Ubuntu Release Upgrade

[Paul Wolstenholme]

I'm just starting using Ansible a few weeks ago. Using:
ansible 1.4 (devel a002a24973) last updated 2013/09/25 17:14:03 (GMT -700)


Currently, I'm using it with Vagrant, VirtualBox with Ansible as a provisioner to build a clustered Varnish test suite. It works awesome.

In our dev/qa/production environments we've been running Varnish on Ubuntu Lucid. I'd like to upgrade to Precise. Time to upgrade. I thought this  might be good test for Ansible. I've downloaded the standard lucid64 box and created a simple playbook:

- name: Update apt cache
  action: apt update_cache=true
  tags: ubuntu_upgrade
 
- name: Distribution Upgrade {{dist_upgrade}}
  apt: pkg=update-manager-core state=latest
  when: ${dist_upgrade}
  register: upgrade
  tags: ubuntu_upgrade
 
- name: Do Release Upgrade
  command: /usr/bin/do-release-upgrade -f DistUpgradeViewNonInteractive
  when: (upgrade|success) and (${dist_upgrade})
  tags: ubuntu_upgrade


When I run the playbook, the do-release fails task fails and Ansible hangs.  I thought at some point it may timeout or someting but I let in run all night and the console indicated it was still working on the task.

When I log into the machines while the tasks are executing. It seems to start off okay on one machine but after a few minutes activity on the box decreases to an idle state. One thing I noticed is a precise process that has gone into a zombie state.  The task does not kick off on the other box.

I am curious if anyone might be able to shed some light on doing a release upgrade on Ubuntu using Ansible.

If I ssh into the guest machine I can  run it manually.

Cheers,
Paul

[Michael DeHaan]

I would probably consider async mode (see docs on async), though I would expect you to encounter an SSH timeout.   It is probably that this command is not daemonizing correctly.

I should point out your use of legacy variables is discouraged:

  when: (upgrade|success) and (${dist_upgrade})

Can be written as:

   when:  (upgrade|success) and dist_upgrade

Similarly:

  when: ${dist_upgrade}

Should be:

  when: dist_upgrade

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[Alex Rodenberg]

do-release-upgrade is slow.. can take from 1 - 2 hours to complete depending on your internet speeds.

Have you checked the screen that it creates during the processing when you think it is idling ?

do a:

sudo screen -list

It should list the one running there with something like this:

There is a screen on:

    2953.ubuntu-release-upgrade-screen-window   (09/13/2012 04:48:02 AM)    (Detached)

1 Socket in /var/run/screen/S-root.

Then you can run:

sudo screen -d -r root/2953.ubuntu-release-upgrade-screen-window

I'm not 100% sure that screen gets run when you do a DistUpgradeViewNonInteractive.. but have a look..

I would suggest running this command without waiting for it in a shell script or something like that, so Ansible doesn't wait forever/until SSH times out. As this can't really be timed or checked if succeeded before the machine have rebooted and you see a new distro version.

[Michael DeHaan]

Ansible has an async option that can be used to poll on long running tasks, BTW.

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[Alex Rodenberg]

Nice I didn't even notice that.

What would happen if the box restarts though ? (Which happens after do-release-upgrade is done)

[Alex Rodenberg]

At least one can run it with poll 0, but would be cool if it can still run after reboot to continue doing a play.