Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Automation for DBA - Vagrant part 1

Vagrant is an open source tool for building a virtual environment. It is based on text based configuration file and concept of prebuilt OS boxes.
One can find a lot of boxes on Atlas webpage (https://atlas.hashicorp.com/boxes/search), ready to download and use.  Although if there are any security concerns about using a OS from 3rd party webpage, I published a blog post about creating a new Vagrant box using Oracle Linux here and Oracle Virtual Box.

For simplicity of this series, predefined Linux box will be used in all examples.
There are two boxes that I’m using in my own work.
First one “kikitux/oracle6-racattack” created by Alvaro Miranda (https://github.com/kikitux) member of Rac Attack team. The other one is “racattack/oracle65” created by Jeremy Schneider who is also member of RacAttack team.

Vagrant itself is not a Virtualization provider. It can control different virtualization tools, including:
-    Virtual Box
-    AWS EC2 (with an additional plugin)
-    KVM (with an additional plugin)
-    VMWare Fusion / Workstation (paid version of Vagrant)

Most of the differences between providers are hidden by Vagrant workflow, and a configuration file defining a Vagrant box is similar between different providers.
Vagrant user is using same set of commands to start, stop or destroy virtual machine and does not have to know which provider is used for that.

There is a list of typical Vagrant commands:

-    vagrant init – creating a basic configuration file
-    vagrant up – starting a virtual machine
-    vagrant halt – stopping a virtual machine
-    vagrant destroy – delete a virtual machine
-    vagrant ssh – open a ssh session to vagrant user on virtual machine

After this short introduction let’s get started with a Vagrant on Laptop/Desktop (using Virtual Box as a provider)

Prerequisites:
-    vagrant software – https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html
-    Virtual Box - https://www.virtualbox.org/

In the first step a new directory will be created and used for Vagrant to initiate build of new virtual machine.


mkdir machine1
cd machine1

In the next step Vagrant machine will be initialized


vagrant init racattack/oracle65
A `Vagrantfile` has been placed in this directory. You are now
ready to `vagrant up` your first virtual environment! Please read
the comments in the Vagrantfile as well as documentation on
`vagrantup.com` for more information on using Vagrant.

A new Vagrantfile has been created with basic configuration. By default Vagrant is trying to change a default set of public / private key with a new pair generated on user machine. But there are some problem with that on latest version of Vagrant, so as a workaround please add this line to Vagrantfile (see https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5186)


config.ssh.insert_key = false

This is how Vagrantfile looks like without commented lines


Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
    config.vm.box = "racattack/oracle65"
    config.ssh.insert_key = false
end

Now this machine can be started. If a box selected in an init stage is not existing yet in the provider catalog, it will be automatically downloaded and cloned to a new machine.

mprzepiorowski$ vagrant up
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
==> default: Box 'racattack/oracle65' could not be found. Attempting to find and install...
    default: Box Provider: virtualbox
    default: Box Version: >= 0
==> default: Loading metadata for box 'racattack/oracle65'
    default: URL: https://atlas.hashicorp.com/racattack/oracle65
==> default: Adding box 'racattack/oracle65' (v14.11.01) for provider: virtualbox
    default: Downloading: https://atlas.hashicorp.com/racattack/boxes/oracle65/versions/14.11.01/providers/virtualbox.box
==> default: Successfully added box 'racattack/oracle65' (v14.11.01) for 'virtualbox'!
==> default: Importing base box 'racattack/oracle65'...
==> default: Matching MAC address for NAT networking...
==> default: Checking if box 'racattack/oracle65' is up to date...
==> default: Setting the name of the VM: machine1_default_1439847872931_79029
==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
    default: Adapter 1: nat
==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 22 => 2222 (adapter 1)
==> default: Booting VM...
==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
    default: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2222
    default: SSH username: vagrant
    default: SSH auth method: private key
    default: Warning: Connection timeout. Retrying...
==> default: Machine booted and ready!
==> default: Checking for guest additions in VM...
==> default: Mounting shared folders...
    default: /vagrant => /Users/mprzepiorowski/Documents/machine1
Is this that simple? Yes it is – a new virtual machine with Oracle Linux is installed and ready. Next step is to ssh into a new created machine. There is no need to know neither a password nor an IP address,

mprzepiorowski$ vagrant ssh
[vagrant@oracle6-racattack ~]$ 

Now it is a time to customize this machine a little bit. Before that an existing machine has to be stopped using a Vagrant command


mprzepiorowski$ vagrant halt
==> default: Attempting graceful shutdown of VM...

