Advanced OnTakt Setup

It is possible to run OnTakt on your own hardware, which includes virtual machines.

Hardware specifications

Specification	Minimum	Recommended	Notes
Chipset	BIOS	UEFI
CPU	1.5 GHz × 2 cores	2.0 GHz × 4 cores	64-bit x86 only (32-bit x86 or ARM will not work)
Memory	4 GB	8 GB
Storage	100 GB HDD	128 GB SSD
Network interface	100 Mb/s Ethernet	1000 Mb/s Ethernet
Internet connection	Not required	100 Mb/s down	For downloading updates
USB ports	1	1	For installation and backups

Installation instructions

Download the WolframOS ISO
Use Etcher (or another ISO image writer) to write it to a USB flash drive that is at least 2GB. Anything else on the flash drive will be erased!
Make sure the IPC is powered off. Unplugging it is an easy way to do this and will not hurt anything because we are about to wipe it anyway.
Insert the flash drive into the IPC. DO NOT leave this flash drive plugged into any other PC. Rebooting a computer with this drive plugged in can erase its hard drive with very little time to stop it.
Connect IPC to network and then power. A monitor and keyboard are optional, but the IPC must have a network connection for the OS installation to succeed.
Boot from the flash drive. For new PCs, this will usually happen by default. If it doesn't, check your PC's manual for instructions for booting from USB devices. This may involve a keypress during boot to select a temporary boot device, or changing the BIOS configuration.
Wait about 20 minutes. When the installation stops, the system will shut down. If this takes longer than half an hour, connect a monitor to the IPC to see if there are any error messages. Sometimes trying the installation again can fix them.
The IPC is now ready, but shut down. Remove the flash drive.
Continue to first-time setup

Virtual machine installation

These instructions should also work for deployment as a virtual machine. VirtualBox has been tested and found to work. Keep in mind the necessary port forwarding settings when setting up the virtual machine.

Using your own domain name

If you would like the launch page, OnTakt, and Inspection to be available at locations such as wolfram.example.com, ontakt.example.com, and inspection.example.com, you can set up a reverse proxy to handle domain routing and SSL certificates.

Support notice

Reverse proxy configuration is not supported by Wolfram Manufacturing and we cannot assist with setup or troubleshooting. We will not accept bug reports for issues caused while accessing our services via a reverse proxy. If you experience a problem while using the reverse proxy, try again with direct IP/port access and submit a report from there if the issue still occurs.

Security notice

We advise that you do not make your reverse proxy accessible from outside your local network for security reasons. If you have an existing web server you are using for the reverse proxy, make sure it will not proxy requests from the outside internet. If you are using a reverse proxy, we are not responsible for any network issues or security incidents.

We also strongly advise that you do not port forward OnTakt directly to the internet. If you do this, we are not responsible for any service or network issues or security incidents.

Using NGINX as a reverse proxy

NGINX is a free web and reverse proxy server. Assuming the OnTakt server has a fixed IP address of 10.0.0.42, an example HTTP-only site configuration file (/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/wolfram.conf on most Linux distributions, /etc/nginx/vhosts.d/wolfram.conf on some) for the launch page and OnTakt would be:

# Launch page
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name wolfram.example.com
    
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://10.0.0.42:80;
    }
}

# OnTakt
# (for Inspection, copy and change the proxy_pass line to port 8710 instead of 8720)
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name ontakt.example.com;
    
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://10.0.0.42:8720;
        proxy_set_header Host $host:$server_port;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;

        # Websockets
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;
    }
}

HTTPS configuration will depend on the domain registrar or DNS server, but Certbot is a tool that supports most configurations.