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Last Update: Oct 25th, 2021
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ET/BWMGR Software Appliance Installation

The first step in building an ET/BWMGR software appliance is to download the installation disk image. The installation image will build a HDD with a base OS and install the utilities needed to download the ET/BWMGR software.

Choosing Hardware

The ET/BWMGR software appliance is based on FreeBSD 13.2; if FreeBSD runs on your hardware you will be able to run our appliance. While any hardware will "work", many drivers and devices are better supported by the OS than others. Our hardware selection guide..

What You'll Need to Burn the USB Image

To download and write the image, you will need a computer with internet access, running Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, or Mac OS X, and a USB flash drive of 4GB or greater size. Windows machines will need additional software to "burn" the image to the USB device.

General Hardware Requirements

To boot and run the demo, you will need the following:

  • Intel or AMD 64 Bit CPU
  • 2 or 3 compatible Ethernet interfaces for bridging (see the hardware list above.) While the system with work with only 2 interfaces, 3 is highly recommended for performance reasons.
  • USB 2.0 ports and BIOS support for booting from USB flash drive.
  • 4GB RAM, 8GB+ recommended
  • Safari or Chrome Web Browser (to access the product GUI. Others may work also)

It's best to use the 3-port configuration to test the demo, especially if you are testing performance on a fast network segment. While the product will operate with 2 ports, it completely changes how the system works, as the IP address will be attached to the same bridge that is passing the managed traffic. Having 2 dedicated ports for managing traffic is a much more efficient use of hardware. However, if you simply want to explore the GUI and product features on a single connection or small test network, using 2 ports is an acceptable configuration, just not the recommended production set-up.

The Build Process

The USB contains an installer which builds a HDD with the OS and some tools needed to install the full BWMGR product. After the USB build process, you'll have a fully function freeBSD based appliance with the necessary tools to download and install a full appliance. This is what you'll be doing:

1) Download the Demo Image
2) Burn the USB
3) Boot the USB on the target system
4) Build a HDD with the Base System and the Installer
5) Boot from the HDD
6) Obtain a Demo License (Unless You've Purchased a LIcense or are building a replacement System)
7) Install the Demo or Full Bandwidth Management System
8) Set up the ET/BWMGR

Step 1: Download the Demo Image

Downloading the Image

The ET/BWMGR installer is a disk image file (.img) that can be written directly to a USB or HDD and booted. The instructions are for a USB; however if you have a dual HDD system you can also write to a HDD.

The following instructions apply to the most popular OSes; If you'll be burning the USB on the same system as your browser, you can use the following button to download the image

For the purposes of these instructions, we'll refer to the download file as etbwmgr.zip and the disk image file as etbwmgr-6.11.base.img. The name of the image file will change over time.

Step 2: Burn the USB

If you already own an ET/BWMGR system, you can use our diskutil utility to burn the USB. You'll need to operate as root user.

# unzip etbwmgr.zip

You should now have the .img file in the current directory that is approximately 2GB. Plug in a USB drive and run diskutil to find the disk:

# diskutil list

ada0 [228936 MB] Patriot Burst (SBFM61.3) (GPT / Configured / Root)
da0 [29321 MB] SanDisk Ultra 1.00 (Blank)

USB drives are named da# in FreeBSD; the target drive is da0. The disk can be blank or not; whatever is on it will be overwritten.

90dev# diskutil da0 burn etbwmgr-6.11.base.img
Writing etbwmgr-6.11.base.img to /dev/da0: 2147483648 bytes:
|0---------------------50--------------------100|
###########

Skip to "Booting the USB"

Windows

Download the image using the button above and copy the file to your desktop. Right click on the zip file and select "Extract All". It will extract to a folder named etbwmgr and the img file will be in the folder.

Windows doesn't have native tools to properly burn a raw USB, but we've found an free application which does the job. You can find it at hddguru.com. Download HDD Raw Copy ver 1.10 setup and install the application on your desktop.

Run the app, and select the .img file as the "Source" and select the usb as the "Target". Then just press the Start button and it will burn the image to the USB.

Hddguru burn

Skip to "Booting the USB"

Linux

If you haven't copied over the image from your browser system, you can use wget to download the zip file.

