1      Become a Registered User

If only interested in using SecureOffice as a secure, free, high performance gateway / router / access point, this step can be omitted.

Users who wish to ask questions, comment and post to the support forum or want to use premium or licensed packages are required to become registered users at the support (this) site.

Becoming a registered user at the support (this) site is necessary for access to premium and licensed packages, which are not free.

Users interested in using premium, licensed SecureOffice applications such as secure telephony (SecurePBX), virtual machine hosting (VmWare Workstation) and Docker container support (for Home Assistant, NextCloud, etc) are required to be registered users and have purchased access to the custom package / script repository for the installation of any premium packages required to proceed.

Users interested in extra packages / dependencies not provided by standard OpenWrt such as xorg desktop, zoneminder (security camera / alarm system), nxserver (remote xorg desktop access), home-assistant (home automation), free, automatically updating SSL certificates, etc must be registered users and have purchased access to the custom package / script repository.

User verification for premium packages, licensed applications and premium repository access requires a valid user ID for the support site.

If intending to register at the support site, the sooner the better. Part of the registration process is email address verification, which takes time for the confirmation email to reach you and, your reply email to be processed. The registration process must be complete before installing any premium or licensed applications.

To register at the support (this) site:

• Click "Register" at top right of this page. The registration form will appear.
• Enter username, email and password.
• Select "I Agree" to the site terms of use.
• Answer the "skill" testing question.
• Click submit. A confirmation email will be sent.
• Follow instructions in the confirmation email to complete registration.

User identity information will not be shared with third parties, or result in any emails unless, during registration (Advanced), you choose to receive notifications, in which case, you may receive occasional emails regarding SecureOffice updates.

2      Choose a Domain Name and DDNS Provider

If users do not intend to host services for the internet, this step can be omitted.

If a domain name is already set up, it is recommended to review the following instructions, to check compatibility, to avoid problems.

To complete domain name related pre-requisites, follow the instructions here.

Once SecureOffice is installed and you have an active domain name and DNS provider, SecureOffice must be configured to use it. This is necessary for access to premium and licensed packages. It is crucial to perform this step prior to registering SecureOffice (System->Licensing->Registration). For example, if your domain is "mydomain.com" and your LAN address is "192.168.10.1" (default), enter the following at a SecureOffice command prompt:

"echo 192.168.10.1 mydomain.com >> /etc/hosts"

Replacing 192.168.10.1 and mydomain.com with your LAN address and your domain name (without www) respectively.

3      SSL Encryption Certificates

SSL certificates for your domain are necessary for HTTPS (encrypted) website access, encrypted access to local email server, encrypted SIP signalling for SecurePBX telephony system, or in general, encrypted access to any SecureOffice service such as websites.

Options for acquiring SSL certificates are discussed here.

4      Choose WAN versus LAN Network Topology

This preference determines whether the hardware chosen for SecureOffice requires two Ethernet ports (WAN), or one Ethernet port (LAN) topology.

The differences and pros / cons between WAN and LAN network topology are explained here.

It must be decided whether you want SecureOffice to be a server on your LAN (keep existing router / services) or, whether you want SecureOffice to directly connect to the Internet (WAN), replacing your existing router and services (highest performance / security option).

Whichever choice is made, you can change your mind later and easily go from a LAN topology to a WAN topology or, the converse. WAN topology requires two ethernet ports and, if your hardware only supports one ethernet port there is no option but to use a USB ethernet dongle (USB3 recommended, WAN port), a slight network performance decrease will occur. It is recommended that if ever intending to use WAN topology, procure hardware with at least two gigabit ethernet ports.

Initially choosing LAN topology requires fewer changes to your existing network topology and services provided by your existing router. Choosing LAN topology for existing networks is the easiest way to add SecureOffice services and, later, re-configure for WAN topology, incrementally replacing the services provided by your existing router with equivalent SecureOffice services. This allows you to access your existing router configuration for cloning settings to SecureOffice and not lose internet connectivity (provided by existing router) during the SecureOffice installation process.

