Assisted Installer Unofficial Install Guide

Prerequisites

Only usage of CentOS8 / RHEL8 / Rocky8 / AlmaLinux on the assisted installer host¹ is supported
- This host will run minikube and the UI for deploying OpenShift on Bare Metal
Setup DHCP/DNS records for the following OpenShift nodes and VIPs. List includes
- Master nodes
- Worker nodes
- API VIP
- Ingress VIP
  
  NOTE: dnsmasq can be used to setup DHCP and DNS. Out of scope for this document but I've included links on how to do it.
Ensure these values are properly set via nslookup and dig commands from your assisted installer host
Download your Pull Secret from https://console.redhat.com/openshift/install/pull-secret

Deployment

Procedure

As $USER user with sudo privileges,

Generate an SSH key if not already available (~/.ssh/id_rsa)

[$USER@assisted_installer ~]# ssh-keygen -t rsa -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa -P ''

Make sure that git and make are installed in your host. Note that repositories should be already configured and available on your system.
```
[$USER@assisted_installer ~]# dnf install -y make git
```

Clone the assisted-test-infra git repository:

[$USER@assisted_installer assisted-installer]# git clone https://github.com/openshift/assisted-test-infra
[$USER@assisted_installer assisted-installer]# cd assisted-test-infra

Setup the assisted installer's environment by running the setup target:
```
[$USER@assisted_installer assisted-test-infra]# make setup
```
(Optional) Currently the Installer defaults to deploying OpenShift 4.9. If you wish to change this value, set OPENSHIFT_VERSION to a different value, e.g. 4.8, 4.10
```
[$USER@assisted_installer assisted-test-infra]# export OPENSHIFT_VERSION=4.10
```

Once complete, use the run makefile target that deploys all assisted-installer parts (both UI and API):

[$USER@assisted_installer assisted-test-infra]# make run
.
.
.


deploy_ui.sh: OCP METAL UI can be reached at http://<host-ip>:6008
deploy_ui.sh: Done

Once the UI has finished deploying, on a browser, access it via your host's IP and use port 6008, URL will be something like http://<host-ip>:6008
Within the browser, select the Create New Cluster blue button
A popup window labeled New Bare Metal OpenShift Cluster opens and requests a Cluster Name and OpenShift Version. Enter an appropriate Cluster Name.

NOTE: The OpenShift Version selected is the value assigned to OPENSHIFT_VERSION. If not set, then it uses the default provided by the assisted-service.
On the next screen, enter the Base DNS Domain, Pull Secret, and SSH Public Key. Once complete, click on the button Validate & Save Changes.
- The Base DNS Domain would be something like example.com.
- The pull secret would be the file contents you captured as a prerequisite.
- The SSH public key would be the file contents of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
NOTE: This screen also shows Available subnets, API Virtual IP and Ingress VIP but these do not need to be set at this time of the install.

NOTE: If you get Value must be valid JSON for your pull secret, make sure you are not surrounding your pull secret in tick marks ' '

NOTE: Make sure to delete any extra white spaces when entering your pull secret and SSH key.
Once Validate & Save Changes has been clicked, click on the blue button labeled Download discovery ISO, and enter the HTTP Proxy URL (if required) and SSH public key using the host that is serving out the assisted installer UI. Click Download Discovery ISO. This will prepare the ISO and start the download

NOTE: If you wish not to download the ISO on your current system but on a separate system, after you've initiated the download by clicking the button, you can cancel the download and run the following wget command.

NOTE: This example installs ISO on the assisted installer host that will serve out the ISO via HTTP for the OpenShift cluster nodes.
```
 [$USER@assisted_installer ~]# mkdir ~/assisted-installer/images
 [$USER@assisted_installer ~]# wget http://$(hostname):6008/api/assisted-install/v2/clusters/<cluster-id>/downloads/image -O ~/assisted-installer/images/live.iso
```
NOTE: When the ISO starts the initial download the cluster ID will show up on your browser address bar. Use that value and replace <cluster-id> with it.
The next step uses Juan Parrilla's git repository for simplicity to do the following:
- Create a podman container that will setup iDRAC on DELL servers to boot from ISO
NOTE: Steps 14-18 only work on DELL hardware. A different method would need to be used if using a different vendor to mount your live ISO.

