Quick Installation Guide on Debian Jessie

This is the Synnefo Quick Installation guide.

It describes how to install the whole Synnefo stack on one (1) physical node, in less than 10 minutes. The installation uses the snf-deploy deployment tool and installs on a physical node that runs Debian Jessie. After successful installation, you will have the following services running:

  • Identity Management (Astakos)
  • Object Storage Service (Pithos)
  • Compute Service (Cyclades)
  • Image Service (part of Cyclades)
  • Network Service (part of Cyclades)

and a single unified Web UI to manage them all.

Prerequisites

To install Synnefo the only thing you need is a Debian Jessie Base System that has access to the public Internet.

Installation of snf-deploy

First of all we need to install the snf-deploy tool. To do so please add the following line in your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://apt.dev.grnet.gr jessie/

Then run:

# curl https://dev.grnet.gr/files/apt-grnetdev.pub | apt-key add -
# apt-get update
# apt-get install snf-deploy

Synnefo configuration & installation

Configuration

Now that you have snf-deploy successfully installed on your system, you can continue with configuring and installing Synnefo. Configuration files for snf-deploy can be found in /etc/snf-deploy, the defaults should work out of the box for most setups. If for some reason you encounter any problems, you should check there for network conflicts, etc.

Installation

To install the whole Synnefo stack run:

# snf-deploy synnefo --autoconf

This might take a while depending on the physical host you are running on, since it will download everything that is necessary, install and configure the whole stack.

If the following ends without errors, you have successfully installed Synnefo.

NOTE: All the passwords and secrets used during installation are hardcoded in /etc/snf-deploy/synnefo.conf. You can change them before starting the installation process. If you want snf-deploy create random passwords use the --pass-gen option. The generated passwords will be kept in the /var/lib/snf-deploy/snf_deploy_status file.

Accessing the Synnefo installation

Remote access

If you want to access the Synnefo installation from a remote machine:

Method 1: Modify DNS name resolution

  • Set your nameservers accordingly by adding the following line as your first nameserver in /etc/resolv.conf:

    nameserver <IP>

    The <IP> is the public IP of the machine that you deployed Synnefo on, and want to access. Note that /etc/resolv.conf can be overwritten by other programs (Network Manager, dhclient) and you may therefore lose this line. Depending on your system, you may need to disable writes to /etc/resolv.conf or prepend the nameservers in the /etc/dhclient.conf.

Method 2: Modify /etc/hosts

  • Add the IP of your Synnefo installation in your /etc/hosts file:

    <IP> synnefo.live
<IP> accounts.synnefo.live
<IP> compute.synnefo.live
<IP> pithos.synnefo.live
If you’re using Windows the same settings can be applied on C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS.

Method 3: Use a SOCKS proxy (easier)

  • Alternatively, you can setup a SOCKS proxy using the ssh client and instruct your browser to use it. To setup a SOCKS proxy run:
$ ssh -D localhost:9009 user@host

Now, you can either instruct your browser to tunnel all the traffic through the SOCKS proxy or even better install a plugin like Foxy Proxy to fine tune when to use the proxy or not.

In order to use the proxy globally in Firefox, go to Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Network->Settings and set SOCKS host to localhost and Port to 9009. Firefox by default doesn’t use the SOCKS proxy for domain name resolving. To enable this, type about:config in the URL bar and change network.proxy.socks_remote_dns to true.

For better control on which sites you view over the proxy, download FoxyProxy and set a URL_Pattern to whitelist the synnefo.live domain. To do this use the URL_Pattern *synnefo.live* and set FoxyProxy to run in the Use proxies based on their pre-defined patterns and priorities mode.

FoxyProxy is also available for Chrome through the Chrome Web Store, so a similar approach will work in Chrome also.

Note

Internet Explorer doesn’t support SOCKS5 proxies.

Then open a browser and point it to:

https://astakos.synnefo.live/astakos/ui/login

Local access

If you want to access the installation from the same machine it runs on, you must connect graphically to the machine first. A simple way is to use SSH with X-forwarding:

$ ssh <user>@<hostname> -YC

where <user> is your username and <hostname> is the IP/hostname of your machine. Then, run firefox or chromium and in the address bar write:

https://astakos.synnefo.live/astakos/ui/login

The default <domain> is set to synnefo.live. A local BIND is already set up by snf-deploy to serve all FQDNs.

Login

Once you see the Login screen, go ahead and login using:

username: user@synnefo.org
password: 12345

which is the default user. If you see the welcome screen, you have successfully installed Synnefo on a single node.

Caveats

Certificates

To be able to view all web pages make sure you have accepted all certificates for domains:

  • synnefo.live
  • accounts.synnefo.live
  • cyclades.synnefo.live
  • pithos.synnefo.live
  • cms.synnefo.live

Using the installation

You should be able to:

  • Spawn VMs from the one public Image that is already registered
  • Upload files on Pithos
  • Create Private Networks
  • Connect VMs to Private Networks
  • Upload new Images
  • Register the new Images
  • Spawn VMs from your new Images
  • Use the kamaki command line client to access the REST APIs