Setting up a local Yum Server using the Exalogic ZFS Storage Appliance

One of the Exalogic Racks that I have setup had no access to the internet from the 10GbE network, as such no easy mechanism for additional rpms to be deployed to the vServers that are created.  In order to make things simpler for installation on the multiple vServers and have some degree of control over what versions of the software are installed this note describes how to setup a local yum server.

Within an Exalogic we have a handy HTTP server built into the ZFS storage device which we will use to serve up the content of the YUM Repository. This makes it available to every vServer that is attached to the vServer-shared-storage network.

Setup the Yum Repository

This first activity is to setup the actual repository on the shared repository. A few activities are required to enable this:-

Create a share for the repository

The first step is to create a share on the Exalogic rack that will be used to host the yum repository and make it available via HTTP. Some instructions on setting up a share can be found in the technote "Creating a Project or Share in the ZFS appliance".  In this case this service will be common to all vServers so use the existing project "common" and create a share under it called "yum-repo", making the share available via HTTP.

Having created the share we need to make it available via HTTP. To achieve this firstly enable the HTTP service on the ZFS appliance. This is achieved by clicking the enable icon on the HTTP service inside the Configuration/Services tab. The service shown below.

Having enabled the HTTP service it is then necessary to change the configuration for the share to make the share content available via HTTP. This is achieved by selecting "Shares" then picking the share itself. In our case this is common/yum-repo. Now select the Protocol tab option and set the "Share mode" of the HTTP service to Read Only.  If this is not possible it is probably because it has been set to Inherit from project.  If you are happy to have all shares under the project exposing their content via HTTP then leave the "Inherit from project" option selected and change the HTTP protocol on the project level so that it is set to Read only.  If you only want to expose this share then de-select the "Inherit from project" option and set the share mode to Read only.

Create the Repository

The simplest way to get a hold of the appropriate packages is to download the Exalogic base image. This is the .iso file rather than the virtual image which is a single image file as oppose to an installation CD. From the Exalogic e-delivery website it is possible to download the latest physical image. (At the time of writing this was the 2.0.0.0.0 version.) It ships as two zip files which need to be expanded and the runMe.sh run which will amalgamate the two images to create a single iso file.

Using the single iso file loopback mount the iso and then copy all the content onto the yum-repo share.

So an example process from a compute node to mount the iso and copy the contents off it is shown below.

# mkdir /mnt/yum-repo # mount <IP address of shared storage>:/export/common/yum-repo /mnt/yum-repo # cp <Path to base image>/el_x2-2_baseimage_linux_2.0.0.0.0_64.iso /mnt/yum-repo # mkdir /mnt/yum-repo/tmp # mount -o loop /mnt/yum-repo/el_x2-2_baseimage_linux_2.0.0.0.0_64.iso /mnt/yum-repo/tmp # mkdir /mnt/yum-repo/el_x2-2_baseimage_linux_2.0.0.0.0_64 # cp -r /mnt/yum-repo/tmp/* /mnt/yum-repo/el_x2-2_baseimage_linux_2.0.0.0.0_64

Now we want to run the createrepo command to actually create the repository that all the clients can utilise. In order to achieve this the first thing we need to do is actually install the repository package, then run the createrepo command.

# cd /mnt/yum-repo/el_x2-2_baseimage_linux_2.0.0.0.0_64 # find . -name createrepo* ./Server/createrepo-0.4.11-3.el5.noarch.rpm # rpm -ivh /mnt/yum-repo/el_x2-2_baseimage_linux_2.0.0.0.0_64/Server/createrepo-0.4.11-3.el5.noarch.rpm warning: /mnt/yum-repo/el_x2-2_baseimage_linux_2.0.0.0.0_64/Server/createrepo-0.4.11-3.el5.noarch.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 1e5e0159 Preparing... ########################################### [100%] 1:createrepo ########################################### [100%] # # createrepo . 3338/3338 - VT/etherboot-roms-kvm-5.4.4-13.el5.x86_64.rpm 6_64.rpm.rpmpm Saving Primary metadata Saving file lists metadata Saving other metadata #

Configure the Client & Install the Packages.

