2018-02-22 Create VM

Overview

AUBURN is a minimum ANSIBLE server running on UBUNTU 16.04 LTS.

References

Procedure

These commands are run on VICTORIA to set a paravirtualised (PV) virtual machine (VM) running under Xen.

Create VM Directory

On VICTORIA, the following command is used to create the directory containing the VM files:

mkdir -p /OVS/running_pool/AUBURN

Create Virtual Disk

On VICTORIA, the following commands are used to allocate a 5 GB virtual disk:

cd /OVS/running_pool/AUBURN dd if=/dev/zero of=root.dsk bs=4096 count=1310720

Note: If one follows the recommendation of disk space being 1.5 GB as given in Ubuntu Server (CLI) Installation, the following error appears during installation:

Generate HVM Configuration File

On VICTORIA, the following command is used to create a HVM configuration file. The VM is converted to PV image later on:

cd /OVS/running_pool/AUBURN cat >auburn.cfg <<DONE
# =====================================================================
# Guest configuration for AUBURN # Minimal CLI server for Ubuntu
# Generated $(date +"%F %T")
# =====================================================================
#
# This is a fairly minimal example of what is required for an # HVM guest. For a more complete guide see xl.cfg(5)
# This configures a HVM guest builder="hvm"

# Guest name
name = "auburn"

# Device model
device_model_version="qemu-xen"
vendor_device="xenserver"

# 128-bit UUID for the domain as a hexadecimal number.
# Use "uuidgen" to generate one if required.
uuid = "$(uuidgen)"

# Initial memory allocation (MB)
memory = 2050

# Number of VCPUS
vcpus = 1

# Network devices
# A list of 'vifspec' entries as described in
# docs/misc/xl-network-configuration.markdown
vif = [
    'mac=00:16:3E:00:00:02,bridge=xenbr0'
     ]

# Disk Devices # A list of 'diskspec' entries as described in
# docs/misc/xl-disk-configuration.txt
disk = [
    '/OVS/running_pool/AUBURN/root.dsk,raw,xvda,rw',
    '/OVS/iso_pool/ubuntu-16.04.3-server-amd64.iso,raw,xvdc,ro,cdrom'
    ]

# Guest VGA console configuration, either SDL or VNC
vnc = 1
vnclisten = "0.0.0.0"
vncdisplay = "14"

# Fix for full-screen cursor
usb=1
usbdevice=["tablet"]

# New Features in Xen 4.4.0
# always emulate
tsc_mode="default" DONE

Start the Installation

The installation is started by creating the VM as follows:

xl create /OVS/running_pool/AUBURN/auburn.cfg

Follow the procedure in Install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Server.

Convert HVM to PV

Follow the procedure in Convert XEN HVM to PV.

Outstanding Issues

There are three (3) outstanding issues:

    1. Ethernet NIC is using DHCP instead of a manually assigned IP address
    2. DNS Server on home network is not being used
    3. Host name is not fully qualified

Using DHCP

The following command output shows that the IPV4 address (192.168.1.6) is not the one assigned in the Planning Document (192.168.1.109):

douglas@auburn:~$ ifconfig eth0
eth0
      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:3e:00:00:02
            inet addr:192.168.1.6  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::216:3eff:fe00:2/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:9002 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:11237 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
           RX bytes:2772825 (2.7 MB)
           TX bytes:1480217 (1.4 MB)

Missing DNS Server

The following command output shows that the DNS server on the home network (192.168.1.252) is missing:

douglas@auburn:~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)
#     DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN
nameserver 192.168.1.1

Short Host Name

The following command output shows that the hostname lacks the domain name of yaocm.id.au:

douglas@auburn:~$ hostname
auburn