This document describes the installation and setup of HIL on CentOS 7.0.
HIL should work on other distros, but is not well tested or supported.
For development environments, see Installation - Developers <INSTALL-devel.html>_.
This section talks about what must be done on the server upon which HIL runs.
HIL requires a number of packages available through the CentOS RPM repositories, as well as the EPEL repository. EPEL can be enabled via::
$ yum install epel-release
Then, the rest of the packages can be installed via::
$ yum install libvirt bridge-utils ipmitool telnet httpd mod_wsgi python-pip qemu-kvm python-virtinst virt-install python-psycopg2 vconfig net-tools
In addition, HIL depends on a number of python libraries. Many of these are available as RPMs as well, but we recommend installing them with pip, since this will install the versions that HIL has been tested with. This is done automatically by the instructions below.
The setup described in this document runs into problems with SELinux. In the future, we hope to ship a set of SELinux security policies with HIL, but for now the solution is to disable SELinux::
$ sudo setenforce 0
Make sure SELinux is also disabled on startup. To do this on CentOS/RHEL <https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/SELinux>_, edit
/etc/selinux/config to change:
SELINUX=enforcing
to
SELINUX=permissive
For simplicity we have provided default values:
Copy the following lines in file hil_env
export HIL_USER=hil
export HIL_ADMIN=hil
export HIL_ADMIN_PASSWORD=secret
export HIL_HOME_DIR=/var/lib/hil
Before starting this procedure do::
$ source hil_env
First create a system user ${HIL_USER} with::
$ sudo useradd --system ${HIL_USER} -d /var/lib/hil -m -r
The HIL software itself can then be installed as root by running::
$ sudo su -
$ cd /root
$ git clone https://github.com/CCI-MOC/hil
$ cd hil
$ python setup.py install
HIL is configured with hil.cfg. This file contains settings for both the
CLI client and the server. If hil.cfg is not found, hil would refuse to run
and exit. Carefully read the hil.cfg* files in examples/,
to understand and correctly set all of the options. In particular,
the following two fields in the headnode section are very
important: trunk_nic must match your choice of trunk NIC in the "Networking
- Bridges" instructions below;
base_imgsmust match the name of the base headnode libvirt instance created in the "Libvirt" instructions below.
For a detailed description of the configuration needed for various switch
setups, see Network Drivers <network-drivers.html>_.
Logging level and directory can be set in the [general] section. For more
information view logging <logging.html>_.
hil.cfg file contains sensitive administrative information and should not be exposed to clients or
end users. Therefore, after placing the file at /etc/hil.cfg its
permissions should be set to read-only and ownership set to ${HIL_USER}
From source directory of hil as user root do the following::
(from /root/hil)
$ cp examples/hil.cfg /etc/hil.cfg
$ chown ${HIL_USER}:${HIL_USER} hil.cfg
$ chmod 400 hil.cfg
(run following command as ${HIL_USER} from ${HIL_HOME_DIR}
$ su - ${HIL_USER}
$ ln -s /etc/hil.cfg .
HIL includes a pluggable architecture for authentication and authorization. HIL ships with two authentication backends. One uses HTTP basic auth, with usernames and passwords stored in the hil database. The other is a "null" backend, which does no authentication or authorization checks. This can be useful for testing and experimentation but should not be used in production. You must enable exactly one auth backend.
In productions system where non-null backend is active, end users will have to include
a username and password as additional parameters in client_env file to be able to
communicate with the hil server. This is user/password should be registered with the
hil auth backend using hil.
Database Backend ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
To enable the database backend, make sure the [extensions] section of
hil.cfg contains::
hil.ext.auth.database =
Keystone Backend ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
To enable the Keystone backend, make sure the [extensions] section of
hil.cfg contains::
hil.ext.auth.keystone =
Visit the Keystone configuration guide <keystone-auth.html>_ for more information.
Null Backend ^^^^^^^^^^^^
To enable the null backend, make sure [extensions] contains::
hil.ext.auth.null =
The only DBMS currently supported for production use is PostgreSQL.
(SQLite is supported for development purposes only).
There are many ways of setting up PostgreSQL server.
Install configure PostgreSQL CENTOS7 <Install_configure_PostgreSQL_CENTOS7.html>_.
provides one way to accomplish this.
