ODroid – Mosquitto MQTT Broker install

Just for a quick reference, the following instructions detail how to install the latest Mosquitto MQTT broker with Websockets enabled on the ODroid C1+ running (L)Ubuntu release. The instructions are probably also valid for other platforms, but not tested.

1. Install the prerequisites
As the root user, install the following libraries:

apt-get update
apt-get install uuid-dev libwebsockets-dev

Probably the SSL libraries, and a few others are also needed, but in my case they where already installed.

2. Mosquitto install
Download and compile the Mosquitto broker:

mkdir ~/mosq
cd ~/mosq
wget http://mosquitto.org/files/source/mosquitto-1.4.5.tar.gz
tar xvzf mosquitto-1.4.5.tar.gz
cd mosquitto-1.4.5/

Edit the config.mk file to enable the websockets support:

# Build with websockets support on the broker.
WITH_WEBSOCKETS:=yes

and compile and install:

make
make install

3. Configuration
Copy the file mosquitto.conf to /usr/local/etc, and edit the file:

cp mosquitto.conf /usr/local/etc
cd /usr/local/etc

Add at least the following lines to mosquitto.conf file to enable websockets support.

# Port to use for the default listener.
#port 1883
listener 1883
listener 9001
protocol websockets

Add an operating system runtime user for the Mosquitto daemon:

useradd -lm mosquitto
cd /usr/local/etc
chown mosquitto mosquitto.conf

If needed, or wanted, change also on the configuration file the logging level and destination.
For example:

# Note that if the broker is running as a Windows service it will default to
# "log_dest none" and neither stdout nor stderr logging is available.
# Use "log_dest none" if you wish to disable logging.
log_dest file /var/log/mosquitto.log

# If using syslog logging (not on Windows), messages will be logged to the
# "daemon" facility by default. Use the log_facility option to choose which of
# local0 to local7 to log to instead. The option value should be an integer
# value, e.g. "log_facility 5" to use local5.
#log_facility

# Types of messages to log. Use multiple log_type lines for logging
# multiple types of messages.
# Possible types are: debug, error, warning, notice, information, 
# none, subscribe, unsubscribe, websockets, all.
# Note that debug type messages are for decoding the incoming/outgoing
# network packets. They are not logged in "topics".
log_type error
log_type warning
log_type notice
log_type information

# Change the websockets logging level. This is a global option, it is not
# possible to set per listener. This is an integer that is interpreted by
# libwebsockets as a bit mask for its lws_log_levels enum. See the
# libwebsockets documentation for more details. "log_type websockets" must also
# be enabled.
websockets_log_level 0

# If set to true, client connection and disconnection messages will be included
# in the log.
connection_messages true

# If set to true, add a timestamp value to each log message.
log_timestamp true

4. Automatic start
The easiest way is to add the following file to the init.d directory and link it to the current runlevel:

Create the file named mosquitto under /etc/init.d

#!/bin/bash

case "$1" in
    start)
        echo "Starting Mosquitto MQTT Broker"
        touch /var/log/mosquitto.log
        chown mosquitto /var/log/mosquitto.log
        su - mosquitto -c "/usr/local/sbin/mosquitto -c /usr/local/etc/mosquitto.conf" & > /dev/null 2>/dev/null
        ;;
    stop)
        echo "Stopping Mosquitto MQTT Broker"
        killall mosquitto
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/mosquitto start|stop"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit 0

Find out the current run level. On Odroid it seems that is level 2:

root@odroid:/etc/init.d# runlevel
N 2
root@odroid:/etc/init.d# 

And link the automatic start for Mosquitto broker at run level 2:

cd /etc/rc2.d
ln -s  /etc/init.d/mosquitto S97mosquitto

And that’s it.

We can start manually the broker with the command /etc/init.d/mosquitto start, and stop it with the mosquitto stop command.