ubii-node-master

Project setup & Pre-requisits

ALL (Linux, Windows, MacOS)

Node.js

Install Node.js LTS v14.X.X (https://nodejs.org/en/download/). nvm might be helpful. IMPORTANT: Make sure to install the necessary additional tools with it if asked!

Windows & macOS

CMake

install from https://cmake.org/download/

Windows

windows build tools

from admin shell:

npm install --vs2015 -g windows-build-tools

in case of errors, also see: https://www.npmjs.com/package/zeromq

macOS

X-code command line tools

https://developer.apple.com/download/more/

Installing and running Master Node

From a non-admin shell inside the ubii-node-master folder:

Create config

Create a copy of "config.json.template" called "config.json" and adjust settings to your needs (or keep as is). If you're not using web interfaces to connect to master node you probably want to set https->enabled to "false". Then run:

NPM dependencies

npm install

Runnin master node

npm start

HTTPS setup

This can be skipped if you do not rely on HTTPS. To use HTTP instead, open config.json and set https.enabled = false.

How to create your own HTTPS certification

• Install mkcert (https://github.com/FiloSottile/mkcert)
• Run mkcert -install, this will create root certificate files and set everything up for you to sign your own certificates When later trying to connect to the frontend from remote machines, you might need to import these root certificates in the remote machine browser under authorities. Otherwise the browser might regard any socket connection over HTTPS as unsafe, even if you add an exception.
• Running mkcert ubii.com "*.ubii.com" ubii.test localhost 127.0.0.1 <host-ip-address> ::1 will give you 2 .pem files
• Copy .pem files to path-to-backend-folder/certificates

OR (under development)

• run script "createSelfsignedCertificates.js" with (multiple) options -n="<your domain name / IP>"

Alternatives:

• certbot (https://certbot.eff.org/)
• greenlock (https://www.npmjs.com/package/greenlock)

Enable HTTPS

• In config.json set things up under "https"
• enable by setting to "true"
• set paths to your certificates

CORS / allowed origins policies

• add IPs / URLs of allowed origins for CORS (usually the machine running your web frontend / other web clients) to your config.json
• localhost and local IPs are automatically added, if you want web communication from outside you need to configure it manually

Debugging

NodeJS inspection

• start the master node via "npm run start-profiling" (will run with additional command-line flags "--inspect")
• in Chrome browser, go to "about:inspect"
• click "Open dedicated DevTools for Node" or select your process from the remote target list
• Tab "Profiler" allows you to check CPU execution time
• Tab "Sources" allows you to set breakpoints and debug execution

Topic Communication

• use the tools offered in the web-frontend: https://github.com/SandroWeber/ubii-web-frontend