SROS2_Linux.md

Try SROS2 in Linux

Installation

Install from debian packages

First install ROS2 from binaries following these instructions

Setup your environment following these instructions

In the rest of these instruction we assume that every terminal setup the environment as instructed above.

Install from source

You will need to have openssl installed on your machine:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install libssl-dev

First install ROS2 from source following these instructions

Note: Fast-RTPS requires an additional CMake flag to build the security plugins so the ament invocation needs to be modified to pass:

src/ament/ament_tools/scripts/ament.py build --build-tests --symlink-install --cmake-args -DSECURITY=ON --

Additional configuration for RTI Connext

Prerequisite: to use DDS-Security with Connext you will need to procure an RTI Licence and install the security plugin.

Warning: this tutorial is for Connext 5.3.0. If you use Connext 5.2.4 please refer to the tutorial from ROS 2 Beta 3

The RTI Connext installer allows you to choose where it lands in the filesystem. These instructions assume that you have prefixed the RTI paths with $HOME/rti so that the latest version (5.3.0 at time of writing) will land in $HOME/rti/rti_connext_dds-5.3.0. Note that the installer is a multi-partprocess. Fist you must install the "host" package, and then from its launcher you can install the additional "target" packages and the secure_dds package. Additional (and better) help is provided in the RTI documentation.

source ~/rti/rti_connext_dds-5.3.0/resource/scripts/rtisetenv_x64Linux3gcc5.4.0.bash'

It's often handy to create an alias for that super-long shell incantation to source the RTI script, for example, by adding something like this to your ~/.bashrc file (altering the paths and alias names as needed/wanted):

alias rti='. ~/rti/rti_connext_dds-5.3.0/resource/scripts/rtisetenv_x64Linux3gcc5.4.0.bash'

Run the demo

Create a folder for the files required by this demo

We will now create a folder to store all the files necessary for this demo:

mkdir ~/sros2_demo

Generating a keystore, keys and certificates

Generate a keystore

cd ~/sros2_demo
ros2 security create_keystore demo_keys

Generate keys and certificates for the talker and listener nodes

ros2 security create_key demo_keys talker
ros2 security create_key demo_keys listener

Define the SROS2 environment variables

export ROS_SECURITY_ROOT_DIRECTORY=~/sros2_demo/demo_keys
export ROS_SECURITY_ENABLE=true
export ROS_SECURITY_STRATEGY=Enforce

These variables need to be defined in each terminal used for the demo. For convenience you can add it to your ~/.bashrc.

Run the demo

ROS2 allows you to change DDS implementation at runtime. This demo can be run with fastrtps by setting:

export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_fastrtps_cpp

And with Connext by setting:

export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_connext_cpp

Run the talker demo program:

ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

In another terminal (after preparing the terminal as previously described), we will do the same thing with the listener program.

ros2 run demo_nodes_py listener

Note: You can switch between the C++ (demo_nodes_cpp) and Python (demo_nodes_py) packages arbitrarily.

Run the demo on different machines

The previous demo was using SROS 2 on the same box over localhost. That's great, but it's more exciting when multiple machines are involved, since the benefits of authentication and encryption are more obvious.

Let's say that the machine with the keystore created in the previous demo has a hostname feather2, and that we want to also use another machine with hostname oldschool for our multi-machine talker/listener demo. First, we need to run the installation and compilation steps described previously on the oldschool machine. Then, we need to copy some keys to oldschool to allow SROS 2 to authenticate and encrypt the transmissions. Since the keys are just text files, we can use scp to copy them. First, we'll create an empty keystore on oldschool, which is just an empty directory:

ssh oldschool.local
mkdir -p ~/sros2_demo/demo_keys
exit

Now, we'll copy the keys/certificates for the "talker" program from feather2 to oldschool:

cd ~/sros2_demo/demo_keys
scp -r talker USERNAME@oldschool.local:~/sros2_demo/demo_keys

That will be very quick, since it's just copying some very small text files. Now, we're ready to run a multi-machine talker/listener demo!

Once the environment is setup we can run on oldschool:

ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

and on feather2

ros2 run demo_nodes_py listener

Access Control (RTI Connext only, from source only)

The previous demo used authentication and encryption, but not access control, which means that any authenticated node would be able to publish and subscribe to any data stream (aka topic). To increase the level of security in the system, you can define strict limits, known as access control, which restrict what each node is able to do. For example, one node would be able to publish to a particular topic, and another node might be able to subscribe to that topic. To do this, we will use the sample policy file provided in examples/sample_policy.yaml.

First, we will copy this sample policy file into our keystore:

curl -sk https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros2/sros2/ardent/examples/sample_policy.yaml -o ./demo_keys/policies.yaml

And now we will use it to generate the XML permission files expected by the middleware:

ros2 security create_permission demo_keys talker demo_keys/policies.yaml
ros2 security create_permission demo_keys listener demo_keys/policies.yaml

Then, in one terminal (after preparing the terminal as previously described), run the talker demo program:

RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_connext_cpp ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

In another terminal (after preparing the terminal as previously described), we will do the same thing with the listener program:

RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_connext_cpp ros2 run demo_nodes_py listener

At this point, your talker and listener nodes should be communicating securely, using explicit access control lists! Hooray!