Installation on Fedora Linux 45

Fedora Linux 45 is supported as the operating system of the IDSTower server, on x86_64 (64-bit Intel/AMD) only: on 64-bit Arm, the installation script warns that the system has not been tested and continues. MariaDB and Ansible are installed from Fedora’s own repositories. Fedora 45 ships OpenSSL 4 only, and IDSTower’s runtime needs OpenSSL 3, so the installation script also installs Fedora’s openssl3-libs package, which adds OpenSSL 3 beside OpenSSL 4 and changes nothing else on the system.

Note

Fedora is supported for installing the IDSTower server, not as a managed Suricata host. The hosts IDSTower deploys Suricata to must run one of the operating systems listed in Target Host Requirements.

Quick install

Please use our interactive installation script to quickly install IDSTower. The commands below need curl to fetch the script - a minimal image may not ship it, so install it first with sudo dnf install curl -y; the script installs everything else it needs.

$ curl -O https://download.idstower.com/install_script/latest/install-IDSTower.sh
$ echo "034ce66f1ba810df3e675a829a6ebc69527f080acc76e33c2c8d01005112e59c install-IDSTower.sh" \
 | sha256sum -c -
$ bash install-IDSTower.sh -i

Manual install

Please follow these steps to install IDSTower on Fedora Linux 45:

  1. Add IDSTower Yum repository

$ sudo bash -c 'cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/idstower.repo << EOF
[idstower]
name = IDSTower
baseurl = https://download.idstower.com/repos/yum/\$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
EOF'

  1. Install Ansible

$ sudo dnf install ansible-core ansible sshpass openssh-clients -y

  1. Install MariaDB, OpenSSL 3 and IDSTower

$ sudo dnf install mariadb-server openssl3-libs idstower -y

  1. Start and enable MariaDB service

$ sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service
$ sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
$ sudo systemctl status mariadb.service

  1. (Recommended) Run mariadb-secure-installation Script

$ sudo /usr/bin/mariadb-secure-installation

  1. Edit the appsettings.json configuration file (located in: /opt/idstower/) and set the following settings

    • set the EncryptionKey key value with a 64-character hexadecimal string (32 bytes), this key is used for secure storage of cluster keys and other secrets, you can generate one using:

    $ openssl rand -hex 32

    • set the URL key value with the url you want IDSTower to listen to, example: http://idstower.mydomain.local, this url must be reachable from your Suricata hosts, note that you can use ip addresses as well.

    • set the MySQL Database settings like host, port, database name, username & password via the Database key.

    • for more information on the configuration file, please refer to the IDSTower Configuration Guide page.

  2. Initialize the IDSTower database

$ cd /opt/idstower/
$ sudo ./IDSTower --init-database

  1. Add an admin user to IDSTower

$ cd /opt/idstower/
$ sudo ./IDSTower --add-user [Your Admin Username]

Example:

$ sudo ./IDSTower --add-user admin

  1. Enable and start IDSTower Service

$ sudo chown -R idstower:idstower /var/log/idstower
$ sudo systemctl enable idstower.service
$ sudo systemctl start idstower.service

  1. Verify that IDSTower Service started correctly

$ sudo systemctl status idstower.service

  1. Configure firewall to allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic

These commands add the rules to firewalld’s default zone, which is the zone your network interface uses on a stock Fedora (FedoraServer or FedoraWorkstation, not public).

$ sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
$ sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=https
$ sudo firewall-cmd --reload

  1. Access IDSTower web interface

You can now access the IDSTower web interface using the URL specified in your appsettings.json configuration file. Log in using the admin username and password you created in step 8.

Note

On first login, you will be redirected to the license activation page. Enter your license key to activate IDSTower.