Linux Enterprise Install Guide

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Supported Systems

Enterprise Node can be installed on the following Linux Distributions:

  • RHEL 7 distros and derivatives:
    • RHEL 7
    • Amazon Linux 2
  • RHEL 8 distros and derivatives:
    • RedHat 8
    • Oracle Linux 8
    • Rocky Linux 8
  • RHEL 9 distros and derivatives:
    • RedHat 9
  • Ubuntu
    • Ubuntu 22
    • Ubuntu 24

See the latest Enterprise Agent Release Notes for specific OS version support.

Catchpoint agents running browser tests require dedicated CPU resources to ensure accurate and reliable performance measurements. Cloud instances offering shared CPU resources, such as AWS EC2 T2-series , Google Cloud E2 , or Azure B-series, instances, provide CPU performance in short bursts but are not suitable for continuous, sustained CPU-intensive workloads like those involved in Catchpoint's browser testing.

Therefore, Catchpoint strongly recommends selecting compute instances with dedicated CPU resources to guarantee precise, consistent, and reliable performance monitoring results.
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Pre-Installation Tasks

Node settings should be set before installing the node software.

Set a hostname for the machine. This will be the machine name in Catchpoint. Hostnames must be unique across the Catchpoint system (see important note below.)

Note

Linux allows periods (".") in the hostname, and you can include periods in the Enterprise Node Hostname field in Catchpoint, but the Catchpoint system disregards all characters following the first period when evaluating hostnames for uniqueness. To avoid confusion, we recommend one of the following:

  1. If possible, do not use periods in Enterprise Node hostnames.
  2. If your organization's policies require you to include periods in hostnames, ensure that the portion of the name before the first period is unique, and enter only this portion in the Catchpoint portal, to avoid confusion.

Example If the hostname is ip-10-204-XX-YY.ec2.internal, the Catchpoint Portal will only consider ip-10-204-XX-YY and ignore the rest. Therefore we recommend including only this portion in the Hostname field in Catchpoint.

*It is assumed the user running the installation has sudoers or root access and sudo is installed on the system.

  1. Update your distro with latest patches:
    1. For RHEL or CentOS based systems:
      sudo yum update -y
    2. For RHEL 8 / RHEL 9 distributions:
      sudo dnf update -y
    3. For Ubuntu:
      sudo apt update -y
      sudo apt full-upgrade -y
  2. SELinux should be set to 'permissive' on RHEL- or CentOS-based Systems:
    sudo vi /etc/selinux/config
    set SELinux=Permissive
  3. Firewall/proxy configuration:
    1. Exclude *.catchpoint.com and *.3gl.net from firewall or proxy restrictions
    2. Also exclude Recommended List of IP Addresses from firewall or proxy restrictions
  4. Set time zone:
    sudo timedatectl set-timezone UTC

Installation

To install Enterprise Node, follow the steps below for your Linux distribution:

RHEL7 and Amazon Linux 2 Distros

  1. Add Catchpoint Repo:
    curl https://repo.catchpoint.net/repo/rhel7/catchpoint.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/catchpoint_el7.repo
  2. Install Agent:
    sudo dnf install SyntheticAgent -y

RHEL8, Oracle Linux 8 and Rocky Linux 8

  1. Add Catchpoint Repo:
    curl https://repo.catchpoint.net/repo/rhel8/catchpoint_el8.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/catchpoint_el8.repo
  2. Install Agent:
    sudo dnf install SyntheticAgent -y

RHEL 9

  1. Add Catchpoint Repo:
    curl https://repo.catchpoint.net/repo/rhel9/catchpoint_el9.repo | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/catchpoint_el9.repo
  2. Install Agent:
    sudo dnf install SyntheticAgent -y

