maas-devel team mailing list archive

[Jon <three18ti@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Francis,

Thanks for the link, I am very familiar with the documentation at this
point.  Something I pointed out in my original reddit post was that the
documentation seems to be lacking because the project appears to be under
development (see:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam/MAAS/AvahiBoot<http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/sxmy4/maas_my_handson_look/>,
for instance).  One big step that is missing from the initial setup
documentation, is to add your key to the MaaS server under your specific
user profile, couple that with the lack of any instructions on how to login
to a newly provisioned box, and you can imagine the frustrated user who
sets up his shiny new machines and can't access any of them, add to that
the lack of "recovery" mode and you can quickly get into a very frustrating
situation.

As far as the adding a node documentation is concerned, it's appears that
this is still under revision because the under instructions for : "You will
get a dialog *"Install or Enlist with Ubuntu MAAS Server"* with 3 options:

The three options listed are :

   1. TODO - Insert example
   2. Specify MAAS Server by Name or Address
   3. Create a new MAAS on this server.

The next bullet explains option 1 however, "It is best to select option 1.
which is the auto-discovered MAAS server. "

So maybe something like:

   1. Auto Discover - autodiscovered Servername Name / IP (Will only appear
   if MaaS server is auto discovered)
   2. Specify MAAS Server by Name or Address
   3. Create a new MAAS on this server.

Would be more appropriate.

Additionally, information on how to delegate nodes to users or information
on how this decision is made would also be infinitely useful.  In a real
world application, would you expect each customer to own their own MAAS?
This seems highly inefficient, as each new MaaS install requires a
dedicated server (though I have had limited some success with MaaS
installed on a virtual machine).

Which brings me to my next question, how do I configure a VM to WoL?  I see
that there is a virsh option, but no further information.  Simply selecting
the "virsh" boot option does not enable MaaS to start VMs.  I have tried
running a VMs in a Hypervisor on the MaaS server, however, I have not tried
adding a node then creating a VM on that node and then adding that VM as a
node to the MaaS server, the latter really doesn't seem like the way to do
it as the former at least will make use of resource that would otherwise go
unused (as I see no mechanism for controlling the MaaS server from MaaS).

The final issue I was having was with Juju.  Now, I've had limited
experience with juju, but I think my issues stem from issues with MaaS.
Initially I was getting an invalid SSH key from a `juju status`, after
rebooting that machine, it reprovisioned itself (to deploy the SSH key?),
then I was able to ssh to the box, however, `juju status` hung for a full
hour before I had to kill it.  Perhaps these are things that should be
broached with the juju team, but as there is some MaaS + Juju cross over, I
can't really say who's responsible for what.  Really, the only reason I am
using juju is because I was excited to use MaaS; I've been working with
Puppet and Chef so I was not initially very eager to learn another
configuration management and deployment tool.  As I understand it, MaaS
relies on Juju for configuration and deployment, so my hands are tied;
there really isn't an option to use say, MaaS + Chef.

One last thing I'd like to inquire about is the other web-services that are
running but unavailable, Cobbler and RabbitMQ being the two important
ones.  I tried to install the cobbler web service but was given an error
that cobbler-web requires cobbler, but if Cobbler is installed, why doesn't
apt think so?  Is there a reason that these services aren't documented on a
MaaS installation?  Personally, I would prefer to only have one Cobbler
installation to maintain, and we already run a RabbitMQ cluster, so
integrating Rabbit on the MaaS into the existing cluster would be trivial
(or replacing the MQ on the MaaS server even).  I mean if there is a reason
that these things aren't documented, would it be possible to document that?

Again, 12.04 has been out less than a week, so I'm sure there will be
documentation coming.  Overall I think this is an awesome product, and I'm
excited to be a part of it, if only in the tiniest of ways.   If there is
something more I can do I would be happy to do so.  I hope that I don't
come off as complaining, in my initial post on reddit I was assessing some
of the gotchas on what I thought to be an awesome product, I hope that is
coming through.

Best Regards,
Jon A

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 3:18 PM, Francis J. Lacoste <
francis.lacoste@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Jon,
>
> The current documentation on MAAS is available at https://maas.ubuntu.com/
>
> It covers installing, adding nodes and deploying services to it through
> Juju.
>
> Cheers
>
> On 12-04-29 07:40 PM, Jon wrote:
> > Hello All,
> >
> > I originally posted this on reddit,
> > http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/sxmy4/maas_my_handson_look/ and
> > was asked to post this here (then mistakenly posted this to the admin
> > list...).
> > I've removed the external links for readability (because I was copying
> this
> > into a web form at the time).
> > My biggest complaint is lack of documentation, and with the release of
> 12.04
> > happening just days ago, I'm sure the docs are coming.  Thanks for
> > making a great product, I can't wait to get MaaS working properly;  I'd
> > love to sell the boss on a proper management solution.
> >
> > Original Post:
> > ----
> > Ubuntu 12.04 has been released, and with it comes a number of
> > advancements.
> > One of the projects I am particularly interested in is the new MaaS
> > (Metal as a Service) which integrates nicely with Juju for automatic
> > deployment and administration of hardware. Because the project appears
> > to be under development, some of the documentation is lacking. That's
> > ok, I'm sure in time the docs will be updated.
> > Installation of the base MaaS server is rather straight forward. It's
> > almost the same process as standard server installation except the
> > additional three or four MaaS screens. For some reason the MaaS install
> > doesn't install the nice Ubuntu login screen when you ssh to a machine.
> > It is possible to install Ubuntu server, then apt-get install maas. I
> > believe this installs everything, but you may need to install maas-dhcp.
> > At this point the, the docs say to run maas-import-isos then add your
> > nodes. Two important points, 1) you can import nodes, but cannot
> > comission them until the import is complete 2) you should add your SSH
> > key (of the machine that is running juju as well as your machine) before
> > you commission your nodes. Click the down arrow next to your username,
> > select preferences and add key. Add your keys from .ssh/id_rsa.pub.
> > When you create a node, currently, the only way to start up a machine is
> > PXE boot, and MaaS must be the only DHCP server on the network. I don't
> > know if WoL because I don't have any devices that support it at the
> > moment. However, i can say using virsh to start VMs does not work.
> > I am unclear how I got the one machine to change from "ready" to "in
> > use" status... After the initial boot and install, I was unable to
> > access my new node. I got as far as juju status where I received a
> > "invalid ssh key" warning. Only after I rebooted this node, the node I
> > can't get my second node to change from ready to deployed, and juju
> > status hangs (I literally literally let it run for an hour before
> > killing the process, I was able to see some traffic between the nodes,
> > but the traffic continued after killing the juju process).
> > One thing that really bugs me, is all of the services that are installed
> > in non-standard locations. For instance maas-dhcp installs a DHCP
> > server, but no information as to where the dhcp leases are stored, and
> > as far as ps is concerned, there don't appear to be any processes with
> > the letters dhcp in them:
> > # ps aux | grep dhcp
> >  root     11383  0.0  0.0   8096   932 pts/3    S+   19:31   0:00 grep
> > --color=auto dhcp
> > Installing the MaaS service also installs Cobbler and RabbitMQ, but
> > information on accessing these systems is also non-existent, and apt
> > doesn't even recognize they are installed.
> > Overall, I think this is an awesome project, but needs some
> > documentation.
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Francis J. Lacoste
> francis.lacoste@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>


-- 
Best Regards,
Jonathan David

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