vaani.setup

This repo is an Express server that runs on the Vaani device and handles the first-time setup required to get the device working:

• since the device is not on the local wifi network when it is first turned on, the device broadcasts its own wifi access point and runs the server on that. The user then connects their phone or laptop to that wifi network and uses a web browser (not a native app!) to connect to the device at the URL vaani.local. The user can select then their home wifi network and enter the password on a web page and transfer it to the web server running on the device. At this point, the device can turn off its private network and connect to the internet using the credentials the user provided.

• after re-connecting to their home wifi, the user can reload the vaani.local page and handle the second part of setup, which is to perform OAuth authentication with Evernote to obtain an access token. (The server saves the token and related values, such as the expiration date, in a file named oauthToken.json.)

The code is Linux-specific, depends on systemd, and has so far only been tested on a Raspberry Pi 3. It requires hostapd and udhcpd to be installed and properly configured. Here are the steps I followed to configure and run this server. Note that the steps include instructions for Raspberry Pi and Edison, but that I have not yet been able to successfully run on Edison

Step 0: clone and install

First, clone this repo and download its dependencies from npm:

$ git clone https://github.com/mozilla/vaani.setup.git
$ cd vaani.setup
$ npm install

Next, you need to create a config file:

$ cd vaani.setup
$ cp evernoteConfig.json.template evernoteConfig.json

Edit evernoteConfig.json to add your Evernote API "consumer key" and "consumer secret" values. You need to register your app with Evernote to get these.

Step 1: Edison specific setup

If you're running this software on an Intel Edison instead of a Raspberry Pi, you'll probably need to modify the default yocto Linux build, as follows:

If you don't already have node 4.4, update your node and npm with commands like these:

# curl https://nodejs.org/dist/v4.4.7/node-v4.4.7-linux-x86.tar.xz | zcat | tar xf - -C /usr/local
# cat <<EOF >> ~/.profile
export PATH=/usr/local/node-v4.4.7-linux-x86/bin:$PATH
EOF
# source ~/.profile
# node --version
v4.4.7

If your Edison is running mdnsd, you'll probably need to disable that and install avahi instead. These software packages are both supposed to do mdns aka zeroconf aka bonjour so that you can refer to your device by the name 'hostname.local'. But the mdns package doesn't work on my Edison, so I've swapped it out for avahi, which is what Raspberry pi uses. Commands like these should work:

# systemctl disable mdns
# systemctl stop mdns
# opkg install avahi
# reboot

By default, my Edison was already running an HTTP server on port 80, so this vaani.setup server was not able to run. I disabled the edison_config server like this:

# systemctl disable edison_config
# systemctl stop edison_config

Step 2: AP mode setup

Install software we need to host an access point, but make sure it does not run by default each time we boot. For Raspberry Pi, we need to do:

$ sudo apt-get install hostapd
$ sudo apt-get install udhcpd
$ sudo systemctl disable hostapd
$ sudo systemctl disable udhcpd

On my Edison device, hostapd and udhcpd are already installed and disabled (but the udhcpd service is named udhcpd-for-hostapd) so these steps are not necessary.

Step 3: configuration files

Next, configure the software:

• On Raspberry Pi, edit /etc/default/hostapd to add the line:

DAEMON_CONF="/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf"

this step is not necessary on Edison.

• Copy config/hostapd.conf to /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf. This config file defines the access point name "Vaani Setup". Edit it if you want to use a different name. On Edison /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf alread exists. You may want to rename the existing file rather than overwriting it.

• On Raspberry Pi (but not Edison) edit the file /etc/default/udhcpd and comment out the line:

DHCPD_ENABLED="no"

• On Edison (but not Raspberry Pi) edit the file /lib/systemd/system/udhcpd-for-hostapd.service and modify this line:

ExecStartPre=/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 192.168.42.1 up

changing 192.168.42.1 to 10.0.0.1. This is necessary because config/udhcpd.conf and wifi.js use 10.0.0.1 as the local IP address when we're broadcasting an access point.

• On Raspberry Pi, copy config/udhcpd.conf to /etc/udhcpd.conf. On Edison, rename /etc/hostapd/udhcpd-for-hostapd.conf to /etc/hostapd/udhcpd-for-hostapd.conf.orig, and then copy config/udhcpd.conf to /etc/hostapd/udhcpd-for-hostapd.conf.

Step 4: set up the other Vaani services

Once the vaani.setup server has connected to wifi and has gotten an oauth token, it will start an auto-update service. That auto-update service will start the Vaani client software. In order for this all to work, you need to have both of these pieces of software installed:

$ git clone https://github.com/andrenatal/git-auto-updater.git
$ git clone git@github.com:mozilla/vaani.client.git

You'll need to create appropriate systemd .service files for both of these and put them in /lib/systemd/system/vaani.service and /lib/systemd/system/git-auto-updater.service.

Importantly, this vaani.setup service stores the OAUTH token in an environment variable in /lib/systemd/system/vaani.service.d/evernote.conf. In order to do this, you need to ensure that the directory exists:

$ sudo mkdir /lib/systemd/system/vaani.service.d

Step 5: run the server

If you have a keyboard and monitor hooked up to your device, or have a serial connection to the device, then you can try out the server at this point:

sudo node index.js

If you want to run the server on a device that has no network connection and no keyboard or monitor, you probably want to set it up to run automatically when the device boots up. To do this, copy config/vaani-setup.service to /lib/systemd/system, edit it to set the correct paths for node and for the server code, and then enable the service with systemd:

$ sudo cp config/vaani-setup.service /lib/systemd/system
$ sudo vi /lib/systemd/system/vaani-setup.service # edit paths as needed
$ sudo systemctl enable vaani-setup

At this point, the server will run each time you reboot. If you want to run it manually without rebooting, do this:

$ sudo systemctl start vaani-setup

Any output from the server is sent to the systemd journal, and you can review it with:

$ sudo journalctl -u vaani-setup

Add the -b option to the line above if you just want to view output from the current boot. Add -f if you want to watch the output live as you interact with the server.

If you want these journals to persist across reboots (you probably do) then ensure that the /var/log/journal/ directory exists:

$ sudo mkdir /var/log/journal