Using WAN topology (directly connected to internet) for new installations (no existing router, cost avoided) is recommended.

5      Use SecureOffice Virtual Machine

Users wishing a zero cost, least effort path to evaluate SecureOffice can download a preconfigured SecureOffice virtual machine.

SecureOffice running as a virtual machine has the following limitations:

• Since SecureOffice is not the primary router, it is running in LAN topology, requiring further network configuration of upstream routers and firewalls.
• The ports forwarded in the above network configuration must be opened on the host PC firewall.
• Virtual machines cannot run virtual machines, which means that the VmWare Workstation premium application cannot be used. It is possible to run other virtual machines (on the host PC) to provide webserver, email and other services. Later, once hardware is available, these virtual machines can be reconfigured, moved and run under SecureOffice using Vmware Workstation.
• Extra configuration is required to use the SecureOffice LAN interface which can be a dedicated virtual network interface for the host PC only for configuration and services or, the LAN interface can be bridged to a real ethernet port (USB ethernet dongle, ethernet card) to provide a generally available LAN for services.
• No Wifi unless you connect a host PC Wifi card to the virtual machine and a virtual machine driver exists for it. If the host only has one Wifi card, host Wifi will be lost by connecting it to a virtual machine.
• There will be a reduction in performance due to running in a virtual machine.

Instructions for downloading and configuring SecureOffice as a virtual machine are located here.

6      PC Hardware Selection

SecureOffice runs on standard x86_64 (64 bit only) Intel processors with standard PC architecture. It is untested (but theoretically possible) for SecureOffice to run on AMD (64 bit only) processors. Any user attempting this, please report results on the user forum.

Development is ongoing to port SecureOffice to lower cost / performance aarch64 (Amlogic TV boxes) systems for the home market.

In practice, any PC or HTPC (Home Theatre PC) computer meeting Windows7 WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) requirements should be compatible with SecureOffice.

It is recommended that you review the hardware requirements section to determine your CPU, memory, storage, USB, ethernet and WIFI requirements prior to purchasing any hardware.

It is intended to offer hardware with SecureOffice pre-installed on x86_64 (Home Theatre PC's) and aarch64 (Amlogic TV boxes) systems. Check (need to be logged in) this site->Purchase for details when available.

7      PC Peripherals Required for Installation

The requirement and extra cost of disk interface peripherals can be avoided if you choose to install SecureOffice directly on the target system using the Linux Emergency USB Boot Disk method.

For initial SecureOffice installation, if you do not have a PC or peripheral capable of reading and writing the physical disk that will host the SecureOffice operating system (USB, SD, TF, mSATA, SATA, etc), you need to borrow or acquire one to access the disk type chosen above from the table below.

Table 1: PC Interfaces Required for Installation

If your PC already has the required interface hardware, you can avoid the minor cost of an adaptor by opening the cover to temporarily install the SecureOffice mSATA or SATA boot disk.

8      Remote Shell and File Transfer

In order to remote (network) access to the SecureOffice command prompt and transfer files between SecureOffice and PC's, several free utility programs need to be installed on the PC or laptop that is intended to remotely access SecureOffice. These utilities are necessary for SecureOffice installation, configuration and maintenance.

Instructions are provided for Microsoft Windows. The same utilities are available for Linux. Instructions for Linux can be found by searching the internet.

For now, it is sufficient to just install these utilities:

PuTTY, WinSCP installation instructions

9      Installation Tools

SecureOffice installation is achieved using a downloaded Linux shell script requiring a Linux system able to access the disk which is intended to host the SecureOffice operating system.

Various methods can be used for SecureOffice installation, described in the "Tools for Initial SecureOffice Install" section.

1  0Install VmPlayer on PC

If intending to install SecureOffice using a virtual machine or host virtual machines on SecureOffice using the premium VmWare Workstation application, follow install VmWare Workstation instructions to install (free) VmWare Workstation.