Advanced information and use cases

Admin privileges

When installing packages, the Software Manager may require administrative privileges to install files or extract them to locations where the starting user has no write permission. Privileged actions are marked with the icon.

For such tasks the Software Manager requests elevation using the operating system’s mechanism and drops elevated rights as soon as they are no longer needed. On Windows this uses User Account Control (UAC) and on Linux it uses polkit.

About permissions

In most cases the Software Manager runs with the current user’s standard permissions. Installing products for all users normally does not require system mode administrative privileges.

Exceptions are headless operation and command-line use, where starting SOM with admin privileges may be required. See Headless operation and Using the Software Manager from the command line.

Headless operation

On systems without a graphical environment or a HTML5-compliant browser, the Software Manager can be controlled from the command line or from a browser on another machine.
For more information about the CLI see the Command line usage.

For example:
If the Software Manager runs on a headless machine named “tiny” and you want to control it from a more capable machine named “bigshot”:

1. Log in to “tiny” and run this command to start the SOM server:

   $HOME/MVTec/SoftwareManager/som --hostname tiny --nogui # start server on tiny
   

   The option --hostname tiny tells the server to listen for connections from other machines on the network. --nogui prevents SOM from attempting to open a browser.

2. On “bigshot”, open a browser and enter the address shown in “tiny” terminal, including the unlock token.
   For more information about how to unlock the frontend, see Lock function in the Software Manager.

Limitations of headless mode

The running SOM cannot elevate to admin privileges via Windows UAC or polkit.

To perform actions requiring admin privileges in headless mode, start the Software Manager with elevated privileges.
On Linux-based systems, this can be done using sudo, and on Windows systems use Run as Administrator when starting the Software Manager.

Connecting through an HTTP proxy

On systems that do not support a direct connection to the internet, the Software Manager can be instructed to connect through an HTTP proxy:

1. Start the Software Manager.
2. Open Settings
3. In the HTTP Proxy field enter the proxy server name, and confirm your with Enter.
4. Restart the Software Manager for the changes to take effect.

Connecting HTTP proxies with authorization

If your proxy requires a username and password, prefix the proxy entry with username:password@, for example: foo:secret@server:port.
This will store the password in the settings file.
To avoid saving the password, start a SOM session with a temporary proxy setting:

som -P http://foo:secret@server:port

You can also specify the proxy in an environment variable HTTP_PROXY, which is used if the HTTP Proxy field in SOM settings is empty: HTTP_PROXY=http://foo:secret@server:port

For proxies requiring NTLM authentication, install a forwarding proxy that handles NTLM and configure SOM to use that forwarding proxy.

flowchart LR
    A[MVTec Software Manager]
    B["Forwarding proxy (localhost:3128)"]
    C["Corporate proxy server (proxy:3128)"]
    D[SOM catalog]
    A <--> B <--NTLM--> C <--Internet--> D

Installation database

Installed packages are recorded in the som.d subdirectory of each product installation directory.

• som.feed is a JSON file that containing metadata for installed packages.
• For each installed package, a separate JSON file in the database directory lists the package’s installed files and directories.
• The directory also contains product icons and, on Windows, an uninstaller.

Installing with the MVtec Software Manager via the command line

The MVTec Software Manager can be used completely via the comman line. For more infromation, see Using the Software Manager from the command line.

Install a product from the command line as follows:

./som install -f <product feed> <package> --accept <EULA hash>

To build this command, run the following steps:

1. List all available products:

   ./som available
   

2. List all available packages for a product:

   ./som list -f <product feed>
   

   <product feed> must be one of the feeds listed by the previous command.

   Tip

   You can also use a shortened portion of the feed string, for example: halcon-23.05-progress instead of https://packages.mvtec.com/halcon/halcon-23.05-progress/halcon-23.05-progress.feed.

3. Run the following command to start installing a product:

   ./som install -f <product feed> <package>
   

   <package> must be one of the packages or meta‑packages listed by the previous command. For example, dev or rt to install HALCON Development or HALCON Runtime, respectively.
   ⤷ The Software Manager prints the EULA to standard output.

4. To accept the EULA and proceed with installation, run the install command again with the EULA accept flag:

   ./som install -f <product feed> <package> --accept <EULA hash>
   

   This command is also shown at the end of the EULA output.

More Info

For more information, see Using SOM from the command line.

About offline usage

Once a package has been downloaded, it is cached in a local repository and can be installed later without an internet connection.

Depending on how many packages you download, the repository can grow large. You can safely delete its contents to reclaim disk space. It is possible to delete the repository in SOM. For this open the Catalog Tab from the window and select the trash icon.
Missing packages will be re-downloaded if needed unless they are no longer available at the remote catalog URL.