Installation under Linux

Recommended Installation Tools

To prevent dependency problems from occurring, it is recommended to install WinCC OA using package management utilities provided by the operating system. This will automatically resolve the necessary dependencies and install the required packages. Please consider, that the system repositories must be added before the installation can be performed

Note: Please also consider the additional notes at the end of this chapter before installing WinCC OA to prevent common issues during the installation process.
Note:

Do not disable IPv6 on a running Linux server. If IPv6 is disbaled, the connection between the WinCC OA managers is broken. You must restart the project manually.

Note also that the WinCC OA managers might not be stopped within the timeout and this could result in database corruption and triggered database repair action after the restart of the project.

RedHat / Oracle Linux

For RedHat / Oracle Linux it is recommended to use yum.

Adapt the Kernel RedHat/Oracle Linux

When using Oracle Linux, use the same kernel version as for RedHat Enterprise.

You can determine or set this as follows:

  • Adapt the GRUB configuration so that Red Hat Kernel boots automatically. For a description of how to adapt the configuration, see https://docs.oracle.com/en/learn/oracle-linux-kernels/.
  • If the UEK (Unbreakable Enterprise Linux Kernel) is not needed, you can uninstall it: sudo dnf erase kernel-uek*

    Thereafter you can check which kernel version is booted as follows:

    sudo uname -r
    [user_name@HOSTNAME ~]$ sudo uname -r
    5.14.0-70.26.1.0.1.el9_0.x86_64

    Check if the UEK is still used:

    [a123_bcd@computer123 ~]$ uname -r

SIMATIC Industrial OS

SIMATIC Industrial OS is a Debian-based distribution and therefore the package management utilities available for other Debian distributions can be used. For WinCC OA it is recommended to use apt.

Installation

WinCC OA can be downloaded from https://winccoa.com/ but is also supplied on DVD. The Linux installation is in the Linux subdirectory.

For the separate Linux distributions that are supported by WinCC OA an individual sub folder is available.

Installation Steps

  1. Insert the WinCC OA DVD in the drive and, if not automatically done by the operating system, mount the CD-ROM drive (DVD installation only). For example:

    mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /cdrom
  2. Switch to the mounted directory (DVD) or to the download directory (Download) of the WinCC OA packages and then to the subdirectory for your distribution, e.g. linux_rhel_x86_64 for RedHat or Oracle Linux

  3. Install WinCC OA by executing the following command:

    RedHat / Oracle Linux

    yum install *.rpm

    SIMATIC Industrial OS

    apt install *.deb

    These commands will install all packages of WinCC OA.

    Note: WinCC OA is installed in the directory /opt/WinCC_OA/3.18.
  4. Alternatively, you can install individual packages of WinCC OA as follows:

    RedHat / Oracle Linux

    yum install <PackageName>.rpm

    SIMATIC Industrial OS

    apt install <PackageName>.deb

    Example

    yum install WinCCOA-3.18.24-Base-rhel.x86_64.rpm
  5. After installing WinCC OA, you can unmount the CD-ROM drive (DVD only)

    umount /cdrom

If you use a GUI for installing WinCC OA, follow the instructions provided by the tool and install the necessary packages of WinCC OA.

Note: Please note, that the base package is mandatory and must always be installed when using WinCC OA.

When installing WinCC OA, the version is registered automatically.

The version is registered in the file pvssInst.conf in the directory /etc/opt/WinCC_OA . This file will be generated automatically during the installation of WinCC OA. The file contains information such as version number, installation directory, installed sub-projects (for example, DBLogger) etc. See chapter Register project for more information.

Available WinCC OA Installation Packages

For WinCC OA following packages are available for installation. Please note, that depending on the used distribution the file extension will be different, e.g. .rpm or .deb

Paketname Beschreibung
WinCCOA_3.18.24-Base-<distribution>.<architecture> contains the base installation as well as other features
WinCCOA_3.18.24-Api-<distribution>.<architecture> contains the WinCC OA API
WinCCOA_3.18.24-Applications-<distribution>.<architecture> contains the example projects DemoApplication and GettingStarted
WinCCOA_3.18.24-Help-<lang>-<distribution>.<architecture> contains the Documentation.
WinCCOA_3.18.24-OracleLibs-<distribution>.<architecture> contains the Oracle Libraries required for the use of the Oracle OCCI Functions (Bulk operations) as well as to use the Reporting feature together with the RDB archiving.
WinCCOA_3.18.24-S7plus-<distribution>.<architecture> contains the S7 Plus driver
WinCCOA_3.18.24-SpecialFunctions-<distribution>.<architecture> contains the Old Version Support
WinCCOA_3.18.24-SqlDrivers-<distribution>.<architecture> contains the Plug-Ins required by WinCC OA to communicate with databases such as mySQL, Oracle, etc via CTRL-Ado.
WinCCOA_3.18.24-Video-<distribution>.<architecture> contains the Video-AddOn
WinCCOA_3.18.24-PROFIsafe_PROFInet-<distribution>.x86_64 contains the PROFIsafe / PROFInet Addon.
CodeMeter-<CodeMeterVersion>.x86_64 contains CodeMeter, used for licensing WinCC OA.
vimaccOA-2.2.10.33.x86_64 contains the vimacc services, used for the video feature.

Removal of WinCC OA

You can remove WinCC OA by using the uninstall options provided by the package manager utilities of the operating system.

RedHat / Oracle Linux

yum remove 'WinCCOA-3.18*'

SIMATIC Industrial OS

apt remove 'WinCCOA-3.18*'

Additional Notes

  • Under Linux a user needs the write permission to the file pvssInst.conf in the directory /etc/opt/WinCC_OA . Otherwise an error message is displayed since the user has no permission to write to this file and the project cannot be started.

  • Error messages are written into the WinCC OA log file WinCCOA_3.18.log under /tmp/ (or under the directory the TMPDIR points to).

  • It is recommended to install the "Core Fonts for the Web" provided by Microsoft in order to obtain the best results when displaying standard WinCC OA panels under Linux. These fonts include, for example, Arial. Download the fonts from http://sourceforge.net/projects/font-tool.

  • It is recommended to create a root directory for projects. e.g.:

    /opt/WinCC_OA/3.18/projects/
  • If the WinCC OA project is run without root privileges, the permissions for the folder /opt/WinCC_OA/3.18/log must be changed to grant the user the required permissions (Read / Write).

  • To install WinCC OA (to verify the signature of the rpm packages), you need to import the public.key for WinCC OA and (if required) the vimaccoa.key for checking the signature of the WinCC OA video package. To import the public key, use the command
    rpm --import [path to the public key]

    If the public key is not imported, the following message is shown in the shell:

    WinCCOA_3.18-<package name>(Plain RPM files cache): Signature verification failed [4-Signatures public key is not available]
  • For a successful installation of WinCC OA on these platforms the "Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux" packages are required. This repository can be added by using following commands:

    RedHat Enterprise Linux:

    yum-config-manager --enable rhel-8-server-extras-rpms
    wget https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
    rpm -i epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

    Oracle Linux:

    yum install epel-release -y
Note: If you are using an ESXI computer and a dongle on Linux, the dongle does not work without errors!