Openstack, a small image for a tiny flavor - openstack

Recently I installed openstack using devstack on my laptop. The problem I'm facing is to launch an instance, since my pc have poor ressources (32 bits, 4 Go Ram, 20Go free space), I need to deploy a very small image.
I tried an iso image for an ubuntu, I downloaded also a image from Ubuntu Cloud images but both of them can't be started. All I want to do is to launch an instance, install java, Tomcat server.
Any advice about an image that I can use?

Try Ubuntu Server Cloud Image
It will run perfectly with 512 MB of RAM.
Also stop unwanted services to save memory. Like stop ssh, sendmail, crond If you are not using them.

Use ubuntu cloud images. Make sure your cloud image is also 32bit.
While spawning instance, see that you look into Nova Security groups to allow ports which you might use.

devstack has cirros built-in. It is probably as small as you can get. It is a limited distro, but you should be able to download the jdk installer and run it.
You may need to download a 32 bit cirros image. The cirros distro downloads are available here:
https://launchpad.net/cirros/+milestone/0.3.0
This image should work for you:
https://launchpad.net/cirros/trunk/0.3.0/+download/cirros-0.3.0-i386-disk.img

You can try any image which are at **https://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/obtain-images.html.
In these Ubuntu image is one which you can use and install applications on it.
It comes with default username ubuntu and you can set new password using cloud-init of heat template or manually while launching the instance.

Related

Docker pull shows "Unknown blob"

I'm trying to pull microsoft/aspnet image. It tries to download something and shows the progress. But then it shows an error - "Unknown blob".
How I can solve this?
P.S. I have docker client and server v1.12.2
Your docker version is 1.12.2 which does not supports Windows Containers, which means you are running Linux Containers in the VM. And you are pulling a Windows container based image so either update your docker to the 1.13.0 beta version which supports Windows Containers and pull this image or find a linux based image of .Net.
To see how to switch to Windows Containers, see this GIF
You must download and install latest docker from here
and switch to windows container.
read more
The problem is not Windows/Linux cross compatibility. A Linux client can pull Windows images, though it cannot actually launch them.
The issue 'unknown blob' is most likely image corruption. Refer to other answer that mentioned that your image name is deprecated.
You're trying to download a windows image to a Linux host.
I'm assuming you're running the docker host within a Linux VM.
If you have access to Windows Server 2016 use that.
try
docker pull microsoft/aspnetcore
Microsoft changed the names of their Docker Hub Repos in the last months so it is not so easy to find the right ones.

OpenStack Installation without virtualbox

Is there any way to install OpenStack without using virtual box in a single machine?
You can install all openstack services(controller, compute, network) in a single node. But it's not recommended.
If you don't want to install virtualbox you can try VMware
You may also try LXC or XEN if you are using linux. Then create 3 virtual machines and install openstack 3 node configuration.
Yes, of course. Just make sure you have enough resources on the system (single machine) to bare OpenStack. You may use packstack do the All-in-One
deployment. Check out RDO.
There is a possibility of installing openstack(both 2 and 3 node architectures) in a single system. But, things are to be considered. Like the performance of the system used, the primary memory associated with it, the secondary memory that is available, e.t.c
If you're talking about development environment, sure! You don't need a VM at all, and can just install it on your laptop directly! Note that this is not a desirable configuration :)
Other ways are to use a different virtualization tool than VirtualBox, like KVM, or VMware stuff.
Virtual machine is nothing but a system with shared resources. Whatever we do on a VM can be replicated to an individual system.
Make sure you have VT enabled on the hardware , else you may have issues in creating instance on the Compute node.
Regards,
Amit Manel
Whatever you can install in single virtual machine , can also be installed on your machine directly.
After all your machine is much more powerful and stable than your virtual machine.
We use virtual machine just to leave our system intact in case something goes wrong. Just compare the time it would take you to delete and create another virtual machine with time and effort for formatting your entire laptop.
Also, we sometimes use virtual machine if we need to make a network of 2-3 computers for some functionality and we have got only one hardware.
I created with kvm virtual machünes on Ubuntu 14.04
If you create the virtual machines and the virtual networks you can use it.
For the easiest way if you use an orchestration/deployment tool e.g. Mirantis Fuel
Surprising no body talked about Dockers. You can run openstack in a docker container.
According to my experience, always try to install openstack on a fresh system( either on a freshly created VM or on a newly installed OS). I have installed openstack many times, and trust me no error will come just follow this link on a newly setup machine. For old system, I was stuck for 3 days, and only GOD knows where from the hell those errors were showing up.
PS: I have always tried ubuntu system.

