Making a hardware watchdog available,</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Changing permission for reboot,</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Patches,</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Configuration of the OS_Mon application.</p>
</item>
</list>
<p>Several of the procedures described below require expert
knowledge of the Solaris 2 operating system. For most of them
super user privilege is needed.
</p>
<section>
<title>Creation of User and Installation Directory</title>
<p>It is recommended that the Embedded Environment is run by an
ordinary user, i.e. a user who does not have super user
privileges.
</p>
<p>Throughout this section we assume that the user name is
<c>otpuser</c>, and that the home directory of that user is,
</p>
<pre>
/export/home/otpuser</pre>
<p>Furthermore, we assume that in the home directory of
<c>otpuser</c>, there is a directory named <c>otp</c>, the
full path of which is,
</p>
<pre>
/export/home/otpuser/otp</pre>
<p>This directory is the <em>installation directory</em> of the
Embedded Environment.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Installation of an Embedded System</title>
<p>The procedure for installation of an embedded system does
not differ from that of an ordinary system (see the
<em>Installation Guide</em>),
except for the following:
</p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>the (compressed) tape archive file should be
extracted in the installation directory as defined above,
and,</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>there is no need to link the start script to a
standard directory like <c>/usr/local/bin</c>.</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Configuration for Automatic Start at Boot</title>
<p>A true embedded system has to start when the system
boots. This section accounts for the necessary configurations
needed to achieve that.
</p>
<p>The embedded system and all the applications will start
automatically if the script file shown below is added to the
<c>/etc/rc3.d</c> directory. The file must be owned and
readable by <c>root</c>, and its name cannot be arbitrarily
assigned. The following name is recommended,
</p>
<pre>
S75otp.system</pre>
<p>For further details on initialization (and termination)
scripts, and naming thereof, see the Solaris documentation.
</p>
<pre>
#!/bin/sh
#
# File name: S75otp.system
# Purpose: Automatically starts Erlang and applications when the
# system starts
# Author: [email protected]
# Resides in: /etc/rc3.d
#
if [ ! -d /usr/bin ]
then # /usr not mounted
exit
fi
killproc() { # kill the named process(es)
pid=`/usr/bin/ps -e |
/usr/bin/grep -w $1 |
/usr/bin/sed -e 's/^ *//' -e 's/ .*//'`
[ "$pid" != "" ] && kill $pid
}
# Start/stop processes required for Erlang
case "$1" in
'start')
# Start the Erlang emulator
#
su - otpuser -c "/export/home/otpuser/otp/bin/start" &
;;
'stop')
killproc beam
;;
*)
echo "Usage: $0 { start | stop }"
;;
esac</pre>
<p>The file <c>/export/home/otpuser/otp/bin/start</c> referred to
in the above script, is precisely the script <c>start</c>
described in the section <em>Starting Erlang</em> below. The
script variable <c>OTP_ROOT</c> in that <c>start</c> script
corresponds to the example path
</p>
<pre>
/export/home/otpuser/otp</pre>
<p>used in this section. The <c>start</c> script should be edited
accordingly.
</p>
<p>Use of the <c>killproc</c> procedure in the above script could
be combined with a call to <c>erl_call</c>, e.g.
</p>
<pre>
$SOME_PATH/erl_call -n Node init stop</pre>
<p>In order to take Erlang down gracefully see the
<c>erl_call(1)</c> reference manual page for further details
on the use of <c>erl_call</c>. That however requires that
Erlang runs as a distributed node which is not always the
case.
</p>
<p>The <c>killproc</c> procedure should not be removed: the
purpose is here to move from run level 3 (multi-user mode with
networking resources) to run level 2 (multi-user mode without
such resources), in which Erlang should not run.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Hardware Watchdog</title>
<p>For Solaris running on VME boards from Force Computers,
there is a possibility to activate the onboard hardware
watchdog, provided a VME bus driver is added to the operating
system (see also <em>Installation Problems</em> below).
</p>
<p>See also the <c>heart(3)</c> reference manual page in
<em>Kernel</em>.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Changing Permissions for Reboot</title>
<p>If the <c>HEART_COMMAND</c> environment variable is to be set
in the <c>start</c> script in the section, <em>Starting Erlang</em>, and if the value shall be set to the
path of the Solaris <c>reboot</c> command, i.e.
