Provisioning for the CodePhenix server.

Prerequisites

Ansible

Installation

ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yaml

Usage

Server installation

Install the server from the Ubuntu Server 22.04 iso.

Choose regular Ubuntu server over minimized version.

Check "Install OpenSSH server", and add a SSH identity from your Github handle.

Check "Allow password authentication" over SSH.

Define a user during the installation wizard, report the username in the group_vars/all/ansible.yaml file.

Do not choose any additional software to be installed.

Launch and finish the installation.

Network configuration

Depending on your use case, you might need to configure the network differently.

Network is configured with Netplan, with configuration files located in /etc/netplan/.

For the light clients to be able to boot from the server, you need to configure the server with a static IP address on the network where the light clients will be.

You can use the following configuration as a base:

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: networkd
  ethernets:
    enp0s3:
      dhcp4: false
      dhcp6: false
      addresses:
        - 192.168.67.1/24
  wifis:
    wlp2s0:
      dhcp4: true
       access-points:
        "my-wifi":
          password: "my-password"

192.168.67.1 is the default LTSP server IP address, you can change it if you want in the group_vars/all/network.yaml file.

If you make any change to this file and you don't want these changes to be further committed, you can ignore further modifications to this file:

git update-index --assume-unchanged group_vars/all/network.yaml

Provisioning configuration

Now that the network is correctly configured, you need to configure the provisioning.

report the server ip address in the inventory file
ignore further modifications to this file: git update-index --assume-unchanged inventory

Actual provisioning

The machine is now ready to be provisioned, you can now run from the host machine:

ansible-playbook -i inventory --ask-become-pass playbook.yaml

Content

This provisioning starts with a plain Ubuntu 22 server edition.

Development

In order to develop on this repository, you can use several virtual machines to test your changes.

VirtualBox

You can use VirtualBox to create a virtual machine, and then provision it as if it was the server. You'll later be able to create light clients with other virtual machines.

Create a VirtualBox VM with the following settings:

network: bridged to a network adapter that has access to the internet
disk: enough to test your changes, 50GB should be enough
RAM: 2GB should be enough
CPU: 2 cores should be enough
select the Ubuntu Server 22.04 iso

Uncheck the "unserpervised installation" option, you'll need to configure the installation manually.

Boot the VM, and follow the Usage section above to install the server.

Once the server is provisioned, you need to make it run on a network where there is no DHCP server:

shut down the VM
go to the VM settings
go to the network tab
select the network adapter
select "Bridge Adapter" in the "attached to" dropdown
select the network adapter that has access to the internet (unplug the cable if you need to)
click on "advanced"
select "Allow all" in the "Promiscuous Mode" dropdown
now boot the VM, it will get stuck for a few minutes on network configuration, but it will eventually boot
run ifconfig to get the name of your network adapter (it will look like enp0s3)
run sudo ifconfig enp0s3 inet 192.168.67.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 (replace enp0s3 with the name of your network adapter)

You can now create light clients on the same network:

create a new VM without any iso nor any disk
in the boot order, select "Network" first
go to the network tab
select the network adapter
select "Bridge Adapter" in the "attached to" dropdown
select the same network adapter as the server VM
click on "advanced"
select "Allow all" in the "Promiscuous Mode" dropdown
boot the VM

It will now boot with iPXE, and will try to boot from the network. It will get an IP address from the server dnsmasq service, and will boot from the server.

Bernardstanislas / phenix-server