unable to launch WindowsXp image on openstack

I tried openstack on my laptop, my setup is like this
Host Machine: Windows 7
Virtualisation: VirtualBox
Ubuntu12 is running on this VirtualBox, On this Ubuntu12, I installed OpenStack Essex packages with qemu as hypervisor, and added few uec linux images on to glance, I was able to access linux images using ssh and vnc, it was great success.
Now, It has become very challenging to upload Windows image , it was really a night mare I tried all possible ways, searched in google found lot of solutions, but nothing worked, at last I converted WindowsXp.vdi file to WindowsXp.img using VBoxManage and added to glance, once I launch it I am getting blue screen error and windowsxp is horribly
restarting......................... So please help to resolve this issue
Your windows images (server or desktop) will BSOD without the correct drivers for the virtualization that you have chosen. Try installing the windows image with one of the drivers at http://www.claunia.com/qemu/drivers/index.html (QEMU drivers) and see how it goes.
Please note: Windows is notoriously difficult to run on any cloud not just OpenStack. In addition to the drivers, you will wrestle with image format (like you have) and initialization problems (otherwise all the images come up with that same GUIDs).

Is it possible to run OpenStack on a laptop/desktop?

I have some questions:
Is it possible to install openstack on a Notebook with a 4GB DD3 Ram? Because the website says it needs atleast 8GB of RAM.
They say it requirs a double-QuadCore , I assue that means Octacore. Can we install that on a Quadcore?
They say that there is no possibility to install it on a NAS . Did you find any where if there is a possibility to do?. I dint find any even after asking our friend(google).
All in all, is it at-all possible to install on it a notebook/Desktop?
That advice is for production environments,
so 1)If you just want to play around your notebook will do fine. I had a succesful test-run on a 1.2 Ghz 1GB Netbook. It became incredibly slow when it launched it's first instance...
With a Double Quadcore they actually mean two seperate Quad-cores, as in two quad-core xeon processors on a single motherboard
So 2) yes you can install it on a quad-core.
3) a NAS device running openstack an openstack storage service seems to be unlikely indeed. You will most likely need more computing power.However If your NAS supports NFS or SSH or sth you can probably mount this drive and use it for storage.
4) You can perfectly build a all-in-one openstack test setup on your notebook. Performance will be low, but acceptable for testing.
It depends on what you mean by "install OpenStack". OpenStack itself is an extremely modular framework consisting on many services (Compute, Networking, Image service, Block Storage, Object Storage, Orchestration, Telemetry, ...). On top of that, a typical production deployment of OpenStack also requires several components, like load balancers, caching systems, firewalls, web servers and others. It is definitely possible to install a minimal openstack system, even on an average laptop.
The simplest way to run OpenStack on a laptop/desktop is to use Devstack, a shell script that installs all services from source and run them (by default) on a single machine. It is customizable enough to provide very good testing ground; it's used by OpenStack developers as well as the OpenStack QA team to test latest developments against "real" systems.
To avoid messing up your system, it's generally recommended to install OpenStack in a VM. From devstack doc:
DevStack should run in any virtual machine running a supported Linux release. It will perform best with 2Gb or more of RAM.
As of the time of this writing (Jan 2015), supported distros are:
Ubuntu (latest LTS)
Fedora
CentOS
Regarding NAS: you can of course use it, but "outside" Openstack apis, by providing mount points to your vms. It's even mandatory if you want to support live migration.

