Node Consoles

[Leigh Stoller]

Hi All. I’ve added support that allows you to access the consoles of XEN
VMs, and physical nodes on sites that have nodes with serial consoles[1].
Lots of problems can be diagnosed if you can look at the console, so
hopefully this will improve debugging for you.

The console is browser based and is known to work in Google Chrome and
Firefox. It does *not* work on Safari, sorry.

To get the URL, you currently have to use Omni, like this:

$ python src/omni.py -a utah3-pg -V3 -u urn:publicid:IDN+emulab.net+sliver+192382 poa myslice geni_console_url

remembering to set the aggregate, the sliver urn, and the slice name
appropriately. This will return a URL like this:

https://www.emulab.net/nodetipacl.php3?node_id=pcvm480-2&key=12345678901234567890

This is a use-once, short lived URL (it expires in 5 minutes). Just plug
that into your browser and you will get access to console. There is a
"close" button at the bottom of the page, please use that to avoid problems
with getting back into the console later.

[1]: Instageni racks do *not* have serial consoles on the physical nodes,
but they are available for XEN VMs.

Thanks very much, lets us know how to goes!

Leigh

[Tim Upthegrove]

This is really cool!  I'm sure it will come in handy for self-serve debugging of lower-level problems.

I have a very basic question.  I tried this out on one of my Xen VMs, and I was prompted for a username and password at the console.  What credentials should I be using?  I'm only used to logging into my GENI nodes using ssh keys.

Thanks,

Tim

Leigh




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[Leigh Stoller]

> I have a very basic question. I tried this out on one of my Xen VMs, and
> I was prompted for a username and password at the console. What
> credentials should I be using? I'm only used to logging into my GENI
> nodes using ssh keys.

Excellent question, but perhaps I do not have the most satisfying answer
yet. There is no root password (that a geni user can find out about). You
can always set a root password for root yourself (via ssh), but for now I
view the console as a way to see what actually failed during boot, since
that is where most of the error output goes during the boot (just need to
scroll up in the console window).

Having a way to retrieve a root password would be nice, but I don't have
anything in place for that yet. I will continue to ponder this.

Leigh