# wget http://www.etinc.com/downloads/etbwmgr.zip
# unzip etbwmgr.zip

You are writing a raw file system, so you need to write to the raw disk. Figure out the device with lsblk:

# lsblk

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 223.6G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 222.6G 0 part /
├─sda2 8:2 0 1K 0 part
└─sda5 8:5 0 975M 0 part [SWAP]
sdb 8:16 0 223.6G 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 0 223.6G 0 part
sdd 8:48 1 28.9G 0 disk
└─sdd1 8:49 1 28.9G 0 part

This system has 2 hard drives and the USB is sdd; determined by the size of the partiion. NOTE: Usually, on a 1 disk system, the usb will be sdb.

To turn the image, use dd to the raw drive, /dev/sdd

# dd if=etbwmgr-6.11.base.img of=/dev/sdd bs=1M

This will burn the image correctly. To check after you burn, you can run sfdisk and it should show a FreeBSD Type:

# sfdisk -l

... bunch of info here...

Device     Boot Start   End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdd4 * 0 49999 50000 24.4M a5 FreeBSD

Skip to "Booting the USB"

Mac OS X

You will not need any special software to write the image. To download the image, click on the link in the ticket, and make note of the folder that it is stored in. Option-click on the download window to open the folder that the download is stored within. If the file is not automatically uncompressed after the download, double-clicking on the file will extract the image file.

Insert your USB flash drive. You will not need to initialize, format, or partition the drive. If you see this prompt upon inserting your USB device:

Mac eject

Click Ignore to dismiss the message. Do not eject or format the drive.

Finding the Device Name

Open a terminal window, and run this command to list all detected drives:
$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *250.1 GB disk0
1: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 200.0 GB disk0s1

/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *3.9 GB disk1
1: DOS_FAT_32 NONAME 4.0 GB disk1s1

The main system/root disk should be on disk0. In this example, our USB disk is named disk1. As with most newly-purchased USB drives, it has a MS-DOS format partition. Whether your USB drive is blank or formatted, you do not need to partition or format the drive.

if you insert a USB drive with MS-DOS or Apple HFS filesystem(s), they will be automatically mounted. You must unmount any such filesystems before you can write the image, and you must do so without ejecting the device. This is how to do that (again, using the example of disk1):

$ diskutil unmountDisk disk1

If you mistakenly eject the device, simply remove and then re-insert the USB device.

Next, in the same terminal window, change your directory to the folder where you downloaded the image. In this example, it is in the Downloads folder. In our example our device is disk1, so we must write the image to the raw device rdisk1. Please double-check your disk name to ensure you don't overwrite the wrong disk!

Replace "#" with the number of your USB disk!

$ cd Downloads
$ dd bs=1m if=etbwmgr-6.11.base.img of=/dev/rdisk#

Writing the file can take anywhere from 3-15 minutes, depending on the speed of your flash device and USB controller. No information will be printed until the write is complete.

When the write is complete, you will see the pop-up prompt again.

Mac eject

Click on Eject, and then remove the USB disk, which is now ready for use. If you accidentally click on "Ignore", then you can manually eject the disk with this command:

$ diskutil eject disk#

Step 3: Booting from the USB

Once the network interfaces are installed, all that's left to do is plug your USB flash drive in the computer you will use for the demo. Make sure that the USB device is the first boot target. Enter the BIOS at boot (usually by pressing "del" or "F2" at boot, depending on the BIOS), and select your USB drive as the first boot device. This may be under the "Boot Order" menu, or some motherboards consider a USB flash drive to be a hard drive, so you must choose the USB device as the first hard drive in that case. If you have a hot swap HDD you can also just remove the drive while you boot so that the USB is the ONLY bootable device, in which case you won't need to mess with the bios.

At the end of the boot process, the system will try to get an address via DHCP and it will display NICs in the system with the addresses obtained. If an address was obtained, you can access the system remotely via SSH or telnet.

Interface Status
--------- ------
igb0 Up
IP: 192.168.0.100
igb1 Down
igb2 Down
igb3 Down

No Disk For Build. Insert a Disk and Hit Return:

This shows that igb0 has the address 192.168.0.100 and the system is accessible on that address. Since its your DHCP server, the address should be accessible from machines on your network.

