Automation#

Instructions to create automatic data uploads from your plant to SunPeek.

The following assumes:

  • You are running as a non root user which has read write access to the directory where the plant data is stored and sudo permissions

  • The machine you are running on has outbound internet access

  • You start the instructions in a shell in the user’s home directory

  1. Run ls -a and see if .ssh appears in the output. If not run mkdir .ssh

  2. cd .ssh

  3. Run ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f sunpeek-upload-key. Then press enter twice to save the key without a password. This will create a public-private keypair. Public key will be saved as sunpeek-upload-key.pub, the private key as sunpeek-upload-key and this must be kept confidential.

  4. Restrict permissions on the private key: chmod 600 sunpeek-upload-key

  5. Type cat sunpeek-upload-key.pub to get the public key, and send it in an email. DO NOT send us sunpeek-upload-key, the private key!

Wait for us to confirm that the server is configured with your public key before continuing.

Note

Text between < > in steps 6 and 8 should be replaced by your own values.

  1. Run cd <plant data directory>.

  2. Test the data transfer. Run rsync -rtPzv -e "ssh -i ~/.ssh/sunpeek-upload-key" ./ your_plant@data-upload.sunpeek.org:./. This command sends any files which are new or changed to the SunPeek data upload server. You should see a list of transferred files.

  3. Configure a cronjob to run the transfer daily: Run crontab -e and enter this to configure crontab to run the transfer every hour: 0 * * * * rsync -rtPz -e "ssh -i ~/.ssh/sunpeek-upload-key" <plant data directory> your_plant@data-upload.sunpeek.org:./ > /tmp/sunpeek_cronjob_log.txt 2>&1. Close the file, saving changes to the proposed filename.

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