CSS cross browser compatibility on Ubuntu

I'm currently working in web development and my default desktop is Ubuntu and I'm kind of happy with the setup and applications I got going. But I need to test web pages for cross browser compatibility while still being on Ubuntu.
I have gone through hell trying to get IE7 or IE8 (with wine) to run on ubuntu and when they finally worked they were very buggy and the graphics/scrolling was insanely slow.
Of course there is the option of virtual box but again, too much GBytes just to run a small application!
So to all the CSS gurus out there, how can I continue with my beloved Ubuntu and still deliver a good quality (tested) page.
Thank you.
Edit:
Update for freshness:
I now use the paid service from browserstack.com to provide the multitude of different browser testing environments via flash tunnelling. I'm a paid user, but there is an initial free trial period. browserstack has freed me of the need to run the windows os on my machines in any form, virtual image or otherwise. Since it also allows tunnelling, I can host the site on my local machine but still test in browserstack browsers. I consider the monthly fee money very well spent.
End Edit
Various options I have tried, including "the final solution": free downloadable windows testing OSes from microsoft
I've tried a number of the options below, but virtualbox may be your best bet for full & complete testing, especially because in a professional capacity you often have to test ie8, ie7 -and- ie6. Which gets tricky with only a single os installed. So in order of simplest and most shallowly testing to most complex and most fully testing:
browserlab.adobe.com
A newer, interesting online solution is: browserlab.adobe.com. It's actually very specific and fast compared to browsershots. It only gives you screenshots, but it's a great first step. So I do recommend that for purely visual (and thus relatively shallow) testing.
Browsershots.org
And while browsershots.org is also something that you should use for an overview experience of what users might see, you really can't get by without the real browsers for javascript and behavior testing (instead of just display & rendering testing that browsershots provides). The delay before you can see the images is also killer.
Dual booting into windows
Another that I've tried is dual booting, I work 99% of my time in ubuntu, and I have windows installed & available to dual boot into. Not a fast way to test, but if you don't have any other way to access ie, it should work for at least the latest version.
Remote desktop-ing over to a running windows box
Before I mention the "covers-all-the-bases" option, another useful possibility is to set up a windows machine and boot it up and connect to it via remote desktop so that you can work from one machine and test from both.
The final solution, using virtualbox
Finally, the mother of all solutions, using virtualbox:
Luckily (I know you said you didn't like the virtualbox solution, and I know it's an annoying setup process, but...) Microsoft provides available-for-a-year-or-more virtualmachine distros with different versions of ie pre-installed, available without the need for a license for a year or so before you'd have to update the virtualmachine, #
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en
Installing a virtualmachine from microsoft's freely available browser testing images
Because this guide to setup on ubuntu is no longer available in full anywhere else, just in case you or someone else actually need it I feel compelled to include the actual details of the install process that were suggested to me on the ubuntu forums and worked when I went through them. I apologize for their length. Courtesy of the now anonymous original poster on the ubuntu forums:
Free Access to Microsoft Browser Compatibility Virtual OSes, Install Steps for Ubuntu
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1097080 (Ed: I can't find this thread online any more)
HOWTO: run IE6, IE7, IE8 on Linux in
VirtualBox You need: virtualbox, qemu,
wine
Code: apt-get install virtualbox qemu
wine
Download the free(!) Microsoft
Internet Explorer Application
Compatibility Check VPC Images here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en
(Note: you don't have to download the
full pack, you can cherry pick
specific combinations of XP/Vista and
IE6-8)
Extract the VPC image(s) with wine
(double-click). (Note: it might take a
while before the first window shows
up)
Turn the VPC image(s) into (a) VMWare
image(s) (which is/are readable by
VirtualBox): qemu-img convert -f vpc
image.vhd -O vmdk image.vmdk
Setup a new VM in VirtualBox, using
the vmdk image as an existing disk.
Boot it, you will see the Windows boot
progress bar and ... it will BSOD
shortly after.
Fixing the BSOD:
The BSOD is caused because the virtual
Windows tries to load processor
drivers for the wrong processor (it is