To create the database tables, first make sure hil.cfg is set up the way
you need, including any extensions you plan to use, then::
$ sudo -i -u ${HIL_USER}; hil-admin db create
If the authorization backend activated in hil.cfg is hil.ext.auth.database =
then you will need to add an initial user with administrative privileges to the
database in order to bootstrap the system.
You can do this by running the following command (as user hil)::
$ sudo -i -u ${HIL_USER}; hil-admin create-admin-user ${HIL_ADMIN_USER} ${HIL_ADMIN_PASSWORD}
You can then create additional users via the HTTP API. You may want to subsequently delete the initial user; this can also be done via the API.
All HIL commands in these instructions should be run in this directory::
$ cd /var/lib/hil
Currently HIL only supports one mechanism for layer-2 isolation: 802.1q VLANs. One NIC on the HIL host is designated the "trunk NIC". All network traffic to headnode VMs in HIL is routed through this trunk NIC, on a tagged VLAN. As such, the port on the switch that this NIC connects to must have all of HIL's VLANs trunked to it. Currently, this configuration must be done manually.
HIL uses Linux bridges to route the traffic from the trunk NIC to the
headnodes. Currently the bridges and VLAN NICs for this must be created
ahead of time. The provided script create_bridges will create bridges
for all VLANS in the allocation pool. It must be run in the directory that
contains hil.cfg. This pre-allocation is easier to reason about
than on-demand creation, and allows HIL to be run as an unprivileged user,
but it also causes some limitations. For instance, because of this, headnodes
can only be connected to networks with allocated VLANs. The bridges must also
be pre-allocated again on each boot. For now, the recommened method is to use
systemd. A systemd service for running the create_bridges script is available
in the 'scripts' directory.
Name of the service is: create_bridges.service
Name of the script is: create_bridges
Centos: ^^^^^^^
Centos uses systemd to controll all its processes.
Place the file create_bridges.service under:
/usr/lib/systemd/system/
Ubuntu: ^^^^^^^ Systemd is available from Ubuntu 15.04 onwards and LTS version 16.04 will ship with systemd by default.
Edit the create_bridges.service file and change the ExecStart
to
/usr/local/bin/create_bridges
Place the file create_bridges.service under:
/lib/systemd/system/
Starting the service: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Following commands will start the daemon:
$ systemctl daemon-reload
$ systemctl start create_bridges.service
You can check the status using:
$ systemctl status create_bridges.service
To auto-start the service on boot (recommended):
$ systemctl enable create_bridges.service
For systems that do not support systemd: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You can add the following line::
($ cd /etc && create_bridges)
to the end of /etc/rc.local.
You can also run the this command manually as root user to create the bridges.
HIL must additionally have IP connectivity to the switch's administration
console. Right now the only mechanism for connecting to the switch is via
telnet (with plans <https://github.com/CCI-MOC/hil/issues/46>_ to support
ssh). As such, the administration console should only be accessible through a
trusted private network.
We must reconfigure libvirt to allow (some) unprivileged users access to
the system QEMU session. To do this, edit /etc/libvirt/libvirtd.conf and
uncomment the following lines::
unix_sock_group = "libvirt" auth_unix_ro = "none" auth_unix_rw = "none"
Then create the group 'libvirt' and add the HIL user to that group::
$ sudo groupadd libvirt $ sudo gpasswd libvirt -a hil
Finally, restart libvirt with::
$ sudo service libvirtd restart
You should also set libvirt to start on boot::
$ sudo chkconfig libvirtd on
Headnode image ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Now we must make a clonable base headnode. (One is required, and more are allowed.) First create a storage pool. Any kind can be used, but we will only document creating a directory-backed storage pool::
virsh --connect qemu:///system pool-define pool.xml
where pool.xml contains a description of the pool::
The directory specified by path must already exist, and be readable and
writable by the libvirt user. Then activate the pool, and make the it
activate on boot, with::
$ virsh --connect qemu:///system pool-start hil_headnodes $ virsh --connect qemu:///system pool-autostart hil_headnodes
The scripts in examples/cloud-img-with-passwd can be used to build
an ubuntu 14.04 or centos 7 disk image with a default root password. Read
the README in that directory for more information.
Once the disk image is built, copy ito the storage pool directory (here we
assume it is called base.img)::
$ mv base.img /var/lib/libvirt/images/
Finally, create the base headnode with::
$ virsh --connect qemu:///system define base.xml
where base.xml contains a description of the headnode::
Note that the above specifies the format of the disk image as raw; if
you're using an image in another format (such as qcow) you will have
to adjust this.