</p>
<pre>
HEART_COMMAND=/usr/sbin/reboot</pre>
<p>the ownership and file permissions for <c>/usr/sbin/reboot</c>
must be changed as follows,
</p>
<pre>
chown 0 /usr/sbin/reboot
chmod 4755 /usr/sbin/reboot</pre>
<p>See also the <c>heart(3)</c> reference manual page in
<em>Kernel</em>.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>The TERM Environment Variable</title>
<p>When the Erlang runtime system is automatically started from the
<c>S75otp.system</c> script the <c>TERM</c> environment
variable has to be set. The following is a minimal setting,
</p>
<pre>
TERM=sun</pre>
<p>which should be added to the <c>start</c> script described in
the section.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Patches</title>
<p>For proper functioning of flushing file system data to disk on
Solaris 2.5.1, the version specific patch with number
103640-02 must be added to the operating system. There may be
other patches needed, see the release README file
<c><![CDATA[<ERL_INSTALL_DIR>/README]]></c>.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Installation of Module os_sup in Application OS_Mon</title>
<p>The following four installation procedures require super user
privilege.
</p>
<section>
<title>Installation</title>
<list type="ordered">
<item>
<p><em>Make a copy the Solaris standard configuration file for syslogd.</em></p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Make a copy the Solaris standard configuration
file for syslogd. This file is usually named
<c>syslog.conf</c> and found in the <c>/etc</c>
directory.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The file name of the copy must be
<c>syslog.conf.ORIG</c> but the directory location
is optional. Usually it is <c>/etc</c>.
</p>
<p>A simple way to do this is to issue the command</p>
<code type="none">
cp /etc/syslog.conf /etc/syslog.conf.ORIG</code>
</item>
</list>
</item>
<item>
<p><em>Make an Erlang specific configuration file for syslogd.</em></p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Make an edited copy of the back-up copy previously
made.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The file name must be <c>syslog.conf.OTP</c> and the
path must be the same as the back-up copy.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The format of the configuration file is found in the
man page for <c>syslog.conf(5)</c>, by issuing the
command <c>man syslog.conf</c>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Usually a line is added which should state:</p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>which types of information that will be
supervised by Erlang,</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>the name of the file (actually a named pipe)
that should receive the information.</p>
</item>
</list>
</item>
<item>
<p>If e.g. only information originating from the
unix-kernel should be supervised, the line should
begin with <c>kern.LEVEL</c> (for the possible
values of <c>LEVEL</c> see <c>syslog.conf(5)</c>).</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>After at least one tab-character, the line added
should contain the full name of the named pipe where
syslogd writes its information. The path must be the
same as for the <c>syslog.conf.ORIG</c> and
<c>syslog.conf.OTP</c> files. The file name must be
<c>syslog.otp</c>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>If the directory for the <c>syslog.conf.ORIG</c> and
<c>syslog.conf.OTP</c> files is <c>/etc</c> the line
in <c>syslog.conf.OTP</c> will look like:</p>
<code type="none">
kern.LEVEL /etc/syslog.otp</code>
</item>
</list>
</item>
<item>
<p><em>Check the file privileges of the configuration files.</em></p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The configuration files should have <c>rw-r--r--</c>
file privileges and be owned by root.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A simple way to do this is to issue the commands</p>
<code type="none">
chmod 644 /etc/syslog.conf
chmod 644 /etc/syslog.conf.ORIG
chmod 644 /etc/syslog.conf.OTP</code>
</item>
<item>
<p><em>Note:</em> If the <c>syslog.conf.ORIG</c> and
<c>syslog.conf.OTP</c> files are not in the
<c>/etc</c> directory, the file path in the second
and third command must be modified.</p>
</item>
</list>
</item>
<item>
<p><em>Modify file privileges and ownership of the mod_syslog utility.</em></p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The file privileges and ownership of the
<c>mod_syslog</c> utility must be modified.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The full name of the binary executable file is
derived from the position of the <c>os_mon</c>
application if the file system by adding
<c>/priv/bin/mod_syslog</c>. The generic full name
of the binary executable file is thus</p>
<code type="none"><![CDATA[
<OTP_ROOT>/lib/os_mon-<REV>/priv/bin/mod_syslog]]></code>
<p><em>Example:</em> If the path to the otp-root is
<c>/usr/otp</c>, thus the path to the <c>os_mon</c>
application is <c>/usr/otp/lib/os_mon-1.0</c>
(assuming revision 1.0) and the full name of the
binary executable file is
<c>/usr/otp/lib/os_mon-1.0/priv/bin/mod_syslog</c>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The binary executable file must be owned by root,
have <c>rwsr-xr-x</c> file privileges, in particular
the setuid bit of user must be set.