You can build the system right on the console if you want; or you can access the system on the IP indicated and build the system via Telnet or SSH.

To Log In:

User: root
Password: saturn5

The installer automatically runs on the console; you can use the console keyboard to run the installer if you prefer. Or you can access the system from a computer on your network. To access the system via telnet from a MAC, open a terminal window.


etbwmgr# telnet 192.168.0.100
Trying 192.168.0.100...
Connected to 192.168.0.100.
Escape character is '^]'.
Trying SRA secure login:
User (root): root
Password:
[ SRA accepts you ]

FreeBSD/amd64 (etbwmgr) (pts/0)

Welcome to ET/BWMGR Appliance

etbwmgr# bwmgrInstaller

No Disk For Build. Insert a Disk and Hit Return:

Step 4: Building the System

If you have a hot-swap HDD system you can insert the disk now and hit return. If you installed your disk already you'll see something like this:

ada0 [114473 MB] KINGSTON SUV400S37120G (0C3J96R9) (GPT / Configured)
da0 [29321 MB] SanDisk Ultra 1.00 (GPT / Configured / Root)

Select a non-Root Drive(ada0):

We recommend only having 1 HDD and 1 USB so there's no confusion over what you're doing. Just hit return and it will build the disk:

Preparing the Disk

SIZE is 114473
size:114473 swap:12G
This will completely erase the contents of ada0 and create the following partitions:
Swap: 12G
Main: 101375M

Enter 'yes' to continue: yes
bootcode written to ada0

Partitions Created. Refreshing Info
Calling Format
newfs -U -t ada0p2

After building the disk it will immediately begin to install the software to the HDD:

Mounting disk ada0
/dev/da0p2 on / (ufs, local, soft-updates)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, multilabel)
/dev/ada0p2 on /ada0 (ufs, local, soft-updates)
Installing 91Install ...
Installing 91Base to /ada0
Uncompressing /usr/local/packages/91Base.txz ...Done
...

Configure Network? (y/n)?: y
Connect the administrative interface and press return

Select the interface you want to be your Administrative Interface

Interface Status
--------- ------
igb0 Up
IP: 192.168.0.100
igb1 Down
igb2 Down
igb3 Down

Select Interface: igb0
IP Address(192.168.0.100): 192.168.0.155
Enter IP Mask(255.255.255.0):
Enter Default Gateway: 192.168.0.1
Enter DNS Server(8.8.8.8):
Enter Hostname: etbwmgr

Using the Following Values for :
IP Address: 192.168.0.155
IP Mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.0.1
DNS: 8.8.8.8
Hostname: etbwmgr
Use these Settings? (y/n): y
Do you want to configure Bridging? (y/n): y
Connect your Outside Interface and press Return
igb0 Up
igb1 Down
igb2 Down
igb3 Down
Enter Bridge Outside Interface: igb1
Enter Second Bridge Interface: igb2
/dev/da0p2 on / (ufs, local, soft-updates)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, multilabel)
Installation Complete. Shutdown system (shutdown -p now) and remove the Installation disk before rebooting

Step 5: Boot From the HDD

After logging in, the first thing to do is run bwmgrSetup, which will create the database and ask you to change the default password.
# bwmgrSetup

+--------------------+
| Databases |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| mysql |
+--------------------+

Creating Database..Done
+--------------------+
| Databases |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| etbwmgr |
| mysql |
+--------------------+

Database Created
Enter Root/Admin Password:
Confirm Password:
Passwords set OK
#

The passwords for root and admin will all be changed to what you specify. You can change those passwords later to your needs. Note that if you run bwmgrSetup after you've installed the ET/BWMGR it will also set the GUI password; but it can't do that at this point.

We know that mysql is working from bwmgrSetup; you should now check to see that apache was installed and is running. You should be able to access the web server from a browser using the IP address of the system:

BwmgrInstaller httpd

If you get this you should be ready to install the BWMGR specific software.

Step 6: Obtaining a License

Whether you purchased a license or are requesting a demo, you'll need a license. In order to generate a license we need some info from the system. You can use the bwmgrLicense tool to request and install your license.

etbwmgr# bwmgrLicense help

Usage
bwmgrLicense show
bwmgrLicense check-license
bwmgrLicense license-request orderID
bwmgrLicense license-request AUTH_CODE
bwmgrLicense install-license
etbwmgr#

If you've purchased a license, you can use your Sales Order / Invoice number. If you're requesting a demo, you'll need to obtain an Authorization code from us via a Sales Ticket.

