Installing the oVirt Node Next Early-Preview

anaconda4{width=”640” height=”169”}

Finally we’ve got continous builds of oVirt Node Next in oVirt’s jenkins instance which are consumable by Anaconda.

Note: This is an early preview, the basic oVirt bit’s (vdsm) are there and you should be able to add such a host to Engine. But updates are not yet working, and if they were, then they’d be broken.

You want to try it? Read on.

Starting the anaconda installer

Independently if you continue with a VM or a bare metal server, the host you will use

  • needs at least 3GB of free space
  • is connected to the internet

Using a VM

The safe way to try the oVirt Node Next is to install it into a VM, this is quite easy:

qemu-img create -f qcow2 dst.img 20G
qemu-system-x86_64 \
  -enable-kvm \
  -m 2048 \
  -cdrom http://jenkins.ovirt.org/job/fabiand_boo_build_testing/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/ovirt-ipxe.iso \
  -hda dst.img \
  -serial stdio \
  -net nic -net user,hostfwd=tcp::19090-:9090

Now select “Interactive installation” and wait for the anaconda installer to come up, this can take a while, as data is downloaded from the internet.

Using bare metal (easy - iPXE ISO)

Trying oVirt node Next on bare metal is not much more difficult.

  1. Download our pre-built PXE ISO:
  2. Write the ovirt-ipxe.iso onto a CD-ROM, DVD, USB, virtual media
  3. Boot your bare metal server using the previously created media

Now select “Interactive installation” and wait for the anaconda installer to come up, this can take a while, as data is downloaded from the internet.

Using bare metal (medium - CentOS 7 ISO + kernel arguments)

Trying oVirt Node Next on bare metal is not much more difficult.

  1. Grab a CentOS 7 (Node Next is based on CentOS 7) netinstall boot.iso from a mirror close to you.
  2. Boot the boot.iso on your bare metal server and wait for ISOLINUX bootloader
  3. Select the default entry and append the following arguments: inst.ks=https://gerrit.ovirt.org/gitweb?p=ovirt-node-ng.git;a=blob_plain;f=docs/kickstart/minimal-kickstart.ks;hb=HEAD inst.updates=http://jenkins.ovirt.org/job/fabiand_boo_build_testing/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/product.img/product.img inst.stage2=http://mirror.centos.org/centos-7/7/os/x86_64/

Now wait for the anaconda installer to come up, this can take a while, as data is downloaded from the internet.

Performing the installation

Once anaconda is up you need to answer a few questions

  1. Select your prefered language and continue
  2. On the next page, select your keyboard layout and timezone

  3. Select the disk to be used - Enter the spoke (the thing which opens when you click on the disk icon), and select the disk to use. Sometimes you need to deselect and select the disk icon again. Note: Leave the partitioning to automatic. If you are brave you can do your own partitioning layout, but ensure to use LVM thin-provisioning.

  4. Now you should have answered all necessary questions, and can proceed by hitting Continue

  5. The installation is started, use the time to at least set a root user password. Note: The installation can take a while, because now the installation image is pulled from our jenkins instance (~500MB).
  6. Once the installation is done and you’ve set a password, you can reboot the host and it should be ready to use.

The host can now be added to Engine.

Note: In case you encounter issues, enable permissive mode on the host by calling setenforce 0

Trying Cockpit

This is an early preview with cockpit installed. But currently cockpit is not enabled and the firewall prevents access. Yes, it will be fixed. Until then: Perform the following steps to take a look at cockpit:

  1. Use the VM installation above
  2. After installation, log intot the VM
  3. Start cockpit: systemctl start cockpit
  4. Stop firewalld: systemctl stop firewalld
  5. Browse to (on the host, not inside the VM), this request will be forwarded to port 9090 inside the VM, where cockpit is running.

Feedback

Is this working for you or not? Could you install Node? Could you add Node? Could you browse Cockpit? Or did your host explode?

Let us know on IRC (irc://irc.oftc.net/#ovirt) or via email (users\@ovirt.org) what you think.

Next steps

The next big step is to enable updates.

::: {#footer} [ January 8th, 2016 11:07am ]{#timestamp} [ovirt]{.tag} [node]{.tag} [anaconda]{.tag} [cockpit]{.tag} [centos]{.tag} :::