Installation & Administration Guide

Configuration

The activate() function that starts the IoT Agent receives as single parameter with the configuration for the IoT Agent. The Agent Console reads the same configuration from the config.js file.

Global Configuration

These are the parameters that can be configured in the global section: * logLevel: minimum log level to log. May take one of the following values: DEBUG, INFO, ERROR, FATAL. E.g.: 'DEBUG'. * contextBroker: connection data to the Context Broker (host and port). E.g.:

        {
        host: '192.168.56.101',
        port: '1026'
        }

• If you want to use NGSIv2 (only sending updates for active attributes):

  {
    host: '192.168.56.101',
    port: '1026',
    ngsiVersion: 'v2'
  }

• server: configuration used to create the Context Server (port where the IoT Agent will be listening as a Context Provider and base root to prefix all the paths). The port attribute is required. If no baseRoot attribute is used, '/' is used by default. E.g.:

        {
        baseRoot: '/',
        port: 4041
        }

• stats: configure the periodic collection of statistics. Use interval in milliseconds to set the time between stats writings.

    stats: {
        interval: 100
    }

• authentication: authentication data, for use in retrieving tokens for devices with a trust token (required in scenarios with security enabled in the Context Broker side). Currently, two authentication provider are supported: keystone and oauth2. Authentication need to be enabled by setting the field enabled to true. In keystone based authentication, the trust associated to the device or deviceGroup is a token representing a specific user and his rights on a given domain (i.e. combination of fiware-service and fiware-servicepath). The authentication process use the trust delegation workflow to check if the trust provided is valid, in which case return a x-subject-token that can be used to authenticate the request to the Context Broker. Required parameters are: the url of the keystone to be used (alternatively host and port but if you use this combination, the IoT Agent will assume that the protocol is HTTP), the user and password to which it is delegated the trust verification. E.g.:

    {
          enabled: true,
          url: 'https://localhost:5000',
          type: 'keystone',
          user: 'iotagent',
          password: 'iotagent'
    }

In oauth2 based authentication, two types of tokens can be used depending on the availability in the IDM to be used. On one hand, the trust associated to the device or deviceGroup is a refresh_token issued by a specific user for the Context Broker client. The authentication process uses the refresh_token grant type to obtain an access_token that can be used to authenticate the request to the Context Broker. At the time being the assumption is that the refresh_token is a not expiring offline_token (we believe this is the best solution in the case of IoT Devices, since injecting a refresh token look may slow down communication. Still, the developer would be able to invalidate the refresh token on the provider side in case of security issues connected to a token). The code was tested using Keycloak, Auth0 and FIWARE Keyrock (it may require customisation for other providers - while OAuth2 is a standard, not all implementations behave in the same way, especially as regards status codes and error messages). Required parameters are: the url of the OAuth 2 provider to be used (alternatively host and port but if you use this combination, the IoT Agent will assume that the protocol is HTTP), the tokenPath to which the validation request should be sent (/auth/realms/default/protocol/openid-connect/token for Keycloak and Auth0, /oauth2/token for Keyrock), the clientId and clientSecret that identify the Context Broker, and the header field that should be used to send the authentication request (that will be sent in the form Authorization: Bearer <access_token>). E.g.:

    {
        enabled: true,
        type: 'oauth2',
        url: 'http://localhost:3000',
        header: 'Authorization',
        clientId: 'context-broker',
        clientSecret: 'c8d58d16-0a42-400e-9765-f32e154a5a9e',
        tokenPath: '/auth/realms/default/protocol/openid-connect/token'
    }

Nevertheless, this kind of authentication relying on refresh_token grant type implies that when the acces_token expires, it is needed to request a new one from the IDM, causing some overhead in the communication with the Context Broker. To mitigate this issue, FIWARE KeyRock IDM implements permanent tokens that can be retrieved using scope=permanent. With this approach, the IOTA does not need to interact with the IDM and directly include the permanent token in the header. In order to use this type of token, an additional parameter permanentToken must be set to true in the authentication configuration. An environment variable IOTA_AUTH_PERMANENT_TOKEN can be also used for the same purpose. For instance:

    {
        type: 'oauth2',
        url: 'http://localhost:3000',
        header: 'Authorization',
        clientId: 'context-broker',
        clientSecret: '0c2492e1-3ce3-4cca-9723-e6075b89c244',
        tokenPath: '/oauth2/token',
        enabled: true,
        permanentToken: true
    }

• deviceRegistry: type of Device Registry to create. Currently, two values are supported: memory and mongodb. If the former is configured, a transient memory-based device registry will be used to register all the devices. This registry will be emptied whenever the process is restarted. If the latter is selected, a MongoDB database will be used to store all the device information, so it will be persistent from one execution to the other. Mongodb databases must be configured in the mongob section (as described bellow). E.g.:

{
  type: 'mongodb'
}

• mongodb: configures the MongoDB driver for those repositories with 'mongodb' type. If the host parameter is a list of comma-separated IPs, they will be considered to be part of a Replica Set. In that case, the optional property replicaSet should contain the Replica Set name. The MongoBD driver will retry the connection at startup time retries times, waiting retryTime seconds between attempts, if those attributes are present (default values are 5 and 5 respectively). E.g.:

{
  host: 'localhost',
  port: '27017',
  db: 'iotagent',
  retries: 5,
  retryTime: 5

