System Administration and Architecture Blog

OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook – Book Available for Pre-Order

Kevin Jackson — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:49:23 +0000

I’m very pleased to announce that you can pre-order my book on OpenStack: OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook

http://www.packtpub.com/openstack-cloud-computing-cookbook/book

Understand, install and configure Nova, OpenStack’s Cloud Compute resource
Learn how to install Swift, how it operates—with practical recipes to troubleshooting and maintaining OpenStack’s Object Storage service
Configure Keystone, OpenStack’s Identity Service which underpins the authentication of all OpenStack services
Manage cloud computing images using the OpenStack Image Service, Glance
Learn how to create custom Windows and Linux images for use in your private cloud environment
Configure and install Horizon, the OpenStack Dashboard service for managing your cloud environment
Learn how to secure your private cloud and the instances running on them
Learn how to troubleshoot, monitor and deploy OpenStack environments beyond test environments and into real-world datacenters

Available around September 2012

CloudCamp Warrington, February 23rd hosted by @appsense #aws #openstack

Kevin Jackson — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:25:46 +0000

I’ll be doing a short (well, I can get carried away but the plan is short) talk on what Autotrader.co.uk is doing in terms of cloud computing which includes efforts and plans around OpenStack and AWS.

You will find some great people at the informal event – from people who are actively involved in cloud technology, to those that are just starting their cloud journey.

If you’re in the North West of the UK and fancy coming along – it is being kindly hosted by the Warrington offices of AppSense Ltd. The evening is turning out to be a great forum and the hope is that more events in the area will follow. If you have an interest in the cloud bubble, please come along for a chat over some drinks and some food.

Full details here: http://cloudcamp.org/warrington

Updated OpenStackInstaller script for Precise and Essex installs

Kevin Jackson — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:12:22 +0000

I’ve updated the OpenStackInstaller script which now gives you a Development (Trunk) OpenStack Essex installation on Ubuntu Precise (Currently Alpha 2) with the following

Nova Compute (and associated services)
Keystone
Glance

This set up allows you to use euca2ools to launch instances as well as nova client tools.

Install Ubuntu Precise
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
reboot

To accommodate the issue with keystone prompting the user to decide on how to set up database services (which therefore breaks an unattended install) a very quick workaround is the following

```
apt-get install keystone
```
Choose No to manage keystone through dbconfig

Then continue the following

(as root)

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

```
cd OpenStackInstaller
```
```
 git checkout essex
```
```
 ./OSinstall.sh
```

A lot of this wouldn’t be possible without the help of people in #openstack on freenode.org.
For an equally awesome installation from scripts for a Diablo release view these scripts: https://github.com/managedit/openstack-setup

OpenStack Auto Assign Floating IP Not Working in Diablo

Kevin Jackson — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:02:28 +0000

Being able to spin up instances in OpenStack is one thing, but they’re not much use if you can’t connect to them using the public network you’ve assigned to it.

Unfortunately in Diablo, the flag –auto_assign_floating_ip=true causes instances to be stuck at pending, and the nova-network.log spews out the something like the following snippet:

(nova.rpc): TRACE:     raise exception.FloatingIpNotFoundForAddress(address=address)
(nova.rpc): TRACE: FloatingIpNotFoundForAddress: Floating ip not found for address
.

This is down to a bug introduced in Diablo, https://bugs.launchpad.net/nova/+bug/834633

The fix is simple though (tested on Ubuntu 11.10 running Python 2.7):

wget https://review.openstack.org/cat/1328%2C3%2Cnova/network/manager.py%5E0 -O nova_network_manager.zip
unzip nova_network_manager.zip
mv /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/nova/network/manager.py{,.orig}
cp manager_new-305ad3be8272f0c69fa9caa8707994ee9233201f.py /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/nova/network/manager.py
restart nova-network
restart nova-compute

Update 08/01/2012: Alternatively you can use the oneiric-proposed repository that has the fix in for Diablo:

Add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list

 deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-proposed main restricted universe multiverse

Then run

apt-get update
apt-get -y dist-upgrade

Then reboot your host.

