Difficulty setting up local server via vagrant/puppet

[Kier Davis]

Problem

I'm having trouble setting up a local instance of the server using vagrant. Running 'vagrant up' seems to only partially provision the system, and the virtual machine is running but I am unable to ping it.

kier@maigre:~/srobo/git/server/puppet [master] $ ping 192.168.44.44

PING 192.168.44.44 (192.168.44.44) 56(84) bytes of data.

^C

--- 192.168.44.44 ping statistics ---

19 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 18024ms

kier@maigre:~/srobo/git/server/puppet [master] $ nmap -p80 192.168.44.44

Starting Nmap 7.01 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2016-02-18 01:33 GMT

Note: Host seems down. If it is really up, but blocking our ping probes, try -Pn

Nmap done: 1 IP address (0 hosts up) scanned in 3.05 seconds

What I'm doing

I'm interested in setting up an instance of the server mainly so that I can properly test stuff like srweb or IDE patches, and also to help learn a bit more about SR infrastructure. I've read through the wiki page [1] and am following the steps in the Vagrant Setup section of the readme in server/puppet.git.

Output logs and stuff

The entire build log is at pasted [2], and the important-looking extracts from this are at [3]. The first bunch of error messages appear to be related to Fritter being unable to find its user ('fritter'), while the second look like Gerrit is failing to start. The Gerrit messages also suggest running a couple of diagnostics commands (output is at [4]), but at first glance I can't see anything that obvious in there.

Versions

I'm using the latest version of server/puppet.git (1512dcf Merge "Prevent others hosting our website inside frames") and of server/dummy-secrets.git (13b02c9 Remove the CSV file).

Vagrant version: 1.8.1

Virtualbox version: 5.0.14_OSEr105127

Possible cause?

I'm running Arch Linux, which from what I've seen tends to stay very close to the bleeding edge. Is it likely that my version of Vagrant or Virtualbox is newer than (and not backwards-compatible with) the one used to deploy to production?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

[1]: https://www.studentrobotics.org/trac/wiki/ServerConfig

[2]: https://gist.github.com/kierdavis/bab5b3ad4622ab121c81

[3]: https://gist.github.com/kierdavis/dcb2cc0a5b59fb952c94

[4]: https://gist.github.com/kierdavis/f30d78c69bb5e10977c1

[Jeremy Morse]

Hi Kier,

The existing errata are:
* As observed, the fritter account has some trouble existing, for
reasons that remain unclear (can't remember where the ticket is),
* Sometimes gerrit fails. This is simply because it's gerrit, it does
that on saffron too,
* It looks like the forum config was changed to be called 'sr2016'
rather than sr2015, which wasn't updated in dummy-secrets.git.
This should now be fixed.

None of these errors should result in you not being able to get into the
VM though (and re-running puppet should lead to no errors). Are you able
to get in via `vagrant ssh`? IIRC virtualbox has a GUI VM manager where
you might be able to get at the VM's console and see what's going on.

If you're able to get in, are you able to ping the internet from on the VM?

--
Thanks,
Jeremy

[Kier Davis]

On Thursday, 18 February 2016 09:45:33 UTC, jmorse wrote:

 * It looks like the forum config was changed to be called 'sr2016'
   rather than sr2015, which wasn't updated in dummy-secrets.git.
   This should now be fixed.

I've pulled the latest dummy-secrets.git and re-run 'vagrant up --provision' on the existing machine (I don't have the time to do a clean build right now), though I'm still unable to ping 192.168.44.44.

 

None of these errors should result in you not being able to get into the
VM though (and re-running puppet should lead to no errors). Are you able
to get in via `vagrant ssh`?

Yeah, that works fine.

 

IIRC virtualbox has a GUI VM manager where
you might be able to get at the VM's console and see what's going on.

If you're able to get in, are you able to ping the internet from on the VM?

That works too - I can ping google from the VM.

Thanks for getting back to me.

[Jeremy Morse]

Hi,

On 18/02/16 14:33, Kier Davis wrote:
> IIRC virtualbox has a GUI VM manager where
> you might be able to get at the VM's console and see what's going on.
>
> If you're able to get in, are you able to ping the internet from on
> the VM?
>
> That works too - I can ping google from the VM.