As it was mentioned at the beginning of the post, Vagrant is using a text based configuration file. All customizations can be done by editing this file.
The configuration file structure can be divided into two sections.
First section defines a provider configuration and this part will change when a provider will be changed. Other section is provider independent and describes all other parameters.


Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|

# this part is common for all providers

  config.vm.box = "racattack/oracle65"
  config.ssh.insert_key = false
  config.vm.hostname = "machine1"

# provider specific configuration

  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
    vb.memory = 1024 
    vb.cpus = 2
  end

end

Starting a machine with a new configuration


mprzepiorowski$ vagrant up
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
==> default: Checking if box 'racattack/oracle65' is up to date...
==> default: Clearing any previously set forwarded ports...
==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
    default: Adapter 1: nat
==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 22 => 2222 (adapter 1)
==> default: Running 'pre-boot' VM customizations...
==> default: Booting VM...
==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
    default: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2222
    default: SSH username: vagrant
    default: SSH auth method: private key
    default: Warning: Connection timeout. Retrying...
    default: Warning: Connection timeout. Retrying...
==> default: Machine booted and ready!
==> default: Checking for guest additions in VM...
==> default: Setting hostname...
==> default: Mounting shared folders...
    default: /vagrant => /Users/mprzepiorowski/Documents/machine1
==> default: Machine already provisioned. Run `vagrant provision` or use the `--provision`
==> default: flag to force provisioning. Provisioners marked to run always will still run.

Checking changes


[vagrant@machine1 ~]$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1020696     121356     899340          0      10980      42100
-/+ buffers/cache:      68276     952420
Swap:      8191996          0    8191996
[vagrant@machine1 ~]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor
processor : 0
processor : 1

All looks good there. Virtual machine has 1 GB of RAM and two vCPU. Machine name has been changed to machine1 as well.

The last change tested here will be a new disk assigned to virtual machine. The box used for an example already has a “sdb” device and an “u01” file system defined inside a box. In this case device “sdc” will be added to the box and can be configured later as a “u02” file system if necessary. The file system creation and configuration will be presented in the next posts about Ansible.

disk_filename = 'disk-u02.vdi'

Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|

# this part is common for all providers

  config.vm.box = "racattack/oracle65"
  config.ssh.insert_key = false
  config.vm.hostname = "machine1"

# provider specific configuration

  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
    vb.memory = 1024
    vb.cpus = 2
    unless File.exist?(disk_filename)
       vb.customize ['createhd', '--filename', disk_filename, '--size', (5*1024), '--variant', 'Standard']
    end
    vb.customize ['storageattach', :id, '--storagectl', 'SATA Controller', '--port', 2, '--device', 0, '--type', 'hdd', '--medium', disk_filename]
  end

end

Options specified in vb.customize are options of VBoxManage command of Virtual Box installation.

mprzepiorowski$ vagrant ssh
Last login: Mon Aug 17 22:01:36 2015 from 10.0.2.2
[vagrant@machine1 ~]$ ls -l /dev/sdc*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 32 Aug 17 22:25 /dev/sdc
[vagrant@machine1 ~]$ 

New disk is added and ready for other activities.

This is end of this post and I will present similar steps for KVM and EC2 virtual machines in the next one.

regards,
Marcin


Monday, August 10, 2015

Preparing a Oracle Linux for a Vagrant box

This post is an overview of an installation and configuration process of the Oracle Linux, which will be used as a machine “box” for Vagrant software using a Virtual Box platform.

Post itself is divided into two parts:

  1. Oracle Linux installation (points 1 to 12)
  2. Vagrant box configuration (points 13 to 16)

Part 1 – Oracle Linux installation

 

1. Create a new Virtual Machine - machine name will be used later to create Vagrant box

2. Set memory size - it does matter only for a installation process, as it can be changed later by Vagrant

3. Create a new disk, which will be used to keep a root and a swap file systems only. Any additional disks will be added dynamically via Vagrant. In this example, a disk size is set to 8 GB.





