Install SPX on RHEL 8 or AlmaLinux 8

Note: SPX supports DKMS, which allows you to build the snapshot driver for the kernel you are using.

  1. Install the EPEL repository. Run the command:
  2. sudo dnf install epel-release
  3. Note: Most CentOS and RHEL Linux installs include the EPEL components. However, if needed, you may manually download and install the EPEL repositories. Go to the Fedora website, https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL, to get the EPEL package. Then run the above command.
  4. If fprintd-pam is installed, then you may encounter a conflict with SPX. To avoid this you can uninstall fprintd-pam:
  5. sudo dnf remove fprintd-pam -y
  6. Note: If this command displays errors, skip to the next step.
  7. Install and configure our repo on the system. This only needs to be done once. Just run an update on SPX after defining the repo.
  8. Open a terminal and type the following:
  9. wget https://downloads.storagecraft.com/spx/CentOS8/storagecraft-repo-latest.rpm -O storagecraft-repo-latest.rpm
  10. sudo dnf install storagecraft-repo-latest.rpm -y
  11. Install the kernel headers required for DKMS installation.
  12. sudo dnf install kernel-devel-$(uname -r)
  13. Install DKMS
  14. sudo dnf install dkms
  15. Install SPX and the snapshot driver (kernel module) using DKMS:
  16. sudo dnf install spx kmod-stcvsm-dkms
  17. Note: The above command line does a clean install of SPX. If SPX and a snapshot driver are already installed, a one-time manual DKMS installation is required.
  18. To install only the the snapshot driver (kernel module):
  19. sudo dnf install kmod-stcvsm-dkms
  20. Important: This assumes the appropriate kernel-devel package has been installed. If it hasn't been installed, CentOS might install kernel-bug-devel, which will cause the snapshot to fail.
  21. To perform an Agent Only install with snapshot driver (kernel module):
  22. sudo dnf install spx-agent kmod-stcvsm-dkms
  23. To verify that the latest version of SPX installed, run:
  24. rpm -qi spx
  25. Start the SPX service:
  26. sudo systemctl enable --now spx
  27. Add the current user to the SPX management group:
  28. sudo /usr/bin/gpasswd -a $USER spx
  29. To open the console:
  30. Select 'Activities' then Search "SPX" to locate the SPX package
  31. To open the interface from the terminal, use the command:
  32. /opt/StorageCraft/spx/bin/spx_gui

The repo rpm package only needs to be installed once. After that, install subsequent builds by using:

If you get an error message saying there's a conflict with a package, remove it:

And then repeat the install.