Congress Installation Documentation

There are 2 ways to install Congress.

  • As part of DevStack. Get Congress running alongside other OpenStack services like Nova and Neutron, all on a single machine. This is a great way to try out Congress for the first time.

  • Separate install. Get Congress running alongside an existing OpenStack deployment

Devstack install

For integrating Congress with DevStack:

  1. Download DevStack

$ git clone https://opendev.org/openstack/devstack.git
$ cd devstack

  1. Configure DevStack to use Congress and any other service you want. To do that, modify the local.conf file (inside the DevStack directory). Here is what our file looks like:

[[local|localrc]]

enable_plugin congress https://opendev.org/openstack/congress
enable_plugin heat https://opendev.org/openstack/heat
enable_plugin aodh https://opendev.org/openstack/aodh
enable_service s-proxy s-object s-container s-account
# ENABLE_CONGRESS_JSON=True  # uncomment to enable the jgress feature

  1. Run stack.sh. The default configuration expects the passwords to be ‘password’ without the quotes

$ ./stack.sh

Enabling Optional features

Config validator datasource

If you want to use the config datasource in a multi-node environment, you must configure the Congress agent and only the agent on the other nodes. Here is the relevant part of local.conf:

enable_plugin congress https://opendev.org/openstack/congress
disable_service congress congress-api congress-engine congress-datasources
enable_service congress-agent

By default, the datasource is enabled for the nova, neutron and Congress services. To enable it for other services, you can define the variable VALIDATOR_SERVICES.

The ENABLE_CONGRESS_AGENT variable in local.conf controls the availability of the config datasource and its agent in devstack. Set it to False to disable it (default value is True).

JGress - Congress JSON Ingester (experimental)

To enable the experimental JSON Ingester feature, set the ENABLE_CONGRESS_JSON variable to True in local.conf.

Z3 Engine (experimental)

To enable the use of the experimental Z3 as an alternate Datalog engine, the ENABLE_CONGRESS_Z3 variable must be set to True in local.conf. You can use a pre-compiled release if your OS supports it (Ubuntu, Debian) by setting USE_Z3_RELEASE to the number of an existing release (eg. 4.7.1).

Separate install

Install the following software, if you haven’t already.

$ sudo apt install git gcc python-dev python-antlr3 libxml2 libxslt1-dev libzip-dev build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev libpq-dev
$ sudo apt install rabbitmq-server  # https://www.rabbitmq.com/install-debian.html
$ sudo apt install python-setuptools
$ sudo pip install --upgrade pip virtualenv pbr tox

Clone Congress

$ git clone https://github.com/openstack/congress.git
$ cd congress

Install requirements

$ sudo pip install .

Install Source code

$ sudo python setup.py install

Configure Congress (Assume you put config files in /etc/congress)

$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/congress
$ sudo cp etc/api-paste.ini /etc/congress
(optional) Customize API access policy

Typically, the default access policy of Congress API is appropriate. If desired, you can override the default access policy as follows:

$ tox -e genpolicy
(edit the generated sample file etc/policy.yaml.sample then copy to conf dir)
$ sudo cp etc/policy.yaml.sample /etc/congress/policy.yaml
(optional) Set-up policy library

This step copies the bundled collection Congress policies into the Congress policy library for easy activation by an administrator. The policies in the library do not become active until explicitly activated by an administrator. The step may be skipped if you do not want to load the bundled policies into the policy library.

$ sudo cp -r library /etc/congress/.

Generate a configuration file as outlined in the Configuration Options section of the Deployment document. Note: you may have to run the command with sudo.

There are several sections in the congress/etc/congress.conf.sample file you may want to change:

  • [DEFAULT] Section

    • auth_strategy

  • “From oslo.log” Section

    • log_file

    • log_dir (remember to create the directory)

  • [database] Section

    • connection

The default auth_strategy is keystone. To set Congress to use no authorization strategy:

auth_strategy = noauth

If you use noauth, you might want to delete or comment out the [keystone_authtoken] section.

Set the database connection string in the [database] section (adapt MySQL root password):

connection = mysql+pymysql://root:password@127.0.0.1/congress?charset=utf8

To use RabbitMQ with Congress, set the transport_url in the “From oslo.messaging” section according to your setup:

transport_url = rabbit://$RABBIT_USERID:$RABBIT_PASSWORD@$RABBIT_HOST:5672

A bare-bones congress.conf is as follows:

[DEFAULT]
auth_strategy = noauth
log_file=congress.log
log_dir=/var/log/congress
[database]
connection = mysql+pymysql://root:password@127.0.0.1/congress?charset=utf8

When you are finished editing congress.conf.sample, copy it to the /etc/congress directory.

sudo cp etc/congress.conf.sample /etc/congress/congress.conf

Create database

$ mysql -u root -p
$ mysql> CREATE DATABASE congress;
$ mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON congress.* TO 'congress'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'CONGRESS_DBPASS';
$ mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON congress.* TO 'congress'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'CONGRESS_DBPASS';

Push down schema

$ sudo congress-db-manage --config-file /etc/congress/congress.conf upgrade head
Set up Congress accounts

Use your OpenStack RC file to set and export required environment variables: OS_USERNAME, OS_PASSWORD, OS_PROJECT_NAME, OS_TENANT_NAME, OS_AUTH_URL.

