Installing IBM BigInsights on CentOS 6

I have been discussing BigInsights and Streams with IBM since the beginning of 2013.  I wanted one of my teams to start a proof of concept for BigInsights. When we looked for instructions on how to successfully install and configure IBM’s big data offering, we couldn’t find any tutorials that worked for us, so I decided to create one.

For this example I chose to use CentOS 6.0 (CentOS isn’t a supported version of Linux as far as IBM is concerned, but it’s essentially the same as Red Hat so it will work for BigInsights) and am using BigInsights Basic Edition. Both are available free of charge.

The outcome of this tutorial is: I currently have a single node version of BigInsights Basic Edition on a Dell notebook (8 GB RAM, i7 processor) that is running CentOS 6.

Here’s how I got it to run:

Install CentOS Operating System

Download CentOS 6 from mirror.centos.org/6/isos/x86_64/
Install CentOS (during install, choose the Desktop install option)
Log in as root

Download and decompress InfoSphere BigInsights

Download BigInsights from www.ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/biginsights/basic.html
Save the file to the Desktop (for this example the filename for BigInsights is iib2000_linux_64.tar.gz)
Open a new Terminal window
tar -xvvf iib2000_linux_64.tar.gz

Pre-installation Configuration

Set up passwordless SSH
ssh-keygen – t rsa

You will be presented with three prompts, select the default option for each by hitting Enter

Copy public key file to authorized key folder
cat /root/.ssh/*.pub > /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

Test passwordless SSH for root user
ssh root@localhost

You will receive an warning stating that “The authenticity of the host ‘localhost (127.0.0.1)’ can’t be established” – simply reply ‘yes‘ at the prompt

Create biadmin user that we will use to do the web-based portion of the install
useradd biadmin
passwd biadmin
Enter password 2x

You will need to use vi to add bidamin to the sudo user list. If you haven’t used vi, here are some hints:

• ‘i’ = start entering text
• ‘Esc’ stop entering text
• ‘:’ + “wq’ = save file

Add biadmin to the sudo user list:

visudo

Find the line that reads:
defaults requiretty

Comment it out:
#defaults requiretty

Find the line that reads:
## allow root to run any commands anywhere
root ALL=(ALL) ALL

Insert a line to make the section appear as:
## allow root to run any commands anywhere
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
biadmin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSED: ALL

Install rpm packages that I’ve found to be missing (and required) during the web portion of the install:
I’m not sure if everyone experiences the need for these, but each time I’ve done the install it has failed due to a configuration check that says the expect rpm is missing. So:

yum clean all
yum install tcl
yum install expect

You must also disable SELINUX or your will receive the following error:

ERROR PriorChecker – 255 – com.ibm.xap.mgmt.ConfigurationException: selinux configuration not compatible – SELINUX=enforcing

To disable SELINUX:

Navigate to the /etc/selinux/ directory

vi config

Find the line that says selinux=enabled and change it to selinux=disabled
save and close the config file

Starting the BigInsights Service

Now, we’re finally ready to start the web-based portion of the install.  If you use IBM’s installation instructions, they generally start at this step and assume you knew to do all of the pre-install configuration items listed above.

Open a new Terminal window

cd /Desktop

ls

cd into the biginsights directory

./start.sh

Once the server boots up and says it’s ready, open Firefox 

The initialization of the server says that it’s going to give you a URL to enter for the  web-based portion of the install.  In my experience, it never does, so enter the URL:

127.0.0.1:8300/Install

The following are the images of each screen in the web-based installation:

Accept the license agreement:

Since I am installing on a single notebook computer, I selected a single node installation

Accept the defaults on the File System screen

This is where we use the biadmin user that we created

All you have to do on the Summary screen is click ‘Install’

 

If all goes well, you will receive the following:

Congratulations, the web-based portion of the install is complete

Click the console link and the BigInsights Console will open and allow you to manage your implementation

Verify the open source software packages that were installed

Open a new Terminal window
To check that all components are sourced correctly, we need to run the following commands:

su – biadmin
enter the password for biadmin if prompted

nano ~/.bashrc

Make sure the following lines exist:

#user specific aliases and functions
source /opt/ibm/biginsights/conf/biginsights-env.sh

Insert a blank line after the source line (above) and then we can add pig, jaql, flume, and hive to the path by inserting the following:

export PATH=$PATH:${PIG_HOME}/bin:${FLUME_HOME}/bin:${JAQL_HOME}/bin:${HIVE_HOME}/bin

Save and Exit

Open a new Terminal Window

To verify that the path changes above work, enter:

su – biadmin
enter the password for biadmin if prompted

Now we can try to start pig to make sure it’s been successfully added to the path.  Enter:

pig

you should receive a prompt that says:

grunt>

if so, your installation is complete.

Tags: BigInsights, Hadoop, Streams, Tutorial