}

• iotManager: configures all the information needed to register the IoT Agent in the IoTManager. If this section is present, the IoTA will try to register to a IoTAM in the host, port and path indicated, with the information configured in the object. The IoTAgent URL that will be reported will be the providedUrl (described below) with the added agentPath:

{
    host: 'mockediotam.com',
    port: 9876,
    path: '/protocols',
    protocol: 'GENERIC_PROTOCOL',
    description: 'A generic protocol',
    agentPath: '/iot'
}

• types: See Type Configuration in the Configuration API section below.
• eventType: Default type for the Events (useful only with the addEvents plugin).
• service: default service for the IoT Agent. If a device is being registered, and no service information comes with the device data, and no service information is configured for the given type, the default IoT agent service will be used instead. E.g.: 'smartGondor'.
• subservice: default subservice for the IoT Agent. If a device is being registered, and no subservice information comes with the device data, and no subservice information is configured for the given type, the default IoT agent subservice will be used instead. E.g.: '/gardens'.
• providerUrl: URL to send in the Context Provider registration requests. Should represent the external IP of the deployed IoT Agent (the IP where the Context Broker will redirect the NGSI requests). E.g.: 'http://192.168.56.1:4041'.
• deviceRegistrationDuration: duration of the registrations as Context Providers, in ISO 8601 standard format. E.g.: 'P1M'.
• iotaVersion: indicates the version of the IoTA that will be displayed in the about method (it should be filled automatically by each IoTA).
• appendMode: if this flag is activated, the update requests to the Context Broker will be performed always with APPEND type, instead of the default UPDATE. This have implications in the use of attributes with Context Providers, so this flag should be used with care.
• dieOnUnexpectedError: if this flag is activated, the IoTAgent will not capture global exception, thus dying upon any unexpected error.
• singleConfigurationMode: enables the Single Configuration mode for backwards compatibility (see description in the Overview). Default to false.
• timestamp: if this flag is activated, the IoT Agent will add a 'TimeInstant' metadata attribute to all the attributes updated from device information. This flag is overwritten by timestamp flag in group or device provision.
• defaultResource: default string to use as resource for the registration of new Configurations (if no resource is provided).
• defaultKey: default string to use as API Key for devices that do not belong to a particular Configuration.
• componentName: default string identifying the component name for this IoT Agent in the logs.
• pollingExpiration: expiration time for commands waiting in the polling queue in miliseconds. If a command has been in the queue for this amount of time without being collected by the device, the expiration daemon will reclaim it. This attribute is optional (if it doesn't exist, commands won't expire).
• pollingDaemonFrequency: time between collection of expired commands in milliseconds. This attribute is optional (if this parameter doesn't exist the polling daemon won't be started).
• autocast: When enabled, the IoT Agents will try to cast attribute's values considering the JSON native type (only for NGSIv2).

Configuration using environment variables

Some of the configuration parameters can be overriden with environment variables, to ease the use of those parameters with container-based technologies, like Docker, Heroku, etc...

The following table shows the accepted environment variables, as well as the configuration parameter the variable overrides.

Environment variable	Configuration attribute
IOTA_CB_URL	contextBroker.url
IOTA_CB_HOST	contextBroker.host
IOTA_CB_PORT	contextBroker.port
IOTA_CB_NGSI_VERSION	contextBroker.ngsiVersion
IOTA_NORTH_HOST	server.host
IOTA_NORTH_PORT	server.port
IOTA_PROVIDER_URL	providerUrl
IOTA_AUTH_ENABLED	authentication.enabled
IOTA_AUTH_TYPE	authentication.type
IOTA_AUTH_HEADER	authentication.header
IOTA_AUTH_URL	authentication.url
IOTA_AUTH_HOST	authentication.host
IOTA_AUTH_PORT	authentication.port
IOTA_AUTH_USER	authentication.user
IOTA_AUTH_PASSWORD	authentication.password
IOTA_AUTH_CLIENT_ID	authentication.clientId
IOTA_AUTH_CLIENT_SECRET	authentication.clientSecret
IOTA_AUTH_TOKEN_PATH	authentication.tokenPath
IOTA_AUTH_PERMANENT_TOKEN	authentication.permanentToken
IOTA_REGISTRY_TYPE	deviceRegistry.type
IOTA_LOG_LEVEL	logLevel
IOTA_TIMESTAMP	timestamp
IOTA_IOTAM_URL	iotManager.url
IOTA_IOTAM_HOST	iotManager.host
IOTA_IOTAM_PORT	iotManager.port
IOTA_IOTAM_PATH	iotManager.path
IOTA_IOTAM_AGENTPATH	iotManager.agentPath
IOTA_IOTAM_PROTOCOL	iotManager.protocol
IOTA_IOTAM_DESCRIPTION	iotManager.description
IOTA_MONGO_HOST	mongodb.host
IOTA_MONGO_PORT	mongodb.port
IOTA_MONGO_DB	mongodb.db
IOTA_MONGO_REPLICASET	mongodb.replicaSet
IOTA_MONGO_RETRIES	mongodb.retries
IOTA_MONGO_RETRY_TIME	mongodb.retryTime
IOTA_SINGLE_MODE	singleConfigurationMode
IOTA_APPEND_MODE	appendMode
IOTA_POLLING_EXPIRATION	pollingExpiration
IOTA_POLLING_DAEMON_FREQ	pollingDaemonFrequency
IOTA_AUTOCAST	autocast