(Adapt parameters according to your environment)

$ ADMIN_ROLE=$(openstack role list | awk "/ admin / { print \$2 }")
$ SERVICE_TENANT=$(openstack project list | awk "/ service / { print \$2 }")
$ CONGRESS_USER=$(openstack user create --password password --project service --email "congress@example.com" congress | awk "/ id / {print \$4 }")
$ openstack role add $ADMIN_ROLE --user $CONGRESS_USER --project  $SERVICE_TENANT
$ CONGRESS_SERVICE=$(openstack service create policy --name congress --description "Congress Service" | awk "/ id / { print \$4 }")
Create the Congress Service Endpoint

Endpoint creation differs based upon the Identity version. Please see the endpoint documentation for details.

Identity v2:
$ openstack endpoint create $CONGRESS_SERVICE --region RegionOne --publicurl https://127.0.0.1:1789/  --adminurl https://127.0.0.1:1789/ --internalurl https://127.0.0.1:1789/

Identity v3:
$ openstack endpoint create --region $OS_REGION_NAME  $CONGRESS_SERVICE public https://$SERVICE_HOST:1789
$ openstack endpoint create --region $OS_REGION_NAME  $CONGRESS_SERVICE admin https://$SERVICE_HOST:1789
$ openstack endpoint create --region $OS_REGION_NAME  $CONGRESS_SERVICE internal https://$SERVICE_HOST:1789
Start Congress

The default behavior is to start the Congress API, Policy Engine, and Datasource in a single node. For HAHT deployment options, please see the HA Overview document.

$ sudo /usr/local/bin/congress-server --debug
Install the Congress Client

The command line interface (CLI) for Congress resides in a project called python-congressclient. Follow the installation instructions on the GitHub page.

Configure datasource drivers

For this you must have the Congress CLI installed. Run this command for every service that Congress will poll for data. Please note that the service name $SERVICE should match the ID of the datasource driver, e.g. “neutronv2” for Neutron and “glancev2” for Glance; $OS_USERNAME, $OS_TENANT_NAME, $OS_PASSWORD and $SERVICE_HOST are used to configure the related datasource driver so that congress knows how to talk with the service.

$ openstack congress datasource create $SERVICE $"SERVICE" \
  --config username=$OS_USERNAME \
  --config tenant_name=$OS_TENANT_NAME
  --config password=$OS_PASSWORD
  --config auth_url=https://$SERVICE_HOST:5000/v3
Install the Congress Dashboard plugin in Horizon

Clone congress-dashboard repo, located here https://github.com/openstack/congress-dashboard Follow the instructions in the README file located in https://github.com/openstack/congress-dashboard/blob/master/README.rst for further installation.

Note: After you install the Congress Dashboard and restart apache, the OpenStack Dashboard may throw a “You have offline compression enabled…” error, follow the instructions in the error message. You may have to:

$ cd /opt/stack/horizon
$ python manage.py compress
$ sudo service apache2 restart
Read the HTML documentation

Install python-sphinx and the oslosphinx extension if missing and build the docs. After building, open congress/doc/html/index.html in a browser.

$ sudo pip install sphinx
$ sudo pip install oslosphinx
$ make docs
Test Using the Congress CLI

If you are not familiar with using the OpenStack command-line clients, please read the OpenStack documentation before proceeding.

Once you have set up or obtained credentials to use the OpenStack command-line clients, you may begin testing Congress. During installation a number of policies are created.

To view policies: $ openstack congress policy list

To view installed datasources: $ openstack congress datasource list

To list available commands: $ openstack congress –help

Upgrade

Here are the instructions for upgrading to a new release of the Congress server.

  1. Stop the Congress server.

  2. Update the Congress git repo

$ cd /path/to/congress
$ git fetch origin

3. Checkout the release you are interested in, say Mitaka. Note that this step will not succeed if you have any uncommitted changes in the repo.

$ git checkout origin/stable/mitaka

If you have changes committed locally that are not merged into the public repository, you now need to cherry-pick those changes onto the new branch.

  1. Install dependencies

$ sudo pip install

  1. Install source code

$ sudo python setup.py install

  1. Migrate the database schema

$ sudo congress-db-manage --config-file /etc/congress/congress.conf upgrade head

  1. (optional) Check if the configuration options you are currently using are still supported and whether there are any new configuration options you would like to use. To see the current list of configuration options, use the following command, which will create a sample configuration file in etc/congress.conf.sample for you to examine.

$ tox -egenconfig

  1. Restart Congress, e.g.

$ sudo /usr/local/bin/congress-server --debug