</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A simple way to do this is to issue the commands</p>
<code type="none"><![CDATA[
cd <OTP_ROOT>/lib/os_mon-<REV>/priv/bin/mod_syslog
chmod 4755 mod_syslog
chown root mod_syslog]]></code>
</item>
</list>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Testing the Application Configuration File</title>
<p>The following procedure does not require root privilege.
</p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Ensure that the configuration parameters for the
<c>os_sup</c> module in the <c>os_mon</c> application
are correct.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Browse the application configuration file (do
<em>not</em> edit it). The full name of the application
configuration file is derived from the position of the
OS_Mon application if the file system by adding
<c>/ebin/os_mon.app</c>.
</p>
<p>The generic full name of the file is thus</p>
<code type="none"><![CDATA[
<OTP_ROOT>/lib/os_mon-<REV>/ebin/os_mon.app.]]></code>
<p><em>Example:</em> If the path to the otp-root is
<c>/usr/otp</c>, thus the path to the <c>os_mon</c>
application is <c>/usr/otp/lib/os_mon-1.0 </c> (assuming
revision 1.0) and the full name of the binary executable
file is <c>/usr/otp/lib/os_mon-1.0/ebin/os_mon.app</c>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Ensure that the following configuration parameters are
bound to the correct values.</p>
</item>
</list>
<table>
<row>
<cell align="left" valign="top"><em>Parameter</em></cell>
<cell align="left" valign="top"><em>Function</em></cell>
<cell align="left" valign="top"><em>Standard value</em></cell>
</row>
<row>
<cell align="left" valign="middle">start_os_sup</cell>
<cell align="left" valign="middle">Specifies if os_sup will be started or not.</cell>
<cell align="left" valign="middle"><c>true</c>for the first instance on the hardware; <c>false</c>for the other instances.</cell>
</row>
<row>
<cell align="left" valign="middle">os_sup_own</cell>
<cell align="left" valign="middle">The directory for (1)the back-up copy, (2) the Erlang specific configuration file for syslogd.</cell>
<cell align="left" valign="middle"><c>"/etc"</c></cell>
</row>
<row>
<cell align="left" valign="middle">os_sup_syslogconf</cell>
<cell align="left" valign="middle">The full name for the Solaris standard configuration file for syslogd </cell>
<cell align="left" valign="middle"><c>"/etc/syslog.conf"</c></cell>
</row>
<row>
<cell align="left" valign="middle">error_tag</cell>
<cell align="left" valign="middle">The tag for the messages that are sent to the error logger in the Erlang runtime system.</cell>
<cell align="left" valign="middle"><c>std_error</c></cell>
</row>
<tcaption>Configuration Parameters</tcaption>
</table>
<p>If the values listed in the <c>os_mon.app</c> do not suit
your needs, you should <c>not</c> edit that file. Instead
you should <em>override</em> values in a <em>system configuration file</em>, the full pathname of which is given
on the command line to <c>erl</c>.
