The following process for installing and configuring Node-RED on IBMI is based on the original developerWorks IBMi article, adjusted for the new open source packaging and current versions.
At some point, interacting with an IBMi system will likely require a terminal login; for this, you will need a terminal emulator that understands and implements the IBM 5250 terminal datastream Find further information about 5250 telnet if you're interested.
IBM and other commercial organisations offer a variety of terminal emulation products -
- IBM Personal Communications
- IBM System i Access
- IBM Host on Demand
- MochaSoft
- Rocket BlueZone
- ASNA to name just a few.
If these are not available to you, there is a reasonably complete free offering tn5250
https://sourceforge.net/projects/xtn5250/files/xtn5250/1.19m/xtn5250_119m.jar
or another java-based emulator tn5250j
THE repository for all things Open Source on IBMi is hosted at bitbucket; here, you will find information about the transformation IBM has initiated to deliver open source packages and projects to the IBMi environment.
Historically, this was through an operating system licensed program option known as 5733-OPS, with additonal packages coming from a wide range of IBM and non-IBM sources.
This approach has been sunsetted in favour of a fully open approrach, based on standard utilities and packaging - yum and rpm.
The following installation of NodeRED uses the new installation process exclusively, without any dependence on ACS
From the main repository at bitbucket, download all bootstrap* objects to your workstation.
ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/ibmi/products/pase/rpms/bootstrap.sh
ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/ibmi/products/pase/rpms/bootstrap.tar.Z
(This assumes your IBMi system has not yet been set up, and does not have the curl or wget utilities available)
Now transfer the two files to your IBMi- host system - if the FTP service is enabled, something like this will do the job.
ftp {{host-ibmi}}
prompt
bin
cd /tmp
mput bootstrap*
quit
The bootstrap process needs to be run within an QShell; from the IBM command line, ensure multi-threading support is enabled, and launch a QShell to verify the bootstrap files are in place.
ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(QIBM_MULTI_THREADED) VALUE(Y) LEVEL(*SYS)
STRQSH
touch -C 819 /tmp/bootstrap.log
ls -l /tmp/bootstrap.*
You should get a listing similar to
Now run the bootstrap install process, which will install a set of base packages (perl, python, rpm, yum and a few others) needed to get the yum/rpm installation management capability going.
/QOpenSys/usr/bin/ksh /tmp/bootstrap.sh > /tmp/bootstrap.log 2>&1
Assuming all goes well, you should see the last few entries in /tmp/bootstrap.log indicating success:
It is now possible to install a supported version of Node.js as a base for NodeRED.
cd /QOpenSys/pkgs/bin
yum install gcc-aix libstdcplusplus-devel
yum install nodejs8 && nodever 8
npm --version
export NODE_PATH=/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/nodejs8/lib/node_modules
ensure the resulting package libraries are included in the PATH for the PASE//QShell environments
export PATH=/QOpenSys/pkgs/bin:/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/nodejs8/bin:$PATH
Optionally, add this command to the .profile file to run each time the shell is started.
Note: some npm package installations need to know where the node executable resides that relates to the runtime of npm - use the following command to help avoid most errors related to this requirement
npm config set scripts-prepend-node-path true
Optionally, add this command to the .profile file to run each time the shell is started.
Now install NodeRED:
npm install -g --unsafe-perm node-red
cd /QOpenSys/pkgs/bin
/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/nodejs8/bin/node-red
To exploit the Watson Cognitive services directly from the IBMi environment, install the Watson package
/QOpenSys/pkgs/bin/npm install node-red-node-watson
To access IBM Cloud Object Storage to save images, etc, the following command will install associated NodeRED package:
/QOpenSys/pkgs/bin/npm install node-red-contrib-cos
To use DB2 for i from a javascript application (such as NodeRED) on a system which has been initialised via the open source mechanism instead of 5377-OPS, a new connector module is available - idb-connector.
/QOpenSys/pkgs/bin/npm install idb-connector
/QOpenSys/pkgs/bin/npm install node-red-contrib-db2-for-i
The corresponding NodeRED DB2 for i module can use this package in place of the 5377-OPS version, but older versions need a minor tweak:
Modify the resulting ibmdb2fori.js file (/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/nodejs8/lib/node_modules/node-red-contrib-db2-for- i/ibmdb2fori.js ) - change
var db = require('/QOpenSys/QIBM/ProdData/OPS/Node6/os400/db2i/lib/db2a');
to
var db = require('db2a');
To launch NodeRED, restart QShell, or launch a PASE terminal (QP2TERM), and start NodeRED:
/QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/nodejs8/bin/node-red -v
All being well, you should see the NodeRED console start, and get confirmation that flows have started:
3 Dec 14:19:54 - [info]
Welcome to Node-RED
===================
3 Dec 14:19:54 - [info] Node-RED version: v0.18.7
3 Dec 14:19:54 - [info] Node.js version: v8.11.3
3 Dec 14:19:54 - [info] OS400 7.3 ppc64 BE
3 Dec 14:19:55 - [info] Loading palette nodes
3 Dec 14:19:56 - [warn] ------------------------------------------------------
3 Dec 14:19:56 - [warn] [node-red/rpi-gpio] Info : Ignoring Raspberry Pi specific node
3 Dec 14:19:56 - [warn] ------------------------------------------------------
3 Dec 14:19:56 - [info] Settings file : /HOME/QSECOFR/.node-red/settings.js
3 Dec 14:19:56 - [info] User directory : /HOME/QSECOFR/.node-red
3 Dec 14:19:56 - [warn] Projects disabled : editorTheme.projects.enabled=false
3 Dec 14:19:56 - [info] Flows file : /HOME/QSECOFR/.node-red/flows_.json
(node:793) Warning: N-API is an experimental feature and could change at any time.
3 Dec 14:19:56 - [info] Server now running at http://127.0.0.1:1880/
3 Dec 14:19:56 - [warn]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Your flow credentials file is encrypted using a system-generated key.
If the system-generated key is lost for any reason, your credentials
file will not be recoverable, you will have to delete it and re-enter
your credentials.
You should set your own key using the 'credentialSecret' option in
your settings file. Node-RED will then re-encrypt your credentials
file using your chosen key the next time you deploy a change.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
3 Dec 14:19:56 - [info] Starting flows
3 Dec 14:19:56 - [info] Started flows
You should now be able to launch the NodeRED IDE from your browser on port 1880.
If the IDE opens as expected, you can start on getting your IBMi system to perform image classification with Watson Visual Recognition.
(A sample NodeRED configuration is available to import as a quickstart)