Hmn -- I'm afraid this strays into networking areas that I'm unfamiliar
with. Being able to `vagrant ssh` into the box and ping out means the
network is up; there's something funkier going on inre ingoing pings though.

Someone else might be able to give more insight as to what's happening,
but I don't think this'll affect anything on the VM itself (fingers
crossed).

--
Thanks,
Jeremy

[Kier Davis]

On Thursday, 18 February 2016 14:55:01 UTC, jmorse wrote:

Hmn -- I'm afraid this strays into networking areas that I'm unfamiliar
with. Being able to `vagrant ssh` into the box and ping out means the
network is up; there's something funkier going on inre ingoing pings though.

Someone else might be able to give more insight as to what's happening,
but I don't think this'll affect anything on the VM itself (fingers
crossed).

Thanks for looking into this. I'll keep poking around the settings for now to see if I can make any progress. 

[Kier Davis]

On Thursday, 18 February 2016 08:43:03 UTC, Kier Davis wrote:

I'm having trouble setting up a local instance of the server using vagrant. Running 'vagrant up' seems to only partially provision the system, and the virtual machine is running but I am unable to ping it.

kier@maigre:~/srobo/git/server/puppet [master] $ ping 192.168.44.44

PING 192.168.44.44 (192.168.44.44) 56(84) bytes of data.

^C

--- 192.168.44.44 ping statistics ---

19 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 18024ms

kier@maigre:~/srobo/git/server/puppet [master] $ nmap -p80 192.168.44.44

Starting Nmap 7.01 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2016-02-18 01:33 GMT

Note: Host seems down. If it is really up, but blocking our ping probes, try -Pn

Nmap done: 1 IP address (0 hosts up) scanned in 3.05 seconds

I mistyped the IP address in the above commands; it should be 192.168.42.42 as specified in the Vagrantfile (cheers to Peter for bringing this to my attention). I get the same results with the right IP though (unable to ping the vm).

 

[Peter Law]

Kier wrote:
> # What I'm doing

> I'm interested in setting up an instance of the server mainly so that I can
> properly test stuff like srweb or IDE patches,

Awesome, thanks for diving in!

It's worth noting that while it ought to be easy to run these in the
puppet-configured VM, they can also be fairly easily setup outside
that. I find that the most convenient setup is to run both srweb and
the IDE under Apache, in a directory owned by your user. I believe
other http servers have been used successfully for both however.

In both cases the README should contain sufficient information to get
going (at least under Apache).

> Vagrant version: 1.8.1
> Virtualbox version: 5.0.14_OSEr105127
>

> # Possible cause?

> I'm running Arch Linux, which from what I've seen tends to stay very close
> to the bleeding edge. Is it likely that my version of Vagrant or Virtualbox
> is newer than (and not backwards-compatible with) the one used to deploy to
> production?

I'm on the Ubuntu 14 LTS, though I've been using Vagrant 1.7.x and
VirtualBox 5.0.14 happily for a while now. I've just updated to
Vagrant 1.8.1 in order to work on the srcomp VM, and on creating a
fresh saffron VM it seems to respond to ping (though it hasn't
finished provisioning yet).

> # Ping issues

I've never seen these issues myself, though I believe that Tom Leese
has seen them on some machines.

Given that you can get into the machine (presumably via `vagrant ssh`)
what does it tell you that its IP is?

Also what happens if you change the networking behaviour (set by the
Vagranfile to 'prinvate_network', though other kinds are available
[1])?

Thanks,
Peter

[1] https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/networking/

[Kier Davis]

Issue resolved (see also today's IRC logs). Turned out the problem was not anything to do with the VM itself, but with the host-only network interface.

On Arch Linux, the host-side network interface that leads to the guest is disabled by default; this can be fixed by installing the "net-tools" package (as suggested by this forum thread [1]).

I've updated the ServerConfig trac page [2] with this info for future reference.

Thanks again for the help guys. 

[1]: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1125616

[2]: https://www.studentrobotics.org/trac/wiki/ServerConfig?action=edit