Just installed PacketFence on my Red Hat Enterprise Linux EC2 instance.

PacketFence is a fully supported, trusted, Free and Open Source network access control (NAC) system. Here comes the installation notes that I have done on my RHEL EC2 instance.

Environment

I have tested the installation on my RHEL - here comes the detail.

$ cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
VERSION="8.5 (Ootpa)"
ID="rhel"
ID_LIKE="fedora"
VERSION_ID="8.5"
PLATFORM_ID="platform:el8"
PRETTY_NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 (Ootpa)"
ANSI_COLOR="0;31"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8::baseos"
HOME_URL="https://www.redhat.com/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://access.redhat.com/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"

REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=8.5
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="8.5"

As PacketFence consumes a huge system resources, you need to deploy large instance so as to succeed an installation. I have deployed t3.xlarge instance. Here comes my instance's resources detail.

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor   : 0
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 85
model name  : Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8259CL CPU @ 2.50GHz
stepping    : 7
microcode   : 0x5003103
cpu MHz     : 2500.000
cache size  : 36608 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 4
core id     : 0
cpu cores   : 2
apicid      : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch invpcid_single pti fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid mpx avx512f avx512dq rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb avx512cd avx512bw avx512vl xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves ida arat pku ospke
bugs        : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds swapgs itlb_multihit
bogomips    : 5000.00
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 1
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 85
model name  : Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8259CL CPU @ 2.50GHz
stepping    : 7
microcode   : 0x5003103
cpu MHz     : 2500.000
cache size  : 36608 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 4
core id     : 1
cpu cores   : 2
apicid      : 2
initial apicid  : 2
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch invpcid_single pti fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid mpx avx512f avx512dq rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb avx512cd avx512bw avx512vl xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves ida arat pku ospke
bugs        : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds swapgs itlb_multihit
bogomips    : 5000.00
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 2
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 85
model name  : Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8259CL CPU @ 2.50GHz
stepping    : 7
microcode   : 0x5003103
cpu MHz     : 2500.000
cache size  : 36608 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 4
core id     : 0
cpu cores   : 2
apicid      : 1
initial apicid  : 1
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch invpcid_single pti fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid mpx avx512f avx512dq rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb avx512cd avx512bw avx512vl xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves ida arat pku ospke
bugs        : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds swapgs itlb_multihit
bogomips    : 5000.00
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 3
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 85
model name  : Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8259CL CPU @ 2.50GHz
stepping    : 7
microcode   : 0x5003103
cpu MHz     : 2500.000
cache size  : 36608 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 4
core id     : 1
cpu cores   : 2
apicid      : 3
initial apicid  : 3
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch invpcid_single pti fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid mpx avx512f avx512dq rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb avx512cd avx512bw avx512vl xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves ida arat pku ospke
bugs        : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds swapgs itlb_multihit
bogomips    : 5000.00
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

$ cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:       16021788 kB
MemFree:         6279768 kB
MemAvailable:   10224076 kB
Buffers:            2716 kB
Cached:          4090160 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:           742532 kB
Inactive:        8359032 kB
Active(anon):        676 kB
Inactive(anon):  5014020 kB
Active(file):     741856 kB
Inactive(file):  3345012 kB
Unevictable:           0 kB
Mlocked:               0 kB
SwapTotal:             0 kB
SwapFree:              0 kB
Dirty:               440 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:       4957232 kB
Mapped:           283048 kB
Shmem:              6040 kB
KReclaimable:     194280 kB
Slab:             374412 kB
SReclaimable:     194280 kB
SUnreclaim:       180132 kB
KernelStack:        6880 kB
PageTables:        72576 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:     8010892 kB
Committed_AS:   18876888 kB
VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed:           0 kB
VmallocChunk:          0 kB
Percpu:             2928 kB
HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
AnonHugePages:    837632 kB
ShmemHugePages:        0 kB
ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
FileHugePages:         0 kB
FilePmdMapped:         0 kB
HugePages_Total:       0
HugePages_Free:        0
HugePages_Rsvd:        0
HugePages_Surp:        0
Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
Hugetlb:               0 kB
DirectMap4k:      313256 kB
DirectMap2M:    11028480 kB
DirectMap1G:     5242880 kB

Steps

Update package.

$ sudo yum -y update

Install firewallｄ.

$ sudo yum -y install firewalld

Install kernel development package.

$ sudo yum -y install kernel-devel-$(uname -r)

Define a repository.

$ sudo yum -y localinstall http://packetfence.org/downloads/PacketFence/RHEL8/packetfence-release-11.1.el8.noarch.rpm

Install!

$ sudo yum -y install --enablerepo=packetfence packetfence

Verify the installation

If you see port 1443 processes, the installation went well!

$ sudo lsof -i:1443
COMMAND    PID    USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
haproxy 118986 haproxy   12u  IPv4 349246      0t0  TCP ip-172-31-31-43.us-east-2.compute.internal:ies-lm (LISTEN)