To request your license,

etbwmgr# bwmgrLicense license-request 20210001
Request Received. Ticket 6048514a9 Created

Access Ticket http://www.etinc.com/tickets/6048514a9

You'll have to wait for us to generate your license; you can run check-license to find out the status:

etbwmgr# bwmgrLicense check-license
Registration is Pending
etbwmgr#

Please note that we will not approve a license from a VPN, Proxy Server or Server Farm. You need to use your corporate network.

When your license is ready you'll see your license info when you run check-license:

etbwmgr# bwmgrLicense check-license
License:1580344513
Level:1000Mb/s
Expires:2022-03-01
Serial:06:60:37:04:d0:77:c3:34:9f:c0

Latest License is Not Installed

When you get this, you can use install license to install the license in the system:

etbwmgr# bwmgrLicense install-license
Installed License, checking...License is Installed
etbwmgr#

Once your license has been issued you should have access to the update server. You can use the bwmgrUpgrader tool to install the software on your system. If you've purchased a license, skip ahead to the "Installing the Full ET/BWMGR Software Package"

Step 7: Install the ET/BWMGR Demo Package

If you've purchased a license or replacement license, skip to "Installing the Full Package"

etbwmgr# bwmgrUpgrader getPackage ET64DEMO

Downloading /boot/kernel.91/et_bypass.ko..Installing..Installed OK
Downloading /boot/kernel.91/etbwmgr-91demo.ko..Installing..Installed OK
...

Installing the Full Package

If you've purchased a license, you can pull down the ET64 package:

etbwmgr# bwmgrUpgrader getPackage ET64

Downloading /boot/kernel.91/et_bypass.ko..Installing..Installed OK
Downloading /boot/kernel.91/etbwmgr-91.ko..Installing..Installed OK
...

Running postinstall

After installing the package, you need to run postinstall to tie up any loose ends.

etbwmgr# bwmgrUpgrader postinstall

The installation is now complete. Reboot the system and login in with your new password.

Check to see that the driver loaded properly:

etbwmgr# bwmgr -v
6.21
etbwmgr#

Step 8: Setting Up The ET/BWMGR

Setting the GUI Password

Next set the GUI password

bwmgr# bwmgr guipassword admin PASSWORD

You should now be able to access the GUI with your browser and log in with admin/PASSWORD

Testing The Bridge

If you've set up bridging, you should now test it to make sure it's working. First, check to see that it was successfully set up:

etbwmgr# ifconfig bridge0
bridge0: flags=8843 metric 0 mtu 1500
ether 02:a1:52:d4:d1:00
nd6 options=21
id 00:00:00:00:00:00 priority 0 hellotime 0 fwddelay 0
maxage 0 holdcnt 0 proto stp maxaddr 2000 timeout 1200
root id 00:00:00:00:00:00 priority 0 ifcost 0 port 0
member: igb2 flags=2000
ifmaxaddr 0 port 0 priority 0 path cost 0
member: igb1 flags=2000 ifmaxaddr 0 port 0 priority 0 path cost 0

Specifically check the "members" to make sure they are correct. Connect the member interfaces and pass some data; you can do this by plugging your outside interface to a switch and the other to a PC or laptop, and then pinging something.

Adding Your First Rule

To determine that the bwmgr is able to manage traffic, you should add a simple rule to make sure you're getting "hits". Go to the BW Rules tab and press New Rule.

Bwmgr editfirstrule

You'll see that In and Out is checked; the default is for the rule to match all traffic. Just save the rule and you should see this.

Bwmgr firstrule

If there's traffic going through the bridge, you should get hits on the rule. Your system is ready to manage traffic.

Disabling Telnet and SSHD Root Login

In order to simplify the installation telnet and sshd root login is enabled on the system. If your system will be firewalled from the internet or you'll be using IP Access lists, then you could leave one or both enabled. Otherwise, you should disable telnet and sshd root access. You can do this on the services tab.

Bwmgr services

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