Definitions

Deploy Configuration

The Deploy Configuration describes to which physical hardware devices the system shall be deployed (installed). CDP Studio supports distributed systems and the applications in a system can be deployed to different target devices in the network.

The Deploy Configuration allows you to search a network for target devices and assign applications to a device.

The Deploy Configuration is found in Configure mode by clicking on the Deploy Configuration tab .

Prerequisites

The target device must have:

• SSH Server: Must be running on port 22.
• The target must have support for either rsync or for sftp.

  Note: Rsync is recommended for faster deployment. If rsync is not available, the deployment will default to using sftp, which is significantly slower.

Windows Target

For Windows, a Cygwin SSH server should be used. Rsync as well can be found from Cygwin installer.

Linux Target

For Linux, both are usually available through a package manager. For Debian the command would be (run as root user):

apt-get install openssh-server rsync

Please consult the manual of your Linux distribution to correctly set up and configure the SSH server.

Search for the Device

By default, all applications are deployed to the localhost. To deploy to other devices, you must first select a network interface where the target device could be found (). Once selected, a device scan will begin.

Any devices found on the network will be listed in the devices table. This table displays all devices with port 22 open (the default port for an SSH server).

To successfully deploy to a device, you must provide a valid username () and pair the device (). After entering the correct credentials, the device’s MAC address and type should be automatically detected and populated in the device list.

Assign the Device

In the Applications table, each application allows you to assign a Device and select a Toolkit for deployment. To designate a target device, simply choose the desired Device for the corresponding application (). The list of available devices is governed by which devices are paired in the Devices table.

After selecting the device, ensure you also choose the appropriate Toolkit for that device in the same table (). For help in selecting the correct toolkit, refer to the Toolkit documentation.

Deploy and Run the System/Application

Once everything is setup correctly the deployment process can be executed from the system or the application context menu (). If started on a system, it will deploy and run all applications under this system. If started on application, it will deploy and run only this application.

More toolkits can be found and installed through the CDPStudio Maintanance Tool

Deploying to Windows Machines

To be able to deploy to a Windows machine you must first set up a Cygwin SSH server on it. Please refer to this manual. Once it is set up you can use the credentials of any privileged user account (Windows user account) on that machine for deployment.

Deploy to a Remote Network

It is possible to scan for devices in remote networks and deploy applications onto them if you add your own networks into the Networks table. To add a remote network, you need to specify its subnet ip and subnet mask. After that, devices from this network are populated and you can assign them to your applications.

A common situation for using remote networks is when using VPN or SSH tunneling to isolate CDP systems from the public internet. Read more in the Remote Access Over SSH manual.

Manually Running Scripts and Commands on a Remote Device

It is possible to manually run shell scripts on a remote device by choosing "Run Custom Script..." from devices table context menu. There are also premade scripts like App Manager that can be found under "Run Script" submenu. Read more about the App Manager here. To execute commands manually, simply choose "Open Remote Shell" and type in the commands that you want to execute.

Automatically Running Scripts Pre- or Post-deployment

CDP Studio supports configuring scripts as part of application deployment. Select Edit from Scripts column in Applications table. Configure either a local script, which is run on host machine even when remote target is seleted. Or configure a remote script which is always run on remote target. You can reorder the scripts and disable them when needed. We suggest adding scripts under the project folder so they are always available even when moving the project. Scripts are run when application project is deployed and the output is seen in Terminal Output pane.

When adding arguments, notice there is an state variable selector integrated on the right hand side of the argument field. From there it is possible to find some useful system state variables and pass them into the script as arguments. E.g eDevice::HostAddress, eDevice::KeyFile etc.

Managing a Device

In some use cases it might be required to change the default private key that is used for SSH access. This is possible via "Manage Devices" once the device has been found.

Selecting "Manage Devices" opens up the following dialog:

In this dialog you can select the device to configure from the Device: drop-down list. From there you can Test the connection to the device, change the private key and even pre-deploy a public key to the device .

Custom Devices can be added manually to CDP Studio. Be aware that the Devices table only shows devices from the selected network. To solve that, you can create a network to manage that specific device.