nova/doc/source/quickstart.rst

Nova Quickstart

P1 (this is one example of how to use priority syntax) * Document the assumptions about pluggable interfaces (sqlite3 instead of mysql, etc) (todd) * Document env vars that can change things (USE_MYSQL, HOST_IP) (todd)

Recommended System Configuration

Although Nova can be run on a variety of system architectures, for most users the following will be simplest:

• Ubuntu Lucid
• 10GB Hard Disk Space
• 512MB RAM

For development, Nova can run from within a VM.

Getting the Code

Nova is hosted on launchpad. You can get the code with the following command

bzr clone lp:nova

The contrib/nova.sh file in the source distribution is a script that will quickly set up nova to run on a single machine. It is tested against Ubuntu only, but other distributions are forthcoming.

Environment Variables

By tweaking the environment that nova.sh run in, you can build slightly different configurations (though for more complex setups you should see Installing and Configuring OpenStack Compute).

• HOST_IP

  • Default: address of first interface from the ifconfig command
  • Values: 127.0.0.1, or any other valid address

• TEST

  • Default: 0
  • Values: 1, run tests after checkout and initial setup

• USE_MYSQL

  • Default: 0, use sqlite3
  • Values: 1, use mysql instead of sqlite3

• MYSQL_PASS (Only useful if $USE_MYSQL=1)

  • Default: nova
  • Values: value of root password for mysql

• USE_LDAP

  • Default: 0, use nova.auth.dbdriver
  • Values: 1, use nova.auth.ldapdriver

• LIBVIRT_TYPE

  • Default: qemu
  • Values: uml, kvm

Usage

Unless you want to spend a lot of time fiddling with permissions and sudoers, you should probably run nova as root.

sudo -i

If you are concerned about security, nova runs just fine inside a virtual machine.

Use the script to install and run the current trunk. You can also specify a specific branch by putting lp:~someone/nova/some-branch after the branch command

./nova.sh branch
./nova.sh install
./nova.sh run

The run command will drop you into a screen session with all of the workers running in different windows You can use eucatools to run commands against the cloud.

euca-add-keypair test > test.pem
euca-run-instances -k test -t m1.tiny ami-tiny
euca-describe-instances

To see output from the various workers, switch screen windows

<ctrl-a> "

will give you a list of running windows.

When the instance is running, you should be able to ssh to it.

chmod 600 test.pem
ssh -i test.pem root@10.0.0.3

When you exit screen

<ctrl-a> <ctrl-d>

nova will terminate. It may take a while for nova to finish cleaning up. If you exit the process before it is done because there were some problems in your build, you may have to clean up the nova processes manually. If you had any instances running, you can attempt to kill them through the api:

./nova.sh terminate

Then you can destroy the screen:

./nova.sh clean

If things get particularly messed up, you might need to do some more intense cleanup. Be careful, the following command will manually destroy all runnning virsh instances and attempt to delete all vlans and bridges.

./nova.sh scrub

You can edit files in the install directory or do a bzr pull to pick up new versions. You only need to do

./nova.sh run

to run nova after the first install. The database should be cleaned up on each run.