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.

Upload server setup is documented in the SunPeek data ingestion utility README.

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.

    Note

    With the configured rrsync forced command, the remote ./ maps to the plant’s /srv/sunpeek-data/<plant> staging directory, not the SSH account’s home directory. The plant-side command must continue to use ./; server operators set the actual destination in authorized_keys and the watcher configuration.

  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.