Setting up the Emulab Console Server
This guide assumes that your tipserv is a separate machine from your ops server. It is also written with steps for Comtrol Rocketport devices, other devices may have different set up procedures.
Please see the Console Lines page for a overview of Emulab's console support.
Step 1 - Installing FreeBSD on tipserv
Ensure that your tipserv machine is properly connected to your network and that all of the required software is available through the network or some other media. Boot the FreeBSD installation CD on the machine you will use as your tipserv server. When it asks for the desired installation mode, select Standard. Use the standard bootloader unless you have special requirements.
As with ops and boss, you need to create partitions will the following minimum sizes:
/usr/ |
Needs space for the ports tree and a system object tree, at least 10GB. Be sure to build with plenty of inodes (the ports tree itself uses about 200000, so be safe and build with at least a million). |
/usr/testbed/ |
Needs space for testbed software and logs. At least 10GB. You may simply make sure this space is available in /usr, and not make this a separate partition. |
/home/ |
Needs enough space to hold user accounts for this machine as you will not use your ops login. However, regular users will not be logging into this machine. |
/var/ |
At least a few hundred MB. |
When prompted, continue by selecting the 'Developer' distribution set - this will include full sources. When it asks you if you want to install the ports collection, answer no. Do not install any packages as this time. You will get a chance to do so later.
Near the end of the installation, you will be asked if you wish to install or configure several optional items. Apart from setting the hostname, configuring your network devices, enabling SSH logins (if desired), and setting your time zone and root password, you should skip additional configuration.
You can make yourself a user account at this point since accounts are not shared with boss/ops.
Step 1B - Configure root ssh login
Be sure to copy ops:/root/.ssh/authorized_keys to your new tip machine. Be sure that all directory and file permissions, owner and group, match ops:/root/.ssh and the authorized_keys file. If this is done properly, you should be able to "sudo ssh" from boss to the tip machine without having to type the root password. This must work in order for the tipserver to be functional.
Step 2 - Installing packages
To make sure that you're running with versions of software from the ports collection that are known to work with our software, and to save you hours of compile time, we provide pre-built binary packages of the ports required by Emulab.
If you haven't already, download the Emulab Server Package (you can use the FreeBSD 'fetch' command to download the file.)
Unpack this someplace (you need about 140MB of space, so don't
use /tmp unless it is large enough). Let's say you
unpacked it to /usr/tmp. You would then run:
ln -s /usr/local/bin/perl5.8.8 /usr/bin/perl env PKG_PATH=/usr/tmp/packages pkg_add emulab-ops-2.1
For consistency and to avoid clashes between versions of FreeBSD
ports, we will install based on the same Emulab approved ports tree as
ops and boss. If you haven't already, obtain a copy of our
'approved' ports collection. The package is about 40MB; it unpacks
to 175MB. Unpack it to a place such as /usr/ports (if it
exists, rename the old directory to ports.old, or just remove it), and
install whichever ports you want to make ops
feel like 'home' (such as emacs, jove, or whatever).
Now drag over a copy of your emulab source tree, and configure it just like you did on ops. Then run the "tipserv-install" target to install the necessary software. You will also need to copy over capture.pem,client.pem, and emulab.pem from boss:/usr/testbed/etc to /usr/testbed/etc on your tipserv machine.
Step 3 - Installing the RocketPort Driver
At this point you should have the PCI host adapter card installed and connections to the rackmount interface.
Download the FreeBSD rp driver from the Comtrol website and extract it somewhere. Replace the source located in /sys/dev/rp with that from the archive.
Edit /sys/conf/files to delete the lines containing dev/rp/rp_isa.c and dev/rp/rp_pci.c. Modify the line containing dev/rp/rp.c to the following:
dev/rp/rp.c optional rp isa pci
Edit /sys/i386/conf/GENERIC to include the line:
device rp
Edit /sys/modules/Makefile to remove the line:
rp \
Rebuild the kernel to include the rp driver:
cd /sys/i386/conf /usr/sbin/config GENERIC cd /sys/i386/compile/GENERIC make depend make make installReboot the machine, and confirm that the devices exist. These should be something like
/dev/cuaC* or /dev/ttyC*.