My response to “OpenStack is overstretched” – The Register

Kevin Jackson — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:45:47 +0000

What do we get from writing an opinion online? Noteriety? Fame? Publicity? I’m doing it because sometimes I need to fill in the blank space between the last post and this one.
I’ve just finished reading a Register article entitled “OpenStack is overstretched” in which a Enrico Signoretti writes that due to the popularity of OpenStack it seems like everyone needs to stick their awe in – good and bad – and the outcome is too many cooks.
Whilst I don’t question the burden of having to juggle a large number of vendors interests into a popular Open Source Cloud “Operating System” is a large one – isn’t this where Open Source projects shine? Sub groups work on particular code that may have a small group of people’s interests at heart. But The source code is available to do that right? What makes that feature get into the final cut? Does it matter so long as the core platform exists to serve the general public?
There is no doubt that OpenStack is a challenging product to use and implement and equally one that must keep the release manager busy and community as a whole – but their interests are to make a fantastic Open Source product available to all that want to take it in any direction they want.
We live in a world where we expect products to be able to have one-click installs – and in fact, a part of my job is to get to this stage in all aspects by automate everything. But sometimes it isn’t possible – but we can make it easier and certainly strive to get there. What we can do is to contribute back rather than sit back and watch a product mature enough to then add your own SKU that you can resell to keep your shareholders happy.
It sounds like people are frustrated because OpenStack has the potential to be big but its not ready to shine yet. There are companies using it, there are companies investigating it and there are companies that are contributing to it.

This is Open Source. You get the choice of what you want to do with it.

Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot on the desktop – my thoughts (and it’s not good)

Kevin Jackson — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:18:56 +0000

So Ubuntu 11.10, aka Oneiric Ocelot has been out for a short while now and so far it has been nothing but pain for people upgrading from an earlier release. Not only are the bugs racking up (and some are showstoppers like my post regarding the “Waiting for network configuration” shows, but the move to Unity seems disastrous and is losing people’s allegiance to the once admired desktop Linux of choice for many.
Has Ubuntu lost its way here? Ubuntu’s parental backers, Canonical, are concentrating their efforts on their Ubuntu Cloud Infrastructure project and Ubuntu 11.10 on a server is great, even bringing with it an easier way to get OpenStack installed.
For me, Unity is a mistake. It made sense on my netbook, does it make sense on a touchscreen maybe, but it doesn’t make sense on my desktop. Integration with even the most basic apps are causing problems (Gvim anyone? Empathy?), its sluggish (Gwibber status updates take..an..age..to..input..).

Overall I’ve lost my faith in Ubuntu on the desktop, which is a shame as it was on the way to make adoption to an Open Source desktop possible.

Upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10 problem: Waiting for network configuration then black screen solution

Kevin Jackson — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:25:35 +0000

Have you just upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and now getting the “Waiting for network configuration” message followed by “Waiting up to 60 seconds more for network”? This then might be accompanied by a black blank screen.

[update] I’ve updated this post to reflect the copy step mentioned in the bug post below is surplus as /run is mounted tmpfs – the refined steps are below. The fix is removing the old /var/run and /var/lock then pointing those old locations to /run and /run/lock respectively. I’m suspecting this bug only comes about after an upgrade from your existing session (e.g. apt-get dist-upgrade) where it must have trouble removing these directories because existing services have files needed in there.

The bug is here (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sysvinit/+bug/858122) and the fix is based on this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dbus/+bug/811441/comments/24 :

Hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 at the blank screen to get you to a non-X terminal (tty1)
Login in with your username and password
Change to root with: sudo -i and enter your password
mkdir -p /run /run/lock
rm -rf /var/run /var/lock
ln -s /run /var
ln -s /run/lock /var
reboot

You should have 11.10 back again.

OpenStack Diablo, updates and work in progress!

Kevin Jackson — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 08:26:31 +0000

It has been a while since I blogged, and in that time OpenStack has come on leaps and bounds with Diablo being the latest official release. This will change as I work pretty much full-time on testing OpenStack as an end-user (and day job as architect) based on Diablo. This will also help with some book projects that are in the pipe-line for which I’m very humbled and excited about. I’ll blog my experiences as I go along – after all, it’s the reason you’ve stumbled upon this corner of the internet in the first place to learn from my experiences in using OpenStack.
The project I’m working on will be based on Ubuntu running the latest release of OpenStack, Diablo (2011.3). I’ll be investigating Crowbar from Dell to see how remote bare-metal provisioning of OpenStack is coming along – a crucial element for this to be adopted in established enterprises where it is the norm to roll-out enterprise class software in this way. I’ll try to squeeze in JuJu too. Most importantly though is playing catch up on the raft of projects that are flowing through OpenStack from Keystone for authentication, Quantum (although probably more relevant to Essex as this develops) as well as playing catch up on where Swift, Glance and the Dashboard are.

Virtual Server Hosting using Apache

Kevin Jackson — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 07:41:14 +0000

Check out my tutorial on AdminNation.com on running multiple websites using Apache from basic setup to explanation of virtual server hosting: http://www.adminnation.com/blog/2011/08/23/running-multiple-websites-using-apache/

SSH Access Using Keys (AdminNation.com)

Kevin Jackson — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:47:52 +0000

I was approached to write some articles for AdminNation.com. Check out my article on SSH Access Using Keys as a beginners guide to using SSH more securely and effectively. http://www.adminnation.com/linux/ssh-access-using-keys/