Create a web server container labeled mywebserver that is to serve the live.iso from the ~/assisted-installer/images directory serving out of port 8080 as follows

[$USER@assisted_installer ~]# firewall-cmd --add-port=8080/tcp --zone=public --permanent
[$USER@assisted_installer ~]# firewall-cmd --reload
[$USER@assisted_installer ~]# podman run -d --name mywebserver -v ~assisted-installer/images/:/var/www/html:Z -p 8080:8080/tcp registry.centos.org/centos/httpd-24-centos7:latest

NOTE: Verify you can access the live.iso link as such http://:8080/live.iso

Clone the repository as follows

 ~~~sh
 [$USER@assisted_installer ~]# cd ~/assisted-installer

 [$USER@assisted_installer assisted-installer]# git clone https://github.com/jparrill/racadm-image.git
 ~~~

Change into the racadm-image directory and build the Dockerfile using podman. This will create an podman container that will be used to mount the live.iso to your baremetal nodes via iDRAC.
```
[$USER@assisted_installer assisted-installer]# cd racadm-image
[$USER@assisted_installer racadm-image]# podman build . -t idracbootfromiso
```
NOTE: Ignore any errors and just ensure your idracbootfromiso image is created and exists under the command podman images. If it failed, please attempt to re-run the command above.
With the idracbootfromiso image created, we will now use it to mount the live.iso on all of our OpenShift nodes. For simplicity, this example shows 3 servers (3 masters, 0 workers) but can be extended to X number of servers requiring the live.iso
```
[$USER@assisted_installer ~]# for i in <master0-idrac-ip> <master1-idrac-ip> <master2-idrac-ip>; do podman run --net=host idracbootfromiso -r $i -u <idrac-user> -p "<idrac-pw>" -i http://       <host-ip>:8080/live.iso; done
```
NOTE1: Ensure to include the proper host iDRAC IPs, iDRAC user and iDRAC password. This for loop assumes iDRAC user and iDRAC password are the same, if different adjust the shell command accordingly.

NOTE2: Also make sure to remove/eject the older ISO which were mounted using racadm command as shown below
```
sshpass -p '*****' ssh root@<iDRAC-IP> racadm remoteimage -d
```
The live.iso should reboot the nodes and boot them into an RHCOS Live image. Once it has done this, shortly you will notice the nodes becoming discoverable for your cluster via the http://<host-ip>:6008/clusters/<cluster-id> dashboard.
Once the nodes are now available on the dashboard, select the appropriate role for each OpenShift cluster node.
Enter the API Virtual VIP that you assigned via DNS.
Enter the Ingress VIP that you assigned via DNS.

NOTE: More Network Configuration changes can be made such as changing Cluster Network CIDR, Cluster Network Host Prefix, Service Network CIDR if you change the Network Configuration from Basic to Advanced.
Click the Validate & Save Changes button.
The blue button to Install Cluster should now be made available. Select it.
Wait for the installation to complete.
Once the installation completes, copy download the kubeconfig file and copy it to your host running the assisted service UI or a system that has the oc binary installed.

Export the kubeconfig

[$USER@assisted_installer ~]# export KUBECONFIG=/path/to/kubeconfig

Verify everything is running as expected with your install

[$USER@assisted_installer ~]# oc get nodes
[$USER@assisted_installer ~]# oc get co
[$USER@assisted_installer ~]# oc get pods --all-namespaces | grep -iv running | grep -iv complete

NOTE: Currently there is an issue with the metal3 pod. The Assisted Installer team is aware of this.