Step 4 - Install the Console Software
Set up the logging directories. Capture is hardware to log into /var/log/tiplogs, so a symlink is required.
mkdir -p /usr/testbed/log/tiplogs ln -s /usr/testbed/log/tiplogs /var/log/tiplogs cp /dev/null /usr/testbed/log/tiplogs/capture.log
Set up logging for the capture processes by adding the following to /etc/syslog.conf
# testbed stuff !capture *.* /usr/testbed/log/tiplogs/capture.log
Set up capture log rollover by adding this to /etc/newsyslog.conf
/var/log/tiplogs/capture.log 664 7 * 168 Z
Create a capture startup script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/capture.sh.
It should look something like the below. Add new lines for each device you wish to connect, filling in the device, baudrate, and ttyport. Where ttyport is the device file associated with the given device. Make sure you set it executable by
doing chmod 0775 /usr/local/etc/rc.d/capture.sh. The
following few steps could be scripted if you know the host-port mapping
you plan on using ahead of time.
#!/bin/sh
if ! PREFIX=$(expr $0 : "\(/.*\)/etc/rc\.d/$(basename $0)\$"); then
echo "$0: Cannot determine the PREFIX" >&2
exit 1
fi
case "$1" in
start)
;;
restart)
killall capture
;;
stop)
killall capture && echo -n ' capture'
exit 0
;;
*)
echo "Usage: `basename $0` {start|stop|restart}" >&2
exit 0;
;;
esac
# list of captures to start up
bindir=/usr/local/sbin
# Devices go here
$bindir/capture -T 15 -r -s [baudrate] [device] [ttyport] >/dev/null 2>&1 &
$bindir/capture -T 15 -r -s 115200 ops cuaC14 >/dev/null 2>&1 &
Add devices, servers, and nodes to /etc/remote to allow
access by name. Make sure that your port mappings and device baud rate are correct. It makes adding devices later on easier to keep track of if you enter all the device filenames now, and just add names to them later. Here is an example with a 16 port Rocketport device:
#Emulab device access pc1|rp0-1:/dev/cuaC0:br#115200:pa=none: pc2|rp0-2:/dev/cuaC1:br#115200:pa=none: rp0-3:/dev/cuaC2:br#115200:pa=none: rp0-4:/dev/cuaC3:br#115200:pa=none: rp0-5:/dev/cuaC4:br#115200:pa=none: rp0-6:/dev/cuaC5:br#115200:pa=none: rp0-7:/dev/cuaC6:br#115200:pa=none: rp0-8:/dev/cuaC7:br#115200:pa=none: rp0-9:/dev/cuaC8:br#115200:pa=none: rp0-10:/dev/cuaC9:br#115200:pa=none: rp0-11:/dev/cuaC10:br#115200:pa=none: rp0-12:/dev/cuaC11:br#115200:pa=none: boss|rp0-13:/dev/cuaC12:br#115200:pa=none: ops|rp0-14:/dev/cuaC13:br#115200:pa=none: cisco1|rp0-15:/dev/cuaC14:br#9600:pa=none: cisco2|rp0-16:/dev/cuaC15:br#9600:pa=none:
Step 5 - Device Console Configuration
Each device type may have different configuration requirements for console forwarding. Generally nodes have a bios option to set forwarding after boot, as well as the baud rate. The default images provided by Utah will have FreeBSD/Fedora configured already to forward the console. For your boss and ops server you may need one or both of the following lines in /boot/loader.conf:
If console login is desired, you will also have to editconsole="comconsole" comconsole_speed="115200"
/etc/ttys to allow it:
console "/usr/libexec/getty std.115200" unknown on secure
Step 6 - Boss Configuration
For each independant tipserv machine, add to the nodes and tipservers table in the database.
insert into tipservers values ("mytipserv.emulab.mydomain.net");
insert into nodes (node_id, type, phys_nodeid, role) values ("mytipserv", "pc850", "mytipserv", "ctrlnode");
For each node or device connected to the serial lines, add an entry to the tiplines table:
insert into tiplines (tipname, node_id, server) values ("pcXXX","pcXXX","mytipserv.emulab.mydomain.net")
As with ops, boss must be able to SSH to your tipservers without password. If you haven't set this up already, copy over your root public key from boss:
scp /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub tipserv:/root/.ssh/authorized_keysThis command should now work from boss (without a password prompt):
sudo ssh tipserv ls /
Step 7 - Test It!
On your tipserv, run console pcXXX, hit enter a couple times, or reboot the machine and make sure something comes up.
