Recalling the pain when upgrading from 11.04 to 11.10 (http://uksysadmin.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/upgrade-to-ubuntu-11-10-problem-waiting-for-network-configuration-then-black-screen-solution/) and getting similar symptoms (although those issues related to networking) I ran through the same steps and I had X back again. The steps I did where:

1. Boot into a safe session by selected Advanced Ubuntu Options from the Grub menu then choosing recovery mode
2. Drop to a root shell
3. rm -rf /var/run /var/lock
4. ln -s /run /var
5. ln -s /run/lock /var
6. reboot

I then had X back and lightdm working. I then went to log in, but Unity didn’t seem to work (I still need to troubleshoot and will update here). My current work around was to install Gnome.

1. Get to a console (try CTRL+ALT F1, although this mightn’t work – reboot into a root shell again)
2. (If you don’t have networking, as the root user run the following: dhclient eth0)
3. apt-get update
4. apt-get install gnome
5. reboot or restart lightdm (service lightdm restart)
6. Under your username, choose the Ubuntu symbol above the > symbol to choose window managers and select Gnome
7. Log in

To get Unity back:

1. Fire up a console
2. sudo apt-get remove –purge unity
3. sudo apt-get install unity ubuntu-desktop

(thanks @EwanToo!)

I have no option to install proprietary hardware now – so I ‘ll see how my ATI FireGL card performs under the GPL driver…

• VirtualBox
• Vagrant
• Git client

Getting Ready

To set up a sandbox environment within VirtualBox to run OpenStack Folsom you will need to download:

• VirtualBox from http://www.virtualbox.org/
• Vagrant from http://vagrantup.com/
• Git (using your trusty package manager or from http://github.com/)

Installation of these tools are simple – follow the on-screen prompts.

When ready we need to configure the VirtualBox “Host-Only” Networking. This networking mode allows us to communicate with our VirtualBox guest and our underlying host.
We will set up the following:

• Host-Only Network: IP 172.16.0.254; Network 172.16.0.0/255.255.0.0; Disable DHCP
• Host-Only Network #2: IP 10.0.0.254; Network 10.0.0.0/255.0.0.0; Disable DHCP

(Hint: there is a bash script @ https://raw.github.com/uksysadmin/OpenStackInstaller/folsom/virtualbox/vbox-create-networks.sh to create these for you).

How To Do It

To create a VirtualBox VM, running Ubuntu 12.04 with OpenStack Folsom from Ubuntu’s Cloud Archive, carry out the following

1. Clone the GitHub OpenStackInstaller scripts

git clone https://github.com/uksysadmin/OpenStackInstaller.git

2. Make the scripts the ‘folsom’ branch

cd OpenStackInstaller
git checkout folsom

3. Run ‘vagrant’ to launch your OpenStack instance which will come up with IP 172.16.0.201

cd virtualbox
vagrant up

4. After a short while your instance will be ready. Note that on the first run, Vagrant will download a 384Mb Precise64 “box”. Subsequent launches will not require this step.

Launch a web browser at http://172.16.0.201/horizon and log in with:

Username: admin
Password: openstack

(Note, to edit the IP it is assigned, modify virtualbox/vagrant-openstack-bootstrap.sh (Warning its a bit of a sed hack!).

The OpenStack Folsom release is the community’s sixth release. With each release, the community gets larger and more exciting as more companies come on board and more developers commit their code; with each release comes greater stability and new features that allow us greater flexibility when deploying our cloud environments.

It’s hard to talk about OpenStack Folsom without mentioning two notable new projects: Quantum and Cinder. Quantum provides a feature-rich and extensible API for programmatically defining networks. This allows for far richer network topologies to be defined than currently available such as configuring multi-tier applications and the subnets they’re allocated. It also allows for more advanced configurations at the backend by utilizing plugins, such as utilizing the excellent Open vSwitch software or implementing QoS and security functions. Quantum gives users of OpenStack the ability to completely control all aspects of their cloud compute environment, without compromising the underlying infrastructure and security of the underlying OpenStack environment; Quantum brings true multi-tenancy without any restrictions of VLANs.

Cinder is the OpenStack Block Storage project that was formerly known as nova-volume. This re-birth into its own project allows this crucial piece of core functionality to be developed independently of Nova (Compute) itself. To a user, this means faster development, quicker bug fixes and newer features to meet the demands of today’s hosting requirements.

Other notable features included in Folsom are Microsoft’s hypervisor, Hyper-V, making a comeback after it was removed due to the code being unmaintained for the Essex release and the highly available OpenStack Storage, Swift, being ramped up to 1.7.2. For those upgrading Swift, read the advice here https://lists.launchpad.net/openstack/msg16188.html as this comes with a speed improvement to the rings that is backwards compatible – but downgrading at a later date using the new rings won’t be possible.