Many of these fields are probably not needed, but we have not thouroughly tested which ones. Furthermore, this set of XML duplicates the path to storage directory; this seems unnecessary.
Users may find the scripts in examples/puppet_headnode useful for
configuring the ubuntu headnode to act as a PXE server; see the README in
that directory for more information.
HIL consists of two services: an API server and a networking server. The
former is a WSGI application, which we recommend running with Apache's
mod_wsgi. Create a file /etc/httpd/conf.d/wsgi.conf, with the contents::
LoadModule wsgi_module modules/mod_wsgi.so WSGISocketPrefix run/wsgi
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80 [::1]:80> ServerName 127.0.0.1 AllowEncodedSlashes On WSGIPassAuthorization On WSGIDaemonProcess hil user=hil group=hil threads=2 WSGIScriptAlias / /var/www/hil/hil.wsgi <Directory /var/www/hil> WSGIProcessGroup hil WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL} Order deny,allow Allow from all
(The file may already exist, with just the LoadModule option. If so, it is
safe to replace it.)
Note: if accessing HIL through a public IP address, be sure to change the VirtualHost entry accordingly. VirtualHost documentation <https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/core.html#virtualhost>_
Note: certain calls to HIL such as port_register() may pass arbitrary
strings that should be escaped (see issue 361 <https://github.com/CCI-MOC/hil/issues/360>). By default, Apache Doesn't allow <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4390436/need-to-allow-encoded-slashes-on-apache>
this due to security concerns. AllowEncodedSlashes On enables the passing
of these arguments.
Note: For apache to be able to pass the authentication headers to HIL following directive will have to be turned on
WSGIPassAuthorization On
(see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20940651/how-to-access-apache-basic-authentication-user-in-flask )
If you haven't already, create the directory that will contain the HIL WSGI module::
$ sudo mkdir /var/www/hil/
Copy the file hil.wsgi from the top of the hil source tree to the
location indicated by the WSGIScriptAlias option. The virtual host and
server name should be set according to the hostname (and port) by which clients
will access the api. Then, restart Apache::
$ sudo service httpd restart
You should also set apache to start on boot::
$ sudo chkconfig httpd on
A systemd script for running the network server is available in the 'scripts' directory. Name of the script is: hil_network.service
Centos uses systemd to controll all its processes.
Place the file hil_network.service under:
/usr/lib/systemd/system/
Systemd is available from Ubuntu 15.04 onwards and LTS version 16.04 will ship with systemd by default.
Place the file hil_network.service under:
/lib/systemd/system/
Following commands will start the daemon:
$ systemctl daemon-reload
$ systemctl start hil_network
You can check the status using:
$ systemctl status hil_network
To auto-start the service on boot:
$ systemctl enable hil_network
Some systems like the LTS version of Ubuntu, Ubuntu 14.04 does not come with systemd pre-installed. It uses "Upstart" an equivalent of systemd to manage its daemons/processes.
For such systems, the networking server may be started as the HIL user by running::
$ hil-admin serve-networks &
To make this happen on boot, add the following to /etc/rc.local::
($ cd /var/lib/hil && su hil -c 'hil-admin serve-networks') &
If your authentication backend is null, you only need to have the HIL_ENDPOINT defined
in the client_env. In productions system where non-null backend is active,
end users will have to include a username and password as additional parameters in client_env
file to be able to communicate with the hil server.
If you created a admin user for hil as a part of Setting Up HIL Database step,
you will have to pass those credentials to HIL to be able to access, change state of HIL.
Create a file client_env with following entries::
export HIL_ENDPOINT=http://127.0.0.1/
export HIL_USERNAME=<hil_admin_username>
export HIL_PASSWORD=<hil_admin_password>
To get started with HIL from your home dir do the following::
$ source client_env
$ hil list nodes all
If you get an empty list [] as output then congratulations !!
At this point, you should have a functional HIL service running!
Tab completion is supported only for Bash. In order to activate that, copy the
file scripts/hil-complete.sh to some location and put this in your bashrc:
. /path/to/hil-complete.sh
For more information see the click documentation
For HIL to do anything useful, you must use the HIL API to populate the database with information about the resources in your datacenter -- chiefly nodes, their NICs and the ports to which those NICs are attached. These are the relevant API calls:
node_registernode_deletenode_register_nicnode_delete_nicport_registerport_deleteport_connect_nicport_detach_nic