4. Mount Oracle Linux DVD into Virtual Machine drive


5. Configure 1st network interface to be NAT 

 


6. Add port forwarding for SSH



6.Start Virtual Machine and start a Oracle Linux installation. Some of the screens have been skipped in this post but a default values have been used for those ones.



7.Choose language and keyboard




8.Configure disk using a default basic definition



9.Configure a host name for a box, configure a network with DHCP and start up at boot time.


10.Default packages will be installed only at this time. Some will be added later.



11.Wait for process to be completed
 


12.Restart machine



Part 2 – Vagrant box configuration

13. Add Vagrant related configuration
  • Add user "vagrant" with password "vagrant"
  • Add Vagrant public insecure public key to .authorized_keys
  • Install Guest additional tools
Connect to VM using ssh
 
ssh -p 2022 root@localhost
The authenticity of host '[localhost]:2022 ([127.0.0.1]:2022)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 3e:4f:bd:ca:45:d6:e8:d4:6b:4d:02:bb:1f:c3:ad:a2.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '[localhost]:2022' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
root@localhost's password:
Last login: Sat Jul 18 21:25:57 2015 from 10.0.2.2
Add user using password vagrant
[root@oelbox ~]# useradd vagrant
[root@oelbox ~]# passwd vagrant
Changing password for user vagrant.
New password:
BAD PASSWORD: it is based on a dictionary word
BAD PASSWORD: is too simple
Retype new password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
Add Vagrant public key
[root@oelbox ~]# su - vagrant
[vagrant@oelbox ~]$ mkdir .ssh
[vagrant@oelbox ~]$ chmod 700 .ssh
[vagrant@oelbox ~]$ cd .ssh
[vagrant@oelbox .ssh]$ wget --no-check-certificate https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellh/vagrant/master/keys/vagrant.pub -O authorized_keys
--2015-07-18 21:29:16--  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellh/vagrant/master/keys/vagrant.pub
Resolving raw.githubusercontent.com... 23.235.44.133
Connecting to raw.githubusercontent.com|23.235.44.133|:443... connected.
WARNING: certificate common name “www.github.com” doesn’t match requested host name “raw.githubusercontent.com”.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 409 [text/plain]
Saving to: “authorized_keys”

100%[===========================================================================================================================================================>] 409         --.-K/s   in 0s

2015-07-18 21:29:17 (94.1 MB/s) - “authorized_keys” saved [409/409]

[vagrant@oelbox .ssh]$ chmod 600 authorized_keys

Choose Install Guest Additional CD from Virtual Box menu and check if CDROM it was mounted

Install required packages and add Guest tools
[root@oelbox ~]# yum install kernel-uek-devel-3.8.13-16.2.1.el6uek.x86_64
[root@oelbox ~]# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/
mount: block device /dev/sr0 is write-protected, mounting read-only
[root@oelbox ~]# /mnt/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox 4.3.20 Guest Additions for Linux............
VirtualBox Guest Additions installer
Removing installed version 4.3.20 of VirtualBox Guest Additions...
Copying additional installer modules ...
Installing additional modules ...
Removing existing VirtualBox non-DKMS kernel modules       [  OK  ]
Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules
Building the main Guest Additions module                   [  OK  ]
Building the shared folder support module                  [  OK  ]
Building the OpenGL support module                         [  OK  ]
Doing non-kernel setup of the Guest Additions              [  OK  ]
Starting the VirtualBox Guest Additions                    [  OK  ]
Installing the Window System drivers
Could not find the X.Org or XFree86 Window System, skipping. 

14. Install packages required for Oracle database and EPEL repository and Ansible. 
If you are using RedHat or Centos you can’t use oracle-rdbms packages. Oracle-ansible playbook, which will be used later will take care about all packages during a first installation.

[root@oelbox ~]# yum install oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall.x86_64 oracle-rdbms-server-12cR1-preinstall.x86_64
[root@oelbox ~]# rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
Retrieving http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
warning: /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.SCcj3K: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID 0608b895: NOKEY
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:epel-release           ########################################### [100%]
[root@oelbox ~]# yum install ansible

15. Configure sudo for vagrant user - disable requiretty and allow vagrant user to run sudo without password for all commands.
[root@oelbox ~]# visudo
#Defaults    requiretty
vagrant ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

16. Shutdown Virtual Machine.

This is end of configuration on the Linux level and this Virtual Machine can be used now as a source of the Vagrant box.


regards,
Marcin