Revision as of 16:19, 13 April 2011

Setup of the OBS Appliance

The OBS Appliance provides an easy and scalable way to start using OBS. This setup scales from workstation only to workgroup-size and allows migration to enterprise-size lateron.

Prerequisites:

Hardware:

    min               recommended
* recent CPU           quadcore/HT     (with vmx/smt , 64bit is plus but currently no requirement)
* >= 4GB RAM             12GB          (the more the better!)
* fast disks          fast disks/ssd    
* 100GB diskspace      500GB raid1     (initial footprint is < 4GB , but scales depending on use)

Software

• VirtualBox (or VMware / Qemu , but instructions are VirtualBox-centric atm)
• OBS Appliance (will be downloaded in the tutorial)
• OBS Data storage disk with LVM volumes (we'll setup, this is YOUR data store)
• openSUSE 11.4 live cd (for LVM volume setup)
• network with dhcp (required for appliance!)
• network with dns-server and dhcp client resolution (option)

The steps on this tutorial were collected on an openSUSE 11.3 system.

Fetching needed files

Lets create a folder "obs-appliance-downloads".

mkdir -p ~/obs-appliance-downloads
cd ~/obs-appliance-downloads

VirtualBox

Install VirtualBox (as root) for your Distribution from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads or use your package manager to install VirtualBox. At the time of writing, VirtualBox 4.0.4 was used.

OBS Appliance

The openSUSE Build Service Appliance is developed and hosted by the openSUSE project. We use the "vmx.tar.bz2" image.

The latest stable version is available here:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/Tools/images/

The latest unstable version is available here:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/Tools:/Unstable/images/

At the time of writing (--Jsmoeller 21:34, 23 March 2011 (UTC)) we used:

wget -nd "http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/Tools:/Unstable/images/obs-server.x86_64-2.2.72-Build1.2-vmx.tar.bz2"
#
# ATTENTION !  link changes !

openSUSE 11.4 live cd (optional)

For the initial setup of the data storage LVM disk, we use openSUSE 11.4 with yast2 . If you know how to do this with $YOUR_DISTRO, you can replicate the steps. The livecd can be downloaded here:

wget -nd "http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.4/iso/openSUSE-11.4-KDE-LiveCD-i686.iso"

Creating the virtual machine

Make sure the vboxdrv is loaded and all needed components installed for VirtualBox to run!

Fire up VirtualBox:

VirtualBox

Create a new Appliance (click "New" on top left)

Click on "Next" and fill in the name of the new appliance. OS is "Linux" and Version is "openSUSE(64 bit)".

Note: We'll use 64bit, but currently for MeeGo the 32bit Appliance would work, too.

Click on "Next" and assign ~3G RAM (as always, more is better ;) - it should work with 2G ).

Click on "Next". Now, select to create a new disk:

Click on "Next" - this will open a new wizard to create a disk image:

We'll use a "Dynamically expanding storage" sized 100 GB (your choice - min is ~20GB).

"Finish" will take us back to the first wizard which holds the summary of our new appliance:

Click on Finish. Your new appliance is now ready.

In the next step, we'll boot up once into the live system to create the persistent storage partitions.

Creating the persistent LVM data storage

Using the openSUSE KDE livecd

First step is to create your persistent data storage which is hosted on a set of logical volumes of a "OBS" volume group.

To do this, we add temporarily the downloaded live-cd to the appliance.

Edit the storage settings and select the downloaded iso file located in ~/obs-appliance-downloads/openSUSE-11.4-KDE-LiveCD-i686.iso .

We are ready to start up the appliance and configure the disk - please boot up the appliance now.

The LVM disk setup looks like:

 OBS                    -  volume group name
  |
  +--- server           -  backend and data store    -  20GB
  |
  +--- worker_root_1    -  1st worker root drive     -  6GB
  +--- worker_swap_1    -  1st worker swap drive     -  1GB
  |
  +--- cache            -  package cache             -  1GB

Video: File:Create partitions.ogv

After this is done: remove the cd again from the storage settings!

Using any linux distro and lvm tools

Adding the appliance disk image to the virtual machine

Before adding the appliance to the storage settings, we need to move the volume group to sata port 1.

Then we add another disk and select "use existing disk" and point to the downloaded appliance.

Important: Make sure, the network interface is using "bridged" mode and is connected to a working network interface with dhcp!

Booting up the appliance

Now we're ready to boot up the OBS appliance! Start it and wait for the initial setup to complete (might take some time).

Video: File:Startup appliance.ogv

Using the OBS Appliance

Setup interlinks

First package, first build