cockpit-ceph-installer

This project aims to provide a simple means to deploy a Ceph cluster by 'teaming up' with the ansible-runner and runner-service projects. The goal is to use the cockpit UI to gather all the settings necessary to drive a ceph-ansible playbook to install your Ceph cluster. It also uses the ceph-check-role ansible module to handle the validation of role against host configuration.

Project Status

The plugin currently will

• create the ansible inventory file (hosts and groups)
• probe and validate candidate hosts against their intended Ceph role
• presents available networks for the public and cluster networks required by Ceph

What's left?

1. The UI gathers the variables for ceph-ansible's site.yml, so these variables need to be committed to the filesystem
2. The "Deploy" page needs to be completed. This is the final piece that starts the ceph-ansible site.yml playbook to perform the installation.

Curious, take a look...

Take it for a testdrive

1. Create a test VM

Fedora 29 (example uses a cloud qcow2 image)

1. As root run the following commands to install pre-requisite packages

dnf install -y wget git cockpit-ws cockpit-bridge cockpit-system cockpit-dashboard ansible python python3-pyOpenSSL python3-jwt python3-flask python3-flask-restful
pip3 install ansible_runner

RHEL7 (example uses a RHEL7.6 cloud image)

1. Enable the following CDN repos (ose 3.9 required for python-jwt)

subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-7-server-rpms --enable=rhel-7-server-extras-rpms --enable=rhel-7-server-optional-rpms --enable=rhel-7-server-ansible-2-rpms --enable=rhel-7-server-ose-3.9-rpms

2. Install pre-requisite packages

yum install -y
    ansible  
    pyOpenSSL  
    python-jwt  
    git  
    unzip  
    wget  
    python2-flask-restful  
    python2-pip (for up to date runner install)  
    python2-docutils  
pip install ansible_runner
pip install flask
pip install flask_restful  

RHEL8 beta/base repo

1. RPM installs for the following packages

python3-flask  
python3-pyOpenSSL  
python3-jwt
python3-pip
cockpit-ws  
cockpit-system  
cockpit-dashboard  
cockpit-bridge  
gcc  
redhat-rpm-config  
python36  
platform-python-devel

2. Install ansible and ansible_runner

pip3.6 install ansible
pip3.6 install ansible_runner

3. Use alternatives --config python to ensure /usr/bin/python is present (needed by the ceph-check-role module)

2. Enable the cockpit interface

systemctl enable --now cockpit.socket  

NB the install of python provides a python2 environment and sets up /usr/bin/python, which ceph-check-role uses

3. Install the ansible-runner-service

1. create a config dir (mkdir /etc/ansible-runner-service)
2. As root,

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/pcuzner/ansible-runner-service.git
cd ansible-runner-service
python ansible_runner_service.py

3. ansible_runner_service will create a file called svctoken in the current directory. copy this file to /etc/ansible-runner-service (this is where cockpit expects to pick it up!)
4. install the checkrole playbook and module

  mkdir samples/project/library
  cd samples/project/library && wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pcuzner/ceph-check-role/master/library/ceph_check_role.py
  cd .. && wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pcuzner/ceph-check-role/master/checkrole.yml

5. Update the playbook (the defaults need to be removed so the cockpit plugin can drive the checks). Update the checkrole.yml playbook as follows;

• delete the vars definition (4 lines)
• update the declarations for mode and deployment;

        mode: "{{ mode }}"  
        deployment: "{{ deployment }}"  

4. Define some example ssh access

• add multiple entries to /etc/hosts to represent hosts all pointing to 127.0.0.1
• runner-service will create ssh keys in samples/env. Use ssh-copy-id -f -i ssh_key.pub root@<host> to copy the public key to your test hosts.

5. Deploy the cockpit plugin

1. create cockpit directory in root's home folder

cd ~
mkdir -p .local/share/cockpit

2. grab the dist folder from the project
3. add a symlink to the dist folder in your ceph-installer directory

cd /root/.local/share/cockpit
ln -s ~/ceph-installer/dist/ ceph-installer

4. point your browser at port 9090 of the machine, and login as root
   • make sure runner-service has been started!

Gotcha's

1. if you see "Problem fetching group listnot-found" in the browsers console..
   • check that runner-service is running!

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Hack on it

To develop you need more than the dist and src - you'll need the cockpit dev environment. More steps to come.