Ubuntu 22 and Ubuntu 24

  1. Get the repo list file from the Catchpoint repo and add it to the apt sources:
    ~# wget https://proddebrepo.catchpoint.net/repo/proddebrepo.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/proddebrepo.list
  2. Get the public key for the Catchpoint repo and add it to the apt trusted store:
    ~# wget https://proddebrepo.catchpoint.net/repo/prod-key.asc -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/catchpoint_prod.asc
  3. Update the local apt and confirm it can access the Catchpoint repo:
    ~# apt-get update
  4. The Agent can be installed with the following command:
    ~# apt install -y syntheticagent

Activating an Instance on Portal

If you do not have permission to this feature, contact your administrator. In case you are not enabled for this feature; please reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

  1. From the main navigation select Nodes > Nodes option to see the list of all your nodes.

  2. From the action, bar choose the Add Instance option.
    image.png

  3. To activate your agent, you will require the following:

a. Hostname, Machine ID of the machine on which the Agent is installed. The hostname should be unique across all the instances

b. Ensure the Machine ID should not contain any specially characters and should be a single string. For example, if your Machine ID is A1:00:02:E3:44:11, then you need to enter A10002E34411.

image.png

  1. Enter all the details on the Activation screen and hit Activate to continue to the next step.

  2. This step also displays a summary of the Instance i.e. the hostname, Machine ID, # of Cores and Memory which is useful to determine the capacity of the Node and the instance that can be added to.

  3. The default option is to add the instance to an existing Enterprise or an Enterprise (Pt ) Node or you can choose to create a New Node.

Image

While creating a New Node, ensure you fill in all the required details:

Image

Geography City: Location of the Enterprise Node.

ISP: You Internet Service Provider.

Node Name: A unique name to identify your new Enterprise Node - this should be unique across the system.

Size: Specify the size of the node; you are only allowed to add an instance to a similar size or less sized Enterprise Node. For example, in the above case, you can add this to an A1 or an A2 Enterprise Node.

Package: A package is assigned to your Enterprise Node to determine what type of tests can be run. If you are unaware of your packages, please contact your Customer Success Manager.

Image

Geography City: Location of the Enterprise (Pt) Node.

ISP: You Internet Service Provider. You can use the Unknown option if you are not aware of the details.

Node Name: A unique name to identify your new Enterprise (Pt) Node - this should be unique across the system.

Size: Specify the size of the node; you are only allowed to add an instance to a similar size or less sized Enterprise (Pt) Node.

For example: In the above case, you can add this to an A1 or an A2 Enterprise (Pt) Node.
After entering all the required details, choose Done to activate and add the new instance to your existing or new Node. You are now ready to schedule tests on this
Instance.

About Catchpoint Synthetic Service

The Catchpoint Synthetic Service (RPM) will write the actual program files to the following directories: /opt/catchpoint , /opt/3genlabs and /var/3genlabs.

The synthetic service stores its cache files on
/var/3genlabs/hawk/syntheticnode/service/cache .
There are certain configuration files that are placed in other portions of the system.

For example, Chrome policy files must be placed in a specific location required by Google.

USER ACCOUNTS

Serveruser

  • Not a privileged account.
  • Has its own home directory & shell.
  • Used by all Synthetic Node Services.

cp_admin_service

  • All allowed privileged operations are put into this service and can be requested
    by main SNS or REST API services.
  • Set networking, DNS, restart services, etc.
  • Manages Chrome-sandbox executable permissions.

Xvfb

  • External services (virtual frame buffer) used to manage Legacy Chrome.

SNS Cronjob

  • Runs as serveruser to clean up tmp files.
  • SNS Cronjob is installed in /etc/cron.d/.

mono-sgen

  • Main mono runtime executable.
  • Requires additional capabilities: sniff packets, open raw sockets, set system
  • time, bind ports below 1024.
  • Added capabilities extend to all system users.

Program Location

  • /opt/catchpoint/ : Binaries and Configurations.
  • /opt/3genlabs/ : Chrome binaries & extension, Mono Registry.
  • /var/3genlabs/ : Runtime files and logs.