</p>
<p><em>Example:</em> The following is an example of the
contents of an application configuration file.</p>
<p></p>
<pre>
[{os_mon, [{start_os_sup, true}, {os_sup_own, "/etc"},
{os_sup_syslogconf, "/etc/syslog.conf"}, {os_sup_errortag, std_error}]}].</pre>
</section>
<section>
<title>Related Documents</title>
<p>See also the <c>os_mon(3)</c>, <c>application(3)</c> and
<c>erl(1)</c> reference manual pages.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Installation Problems</title>
<p>The hardware watchdog timer which is controlled by the
<c>heart</c> port program requires the <c>FORCEvme</c>
package, which contains the VME bus driver, to be
installed. This driver, however, may clash with the Sun
<c>mcp</c> driver and cause the system to completely refuse to
boot. To cure this problem, the following lines should be
added to <c>/etc/system</c>:
</p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item><c>exclude: drv/mcp</c></item>
<item><c>exclude: drv/mcpzsa</c></item>
<item><c>exclude: drv/mcpp</c></item>
</list>
<warning>
<p>It is recommended that these lines be added to avoid the
clash described, which may make it completely impossible to
boot the system.</p>
</warning>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Starting Erlang</title>
<p>This section describes how an embedded system is started. There
are four programs involved, and they all normally reside in the
directory <c><![CDATA[<ERL_INSTALL_DIR>/bin]]></c>. The only exception is
the program <c>start</c>, which may be located anywhere, and
also is the only program that must be modified by the user.
</p>
<p>In an embedded system there usually is no interactive shell.
However, it is possible for an operator to attach to the Erlang
system by giving the command <c>to_erl</c>. He is then
connected to the Erlang shell, and may give ordinary Erlang
commands. All interaction with the system through this shell is
logged in a special directory.
</p>
<p>Basically, the procedure is as follows. The program
<c>start</c> is called when the machine is started. It calls
<c>run_erl</c>, which sets things up so the operator can attach
to the system. It calls <c>start_erl</c> which calls the
correct version of <c>erlexec</c> (which is located in
<c><![CDATA[<ERL_INSTALL_DIR>/erts-EVsn/bin]]></c>) with the correct
<c>boot</c> and <c>config</c> files.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Programs</title>
<section>
<title>start</title>
<p>This program is called when the machine is started. It may
be modified or re-written to suit a special system. By
default, it must be called <c>start</c> and reside in
<c><![CDATA[<ERL_INSTALL_DIR>/bin]]></c>. Another start program can be
used, by using the configuration parameter <c>start_prg</c> in
the application <c>sasl</c>.</p>
<p>The start program must call <c>run_erl</c> as shown below.
It must also take an optional parameter which defaults to
<c><![CDATA[<ERL_INSTALL_DIR>/releases/start_erl.data]]></c>.
</p>
<p>This program should set static parameters and environment
variables such as <c>-sname Name</c> and <c>HEART_COMMAND</c>
to reboot the machine.
</p>
<p>The <c><![CDATA[<RELDIR>]]></c> directory is where new release packets
are installed, and where the release handler keeps information
about releases. See <c>release_handler(3)</c> in the
application <c>sasl</c> for further information.
</p>
<p>The following script illustrates the default behaviour of the
program.
</p>
<code type="none"><![CDATA[
#!/bin/sh
# Usage: start [DataFile]
#
ROOTDIR=/usr/local/otp
if [ -z "$RELDIR" ]
then
RELDIR=$ROOTDIR/releases
fi
START_ERL_DATA=${1:-$RELDIR/start_erl.data}
$ROOTDIR/bin/run_erl /tmp/ $ROOTDIR/log "exec $ROOTDIR/bin/start_erl \\
$ROOTDIR $RELDIR $START_ERL_DATA" > /dev/null 2>&1 &]]></code>
<p>The following script illustrates a modification where the node
is given the name <c>cp1</c>, and the environment variables
<c>HEART_COMMAND</c> and <c>TERM</c> have been added to the
above script.
</p>
<code type="none"><![CDATA[
#!/bin/sh
# Usage: start [DataFile]
#
HEART_COMMAND=/usr/sbin/reboot
TERM=sun
export HEART_COMMAND TERM
ROOTDIR=/usr/local/otp
if [ -z "$RELDIR" ]
then
RELDIR=$ROOTDIR/releases
fi
START_ERL_DATA=${1:-$RELDIR/start_erl.data}
$ROOTDIR/bin/run_erl /tmp/ $ROOTDIR/log "exec $ROOTDIR/bin/start_erl \\
$ROOTDIR $RELDIR $START_ERL_DATA -heart -sname cp1" > /dev/null 2>&1 &]]></code>
<p>If a diskless and/or read-only client node is about to start the
<c>start_erl.data</c> file is located in the client directory at
the master node. Thus, the <c>START_ERL_DATA</c> line should look
like:
</p>
<code type="none">
CLIENTDIR=$ROOTDIR/clients/clientname
START_ERL_DATA=${1:-$CLIENTDIR/bin/start_erl.data}</code>
</section>
<section>
<title>run_erl</title>
<p>This program is used to start the emulator, but you will not
be connected to the shell. <c>to_erl</c> is used to connect to
the Erlang shell.