not running on VirtualPC proc, but on
VirtualBox proc). Or something like
that... We need to force Windows not
to attempt to load drivers for the
processor (it doesn't need any proc
drivers, because it's all virtual
anyway). Start safe mode by
(frantically) hitting F8 at Windows
boot and choosing safe mode.
Ignore all the 'New hardware' detected
warnings (we will deal with those
later). Start a command box and run
the following command to disable the
loading of processor drivers:
Code: sc config processor start=
disabled (note the space between '='
and 'disabled'!)
Restart the virtual Windows, it should
now boot all the way to the Windows
Desktop.
Now just when you think you can start
browsing the web with IE, you will
find out that the virtual Windows
needs to install the drivers for the
AMD PCnet NIC, which are located on
the Windows install disk. Fortunately
for those without a Windows install
disk, there is another way :)
Download AMD PCnet drivers here:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/ProductInformation/0,,50_2330_6629_2452%5E2454%5E2486,00.html
Make an iso file containing the
drivers. I used Brasero for
simplicity. Choose to create a Data
Project, add the zip file (or the
unzipped files, saves you a step in
Windows), create the iso. No need to
burn an actual cd!
Stop the virtual Windows, edit the
settings in VirtualBox: mount your
brand new iso.
Start the virtual Windows, when it
asks to install the drivers for the
PCnet nick, point it to the (unzipped)
drivers. Et voila! You have teh
innernets! (Now you can also try to
install the other drivers it complains
for, but it's not really necessary)
The image README says the image will expire after about a year. In my experience the system gets hobbled against multi-hour use, but is still usable for the kind of short periods that you might want when booting up to test a website. At worst you might have to go through these steps again, so be sure to put them somewhere where you can find them again after a year or so.
I think setting up a virtual machine (Virtualbox or VMWare or...) with a proper Windows will be your only (local) option.
I you don't have one, buy a used Windows XP license. XP is cheap (around 20-30 euros here in Germany, for example) and all relevant versions of IE run on it. Home edition is enough. No need for Windows 7 or anything.
You could install IETester on that to get all the IE versions on one OS. IETester has flaws and is not always 100% reliable in what it renders, but for a general CSS compatibility check it should be okay.
I've never tried IE using Wine, but even trying to imagine the combination gives me goose bumps :D
If you have a copy of Windows you could install it in a virtual machine (Virtualbox is a good, free option). Or if you don't mind a lot of lag time and publicly exposing your web pages you could use a service like BrowserShots.
I have not tried this on Ubuntu or anything but windows - but this seems to be a pretty good testing system over the web.
http://spoon.net/browsers/
however, I think your best result would be to use a VM if possible.
I have to add my voice to those opting for VirtualBox.
VMs are the only way to get an accurate representation of how IE platforms behave. They also allow you to keep your main Linux install free of WINE and IE gunk, which is otherwise always troublesome and fragile. (Especially if you're trying to run multiple IEs, which is unreliable and inaccurate even under Windows).
They're not necessarily that big, if you take care to prune the unneeded features, turn off swap, compact the disc image and so on. My XPSP3 test image is just over 800MB.
I didn't want to install all this stuff as I wanted to move forward quick.
I found public AWS images with pre installed browser that you just can start and use.
http://www.hens-teeth.net/html/products/cross_browser_testing.php
If you already have an AWS account this will take you only 5 min. Make sure that you enable the RDP port on the incoming traffic in your security group.
As I use ubuntu I was looking for a way to connect from it to MS Win.
I'm connection on to them via remote desktop.
The way to go here is rdesktop, a command line utility for Windows Remote Desktop. (sudo apt-get install rdesktop)
If you feel like a GUI use tsclient. It's very close to the windows version.
From a work flow perspective I develop for Chrome in Ubuntu first, then have a look at the other browsers via browserlab.adobe.com.
After that I start my new AWS instance to debug.
The small AWS Windows instance is a $0.12 per hour (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing). I can work for a long time on that before it's worth installing all this stuff.
CrossBrowserTesting.com works from Linux. Allows you to access Mac, Windows, and Ubuntu configurations and all the browsers loaded on them via vinagre vnc client.

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