Adding a new e2e flow

Before starting, note that test infra is written in python (>= 3.9) and uses pytest and pytest fixtures for running all of our e2e test flows.
Set up test-infra test environment (assisted-installer-install-guide)
Make sure that the assisted-service is supporting the tested feature
- For customizing tested components, take a look at components deployment parameters
- The changes are already on assisted-service master branch
Make sure to test the changes for both CI-compatible distro (Rocky Linux 8) and QE's compatible environment (RHEL 8.5).
Depends on the test one or more of the following are needed:
1. Adding environment variables -
  - skipper.env - All environment variables that are being used inside assisted-test-infra container must be declared on skipper env file.
  - env_defaults - Add the environment variables to the default file and set default if needed
    - Note 1: Use only env_defaults to access environment variables. Do not access them directly using os.environ or some other method.
    - Note 2: Do not set variable default values on the Makefile or on any other file.
2. Use one of the existing test functions (depends on the mode you are using) or create a new one:
  - Some tests can be modified using only different environment variables (e.g. test_install, test_kubeapi)
  - After you have ruled out the option to customize an existing test using environment variables only, you can add a new test function (just look on some examples under the tests package) to one of the existing test files or create a new one if needed.
3. Node controllers:
  - Alter or create any node controller depends on which platform the test is running on (e.g. terraform_controller, vsphere_controller, libvirt_controller)
  - Any new node controller must have its own implementation of BaseNodeConfig. The defaults values are taken directly from the env_defaults mentioned above.
  - The most heavily-used NodeController is the TerraformController (inherits from LibvirtController), so unless adding a new platform or specific platform test, you probably will have to alter one of those two controllers.
4. General Purpose Controllers - Running extra services alongside the test (e.g. ProxyController on IPv6) are often requires a new controller, if it can be done, run it as an isolated container. You probably will want to declare a new pytest-fixture for creating and destroying it properly.
5. Triggers - Mechanism for automatic assignment of variables:
  - On some scenarios we will need to set multiple environment variables for single test (e.g. SNO), triggers are mechanism for automatically set environment variables when some condition is met (e.g. masters_count=1)
  - The default triggers are defined here
  - The condition for each trigger is defined using python lambda function.
  - When trigger condition is met, it's setting the global_variable instance value (if exists) and for each test configurations it's setting the variables as part of the controller creation fixture

Troubleshooting

Also see the troubleshooting section in the internal Assisted Deployment document.

Problem

Minikube fails when deploying assisted-service using the test infra.

Solution

Run:

make destroy
rm -f /usr/bin/docker-machine-driver-kvm2
make run

Problem

An exception in src/assisted_service_client.py about a missing class or an invalid parameter.

Solution

Rebase test-infra on top of master
Run make image_build to build a new test-infra image

Do not use skipper commands in test-infra :)

Problem

VMs fail to connect to Assisted Service.

Solution

Run kubectl get pods -n <namespace> and look for the assisted-service pod name. For example:

[$USER@assisted_installer ~]# kubectl get pods -n assisted-installer

Run kubectl logs <pod-name> -n <namespace> and check the log for errors.
If you do not see any errors in the Assisted Service logs, ssh to the VM:
- Get the VM IP addresses using virsh net-dhcp-leases test-infra-net.
- ssh core@vm-ip or try ssh systemuser@vm-ip if it did not work
- Agent logs are located under /var/log/agent.log

Problem

There are issues installing Assisted Service.

Solution

Run kubectl get pods -n <namespace> and look for the assisted-service pod name. For example:

[$USER@assisted_installer ~]# kubectl get pods -n assisted-installer

Run kubectl logs <pod-name> -n <namespace> and the log for errors.
SSH to the VMs as described above, run sudo su and check podman logs of the assisted installer container for errors.

Problem

The test infra fails with any of the following errors:

Error: missing provider "libvirt"
make image build failed - DD failed: stat /var/lib/docker/tmp/docker-builder287959213/build/assisted-service-client: no such file or directory
warning: unable to access '/root/.gitconfig': Is a directory fatal: unknown error occurred while reading the configuration files

Solution

Do not run test-infra from /root. Instead, move it to /home/test/ and then run make setup.

Problem

You get an error with the message Error: Error defining libvirt network: virError(Code=9, Domain=19, Message='operation failed: network 'test-infra-net' already exists.

Solution

You probably already have a running cluster. Run make destroy do deleted the existing cluster. If it does not solve the issue, run make delete_all_virsh_resources.

Problem

You get Error: Error creating libvirt domain: virError(Code=38, Domain=18, Message='Cannot access storage file '/home/test/test-infra/storage_pool/test-infra-cluster/test-infra-cluster-master-0' (as uid:107, gid:107): Permission denied').

Solution

Run make setup.

1 It can also be a VM running CentOS8 or RHEL8 and able to do `nested` virtualization as it will run minikube inside. VM should have NICs for connecting to the hosts being installed over bridges at the physical host. [↩](#a1)

Problem

You get Error: Operation not supported: can't update 'bridge' section of network 'test-infra-net-******'.

Solution

Downgrade libvirt: Run dnf downgrade libvirt -y.

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Assisted Installer Unofficial Install Guide

Prerequisites

Deployment

Adding a new e2e flow

Troubleshooting

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Assisted Installer Unofficial Install Guide

Prerequisites

Deployment

Adding a new e2e flow

Troubleshooting