Now log onto your vServer to configure the yum repository. This is done by creating the file /etc/yum.repos.d/local_yum.repo, the content of which specifies the HTTP address for the yum repository on the shared storage. Once created you can run yum reposlist to ensure that it is configured correctly.yum

# cat /etc/yum.repos.d/local_yum.repo [local_yum] name=Exalogic TVP yum rack baseurl=http://<IP address of your ZFS Storage appliance on the vServer-shared-storage network (172.17.0.n by default)>/shares/export/common/yum-repo/el_x2-2_baseimage_linux_2.0.0.0.0_64 gpgcheck=0 enabled=1 # # yum repolist Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security This system is not registered with ULN. ULN support will be disabled. local_yum | 951 B 00:00 local_yum/primary | 1.6 MB 00:00 local_yum 3338/3338 repo id repo name status local_yum Exalogic TVP yum rack enabled: 3,338 repolist: 3,338 [root@esat-ldap ~]# #

Then run 'yum repolist' and if everything's is ok you see the repository listed.

Creating a project/share on the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance

To quote from a colleague - a tea break snippet (See The Old Toxophilist) on setting up a project and share using the ZFS Storage Appliance that is part of the Exalogic rack.

If you are doing this through the Browser User Interface (BUI) then the first thing to do is point your browser at the management administration interface for the ZFS Storage appliance on port 215. Connecting to the active storage head.

https://<IP of active storage head>:215/

Log on to the service and navigate to the shares tab then pick the Projects sub-tab.

You can then click on the small + symbol beside the Projects title, as shown below.

Give your project a suitable name, say MyProject. You can now select this project from the Projects page to edit it. This is done by highlighting the MyProject line and clicking the pencil icon to edit it. Now we want to do some basic best practice configuration.

1. Click on the General tab and specify the "Mountpoint" to be /export/<project name> This will mean that all the data and shares held in this project will be contained within a single directory structure on the storage device. The rest of the General settings can be left at the defaults in the first place.
   eg. /export/myproject  (Minor unix standard to use lower case characters, if you do use mixed, bear in mind it is case sensitive.)
2. Click onto the Protocol tab.
   
   1. Set the Share Mode to be None. This stops anyone but the nodes that are specifically defined connecting to the share.
   2. Click on the + symbol beside the "NFS Exceptions" to add an exception. I tend to use the Type of "Network" and define a network/netmask as the Entity to specify which compute nodes/vServers can access the share. In a virtualised Exalogic the default vServer shared storage network is 172.17.0.0/16 so giving these read/write access is the norm. There is also a tick box for "Root Access", this defines what is known as root squash which determines if the root user of a connected client has root access to the files in the share. Unless specifically needed this should not be enabled.
   3. Add additional networks as needed for your environment.
   4. HTTP - if you require access to the shares via an HTTP interface then set the share mode for this protocol to be read only.
   5. Replication - No need for this in a very simple test environment but for all other environements the Replication tab allows you to define backup locations for the share.
3. Click on the Shares tab
   1. For each share you wish to create click on the + symbol beside the Filesystems, give your share a name. The other options such as the User and Group and permissions are really dependent on what the needs of your environment are. In the example shown below the assumption is that the share myshare will be mountable from /export/myproject/myshare (the default), and once mounted will show up as being owned by oracle:oracle.
      Note :- you may find that the appliance objects to the owner of oracle:oracle as an unknown user and group. If you are just using NFSv3 then you can enter the ID for the oracle user in here which will transfer over to the client server. If using NFSv4 then the user must exist in the shared authentication location - LDAP or NIS.

Now all you need do is mount this share from a compute node (Physical Exalogic) or vServer (virtual Exalogic)

# mount <ip of storage>:/export/myproject/myshare /mnt

or if you want it to be auto-mounted on boot add it to the /etc/fstab file on a directory such as /u01.