</p>
<code type="none">
Usage: run_erl pipe_dir/ log_dir "exec command [parameters ...]"</code>
<p>Where <c>pipe_dir/</c> should be <c>/tmp/</c> (<c>to_erl</c>
uses this name by default) and <c>log_dir</c> is where the log
files are written. <c>command [parameters]</c> is executed,
and everything written to stdin and stdout is logged in the
<c>log_dir</c>.
</p>
<p>In the <c>log_dir</c>, log files are written. Each logfile
has a name of the form: <c>erlang.log.N</c> where N is a
generation number, ranging from 1 to 5. Each logfile holds up
to 100kB text. As time goes by the following logfiles will be
found in the logfile directory</p>
<code type="none">
erlang.log.1
erlang.log.1, erlang.log.2
erlang.log.1, erlang.log.2, erlang.log.3
erlang.log.1, erlang.log.2, erlang.log.3, erlang.log.4
erlang.log.2, erlang.log.3, erlang.log.4, erlang.log.5
erlang.log.3, erlang.log.4, erlang.log.5, erlang.log.1
...</code>
<p>with the most recent logfile being the right most in each row
of the above list. That is, the most recent file is the one
with the highest number, or if there are already four files,
the one before the skip.
</p>
<p>When a logfile is opened (for appending or created) a time
stamp is written to the file. If nothing has been written to
the log files for 15 minutes, a record is inserted that says
that we're still alive.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>to_erl</title>
<p>This program is used to attach to a running Erlang runtime
system, started with <c>run_erl</c>.
</p>
<code type="none">
Usage: to_erl [pipe_name | pipe_dir]</code>
<p>Where <c>pipe_name</c> defaults to <c>/tmp/erlang.pipe.N</c>.
</p>
<p>To disconnect from the shell without exiting the Erlang
system, type <c>Ctrl-D</c>.
</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>start_erl</title>
<p>This program starts the Erlang emulator with parameters
<c>-boot</c> and <c>-config</c> set. It reads data about
where these files are located from a file called
<c>start_erl.data</c> which is located in the <c><![CDATA[<RELDIR>]]></c>.
Each new release introduces a new data file. This file is
automatically generated by the release handler in Erlang.
</p>
<p>The following script illustrates the behaviour of the
program.
</p>
<code type="none">
#!/bin/sh
#
# This program is called by run_erl. It starts
# the Erlang emulator and sets -boot and -config parameters.
# It should only be used at an embedded target system.
#
# Usage: start_erl RootDir RelDir DataFile [ErlFlags ...]
#
ROOTDIR=$1
shift
RELDIR=$1
shift
DataFile=$1
shift
ERTS_VSN=`awk '{print $1}' $DataFile`
VSN=`awk '{print $2}' $DataFile`
BINDIR=$ROOTDIR/erts-$ERTS_VSN/bin
EMU=beam
PROGNAME=`echo $0 | sed 's/.*\\///'`
export EMU
export ROOTDIR
export BINDIR
export PROGNAME
export RELDIR
exec $BINDIR/erlexec -boot $RELDIR/$VSN/start -config $RELDIR/$VSN/sys $*</code>
<p>If a diskless and/or read-only client node with the
<c>sasl</c> configuration parameter <c>static_emulator</c> set
to <c>true</c> is about to start the <c>-boot</c> and
<c>-config</c> flags must be changed. As such a client cannot
read a new <c>start_erl.data</c> file (the file is not
possible to change dynamically) the boot and config files are
always fetched from the same place (but with new contents if
a new release has been installed). The <c>release_handler</c>
copies this files to the <c>bin</c> directory in the client
directory at the master nodes whenever a new release is made
permanent.
</p>
<p>Assuming the same <c>CLIENTDIR</c> as above the last line
should look like:
</p>
<code type="none">
exec $BINDIR/erlexec -boot $CLIENTDIR/bin/start \\
-config $CLIENTDIR/bin/sys $*</code>
</section>
</section>
</chapter>