Put all the elements of Folsom together and you have a cloud software suite that allows you to easily scale out your secure compute environment and place highly available object storage within your datacenter. With a feature rich API fronting all aspects of an OpenStack controlled datacenter, management of this environment brings cost savings through efficiency and automation. Everything becomes code.

So how do you get the magical OpenStack Folsom installed onto the pristine that adorns your network? Over the last couple of months, there have been great strides in this area with the release of Rackspace’s Private Cloud Edition and Piston’s Airframe, both allowing swift installation of OpenStack without the overhead of some of the complexities previously experienced with an installation. Expect Folsom versions of easy to install methods soon. For those installing on Red Hat based and Ubuntu distros are left to stitch some of the required magic together, with some nuances to be mindful of when moving from a previous release – such as keystone and glance command line syntax changes. In fact, moving from a previous release isn’t as straight-forward as an apt-get upgrade, although with the Canonical starting to fulfil their promise of supporting future OpenStack releases on the latest LTS release via their Cloud Archive – this is quickly becoming a reality. Behind the scenes moving from one version to the next makes this process complex, so for those looking at moving from Diablo or Essex are best looking at migrating workloads to your new environment rather than expecting an hands-free upgrade at this stage. This “want” will become mandatory as OpenStack matures further to remove people from the endless conversations and confusions for those entering OpenStack and the sticking point being the version to accept as stable.

Essex laid the foundations for OpenStack production clouds, Folsom builds on this success and comes brandishing new weapons. With performance enhancements in Compute and Storage, Nova Volumes moving to its own Cinder project and Quantum added to its arsenal – OpenStack just made the choice easier when deciding on what cloud software you should deploy in your datacenter.

For more information on the Folsom release, take a look at Emilien Macchi’s deeper dive summary here: http://my1.fr/blog/whats-new-in-openstack-folsom/

About the book

The book is designed specifically to help people get up to speed with OpenStack and give you the confidence and understanding to roll this out into your own datacenters. The book covers installation of OpenStack in a sandbox environment on local equipment running VirtualBox to recipes covering topics that allow you to move out to the datacenter, and sections covering some of the tools and techniques to make for a robust installation of OpenStack in your production environment.

The book will be out shortly and available from Packtpub, Amazon, Amazon UK, (and on Kindle), and Barnes & Noble.

The recipes

So a sneaky peak at the recipes to tease you until publish time:

THE ONLY WAY IS ESSEX

http://openstack.org/projects/essex/

OpenStack is a true Open Source Cloud Platform, backed by many companies who have full-time staff writing code and fixing bugs.  It has a large community of intelligent minds powering OpenStack that you won’t find in any other community cloud ecosystem.  They’re the rock stars of cloud computing.

OpenStack Essex Installation Screencast

Note that this screencast has no sound.

1. Configure VirtualBox with the following
   Network Interfaces:
   eth0 (nat)
   eth1 host-only: 172.16.0.0/16
   eth2 host-only: 10.0.0.0/8
   Memory: 1536Mb
   Hard Disk: 20Gb
   System Processor (optional but recommended): Increase CPU from 1
2. Install Ubuntu 12.04, specifying eth0 as your default interface
3. Configure networking:
   eth1 is your public network set to be 172.16.0.0/16
   eth2 is your private VLAN
4. Run an update on the machine, and reboot
5. Install Git which allows you to pull down a script to perform the installation of OpenStack
6. Grab the script using the following:
   git clone https://github.com/uksysadmin/OpenStackInstaller.git
7. Ensure you’re running the ‘essex’ version of the script by running: git checkout essex
8. Run the script with the following:
   ./OSinstall.sh -F 172.16.1.0/24 -f 10.1.0.0/16 -s 512 -t demo -v qemu
9. Upload an image using the test supplied script:
   ./upload_ubuntu.sh -a admin -p openstack -t demo -C 172.16.0.1
10. Log into the Dashboard: http://172.16.0.1/ with ‘demo/openstack’
11. Create your access keys
12. Edit the default security group (add in SSH access and ability to ping)
13. Launch your instance
14. Log into your new instance!

init: log.c:786: Assertion failes in log_clear_unflushed:
 log->remote_closed

Then see this thread: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/935585 regarding a bug introduced in a recent upstart package.

Fix is simple

1. apt-get install python-software-properties
2. add-apt-repository ppa:jamesodhunt/bug-935585
3. apt-get update
4. apt-get upgrade

When you reboot all should be great thanks to James Hunt.

An example of its use can be seen here: https://github.com/uksysadmin/OpenStackInstaller/blob/essex/keystone-services.sh