Running the quickstart as an unprivileged user¶

It is possible to run the bulk of the quickstart deployment as an unprivileged user (a user without root access). In order to do this, there are a few system configuration tasks that must be performed in advance:

Making sure required packages are installed
Configuring the required libvirt networks

Automatic system configuration¶

If you want to perform the system configuration tasks manually, skip this section and start reading below at “Configure KVM”.

Place the following into playbook.yml in the tripleo-quickstart directory:

- hosts: localhost
  roles:
    - environment/setup

And run it like this (assuming that you have sudo access on your local host):

ansible-playbook playbook.yml

Continue reading at Deploying Tripleo.

Configure KVM¶

You will need to ensure that the kvm kernel module is loaded, and that the appropriate process-specific module (kvm_intel or kvm_amd) is loaded. Run the appropriate modprobe command to load the module:

# modprobe kvm_intel [options...]

Or:

# modprobe kvm_amd [options...]

Where [options...] in the above is either empty, or nested=1 if you want to enable nested kvm.

To ensure this module will be loaded next time your system boots, create /etc/modules-load.d/oooq_kvm.conf with the following content on Intel systems:

kvm_intel

Or on AMD systems:

kvm_amd

If you want to enable nested kvm persistently, create the file /etc/modprobe.d/kvm.conf with the following contents:

options kvm_intel nested=1
options kvm_amd nested=1

Required packages¶

You will need to install the following packages:

qemu-kvm
libvirt
libvirt-python
libguestfs-tools
python-lxml

Once these packages are installed, you need to start libvirtd

# systemctl enable libvirtd
# systemctl start libvirtd

Configuring libvirt networks¶

Quickstart requires two networks. The external network provides inbound access into the virtual environment set up by the playbooks. The overcloud network connects the overcloud hosts to the undercloud, and is used both for provisioning, inbound access to the overcloud, and communication between overcloud hosts.

In the following steps, note that the names you choose for the libvirt networks are unimportant (because the vms will be wired up to these networks using bridge names, rather than libvirt network names).

The external network¶

If you have the standard default libvirt network, you can just use that as your external network. If you would prefer to create a new one, run something like the following:

# virsh net-define /dev/stdin <<EOF
<network>
  <name>external</name>
  <forward mode='nat'>
    <nat>
      <port start='1024' end='65535'/>
    </nat>
  </forward>
  <bridge name='brext' stp='on' delay='0'/>
  <ip address='192.168.23.1' netmask='255.255.255.0'>
    <dhcp>
      <range start='192.168.23.2' end='192.168.23.254'/>
    </dhcp>
  </ip>
</network>
EOF
# virsh net-start external
# virsh net-autostart external

The overcloud network¶

The overcloud network is really just a bridge, so you could simply configure this through your distributions standard mechanism for configuring persistent bridge devices. You can also do it via libvirt like this:

# virsh net-define /dev/stdin <<EOF
<network>
  <name>overcloud</name>
  <bridge name="brovc" stp='off' delay='0'/>
</network>
EOF
# virsh net-start overcloud
# virsh net-autostart overcloud

Whitelisting bridges¶

Once you have started the libvirt networks, you need to enter the bridge names in the /etc/qemu/bridge.conf file, which makes these bridges available to unprivileged users via the qemu bridge helper. Note that on some systems this file will be called /etc/qemu-kvm/bridge.conf.

Add an allow line for each bridge you created in the previous steps:

allow brext
allow brovc

Deploying TripleO¶

With all of the system configuration tasks out of the way, the rest of the process can be run as an unprivileged user. You will need to create a YAML document that describes your network configuration and that optionally changes any of the default values used in the quickstart deployment. To describe the network resources we created above, I would create a file called config.yml with the following content:

networks:
  - name: external
    bridge: brext
    address: 192.168.23.1
    netmask: 255.255.255.0

  - name: overcloud
    bridge: brovc

You must have one network named external and one network named overcloud. The address and netmask values must match the values you used to create the libvirt networks.

Place the following into a file playbook.yml in your tripleo-quickstart directory:

- hosts: localhosts
  roles:
    - libvirt/setup
    - tripleo/undercloud
    - tripleo/overcloud

And run it like this:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml -e @config.yml

This will deploy the default virtual infrastructure, which includes an undercloud node, three controllers, one compute node, and one ceph node, and which requires at least 32GB of memory. If you want to deploy a smaller environment, you could use the minimal.yml settings we use in our CI environment:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml -e @config.yml \
  -e playbooks/centosci/minimal.yml

This will create a virtual environment with a single controller and a single compute node, with a total memory footprint of around 22GB.

See Configuration for more information.

Running the quickstart as an unprivileged user