jclouds-virtualbox is a local cloud provider modelled on the virtualbox hypervisor. Similar to other jclouds supported providers, it supports the same portable abstractions offered by jclouds.
##Setup
Please follow these steps to configure your workstation for jclouds-virtualbox:
jclouds-virtualbox uses the current user.name and private key for sending commands to localhost over ssh.
The current user (user.name) should have passwordless ssh. On a *nix system, you can enable this feature using ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id.
${user.home}/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and ${user.home}/.ssh/id_rsa)$ ssh-keygen
authorized_keys file. ssh-copy-id also assigns proper permission to the remote-host’s home, ~/.ssh, and ~/.ssh/authorized_keysIn this case:
$ ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa your-user@localhost
If your system does not have an ssh-copy-id command, use something like this:
$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh your-user@localhost “cat -> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys”
You need to have passwordless sudo rights on localhost. This is done by editing the sudoers file (/etc/sudoers). Use caution when editing this file, as introducing errors will lock you out of the system. Therefore, it is recommended to edit this file through the visudo command.
The sudoers file should have a line like this (replace your-user):
your-user ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
At this point, you should be able to login to localhost with ssh your-user@localhost without password.
#How it works
--------------- -------------
| Image(s) | | Node(s) |
--------------- -------------
------------------------------- -------
| VirtualBox || Jetty |
------------------------------- -------
--------- passwordless ssh+sudo ----------------------------------------
| jclouds | ---------------------------> | localhost |
--------- ----------------------------------------
###Components
ssh ---------------
/----------------------------------> | Image(s) |
| ---------------
| ------------------------------- -------
| | VirtualBox || Jetty |
| ------------------------------- -------
--------- passwordless ssh+sudo ----------------------------------------
| jclouds | ---------------------------> | localhost |
--------- ----------------------------------------
The OS supported by jclouds-virtualbox are described in a YAML file default-images.yaml stored at src/main/resources/.
For each OS supported, it stores the following information: a unique id, a name, a description, an os_arch, os_family, os_description, os_version, the iso url, the iso md5, username and credential to access this vm, a keystroke sequence for the OS installer and a preseed configuration file that contains the settings for this OS installation.
For example, the corresponding YAML section for ubuntu 10.04.4 server (32 bit) looks like:
- id: ubuntu-10.04.4-server-i386
name: ubuntu-10.04-server-i386
description: ubuntu 10.04.4 server (i386)
os_arch: x86
os_family: ubuntu
os_description: ubuntu
os_version: 10.04.4
iso: http://releases.ubuntu.com/10.04.4/ubuntu-10.04.4-server-i386.iso
iso_md5: fc08a01e78348e3918180ea91a6883bb
username: toor
credential: password
keystroke_sequence: |
<Esc><Esc><Enter>
/install/vmlinuz noapic preseed/url=http://10.0.2.2:8080/src/test/resources/preseed.cfg
debian-installer=en_US auto locale=en_US kbd-chooser/method=us
hostname=vmName
fb=false debconf/frontend=noninteractive
console-setup/ask_detect=false console-setup/modelcode=pc105 console-setup/layoutcode=us
initrd=/install/initrd.gz -- <Enter>
preseed_cfg: |
## Options to set on the command line
d-i debian-installer/locale string en_US
d-i console-setup/ask_detect boolean false
d-i console-setup/layoutcode string us
d-i netcfg/get_hostname string unassigned-hostname
d-i netcfg/get_domain string unassigned-domain
d-i time/zone string UTC
d-i clock-setup/utc-auto boolean true
d-i clock-setup/utc boolean true
d-i kbd-chooser/method select American English
d-i netcfg/wireless_wep string
d-i base-installer/kernel/override-image string linux-server
d-i debconf debconf/frontend select Noninteractive
d-i pkgsel/install-language-support boolean false
tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, ubuntu-server
d-i partman-auto/method string lvm
#d-i partman-auto/purge_lvm_from_device boolean true
d-i partman-lvm/confirm boolean true
d-i partman-lvm/device_remove_lvm boolean true
d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe select atomic
d-i partman/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i partman/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition select finish
d-i partman/confirm boolean true
# Write the changes to disks and configure LVM?
d-i partman-lvm/confirm boolean true
d-i partman-lvm/confirm_nooverwrite boolean true
d-i partman-auto-lvm/guided_size string max
## Default user, we can get away with a recipe to change this
d-i passwd/user-fullname string toor
d-i passwd/username string toor
d-i passwd/user-password password password
d-i passwd/user-password-again password password
d-i user-setup/encrypt-home boolean false
d-i user-setup/allow-password-weak boolean true
d-i pkgsel/include string openssh-server ntp
# Whether to upgrade packages after debootstrap.
# Allowed values: none, safe-upgrade, full-upgrade
d-i pkgsel/upgrade select full-upgrade
d-i grub-installer/only_debian boolean true
d-i grub-installer/with_other_os boolean true
d-i finish-install/reboot_in_progress note
#For the update
d-i pkgsel/update-policy select none
# debconf-get-selections --install
#Use mirror
choose-mirror-bin mirror/http/proxy string
The OS isos and guest additions isos will be stored in the jclouds working directory (by default ~/.jclouds-vbox/isos/)
##Cloning nodes
ssh --------------- -------------
/----------------------------------> | Node(s) | | Image |
| --------------- -------------
| -------------------------------
| | VirtualBox |
| -------------------------------
--------- (a) passwordless ssh+sudo ----------------------------------------
| jclouds | ---------------------------> | localhost |
--------- ----------------------------------------
###Cloning strategy By default, a new node is cloned from a matching ‘Image’ with ‘CloneOptions.Link’. This advanced option will save a lot of disk space and installation time as opposed to creating completely unique VMs for each new node.
Each Node will have 2 NICs (Network Interface Cards) to enable an NAT+Host-Only networking strategy:
#Interacting with jclouds-vbox and connecting to machines
For java guidance, please see [src/test/java/org/jclouds/virtualbox/compute/VirtualBoxExperimentLiveTest.java].
For now nat+host-only is the only available network configuration, nodes should be accessible from the host by:
ssh user@192.168.56.X
where:
vboxnet0#Customization
##Identity and Credential By default, jclouds-virtualbox will try to use the current user (with passwordless ssh and sudo rights), but you can also override this default by specifying -Dvirtualbox.identity and -Dvirtualbox.credential, if you want to use another user available on your local machine.
##Preseed file In order to make available a preseed file, jclouds-virtualbox will start a PreseedServer at http://localhost:23232 that will serve a preseed.cfg file. Make sure your firewall rules are not blocking this port. If you need to override this default you can use -Djclouds.virtualbox.preconfigurationurl=http://localhost:PORT/preseed.cfg, with a different PORT.
##Working directory By default, cached isos for the OSs, guest additions, VMs and most configs are kept at the default working directory named ~/.jclouds-vbox/, you can override the default working directory using -Dtest.virtualbox.workingDir=/path/to/your/workingDir.
##Host-Only network jclouds-virtualbox needs an Host-Only network with DHCP enabled. This DHCP server will be responsible for assigning local IP addresses to the Nodes created by jclouds-virtualbox.
jclouds-virtualbox will automatically create an Host-Only network with these settings:
with
Check virtualbox->Preferences->Networks for more details.
NB: jclouds-virtualbox will not edit/replace a pre-exisiting Host-Only network.
#Notes:
#Troubleshooting
As jclouds vbox support is quite new, issues may occasionally arise. Please follow these steps to get things going again: