OPENVSWITCH LTS IN CENTOS 6

As some visitors have asked me about installing Open vSwitch on CentOS 6, I’m writing the following post after my first about it almos three years ago. If you find a better way, please let me know so I update the post and remove useless info from the Internet 😉

I’ve found this repository by Alexander Evseev so you may try to use the openvswitch packages (you even have the kmod package) found there. Have a look: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/aevseev/CentOS6/x86_64/

In any case… I’ll show you what you can do to generate your own RPM packages the old way (no python api supported as it requires Python 2.7 while CentOS 6 uses Python 2.6):

Current LTS version: 2.5.0
Tested on: CentOS 6.8

Let’s start installing some packages:

yum -y install wget openssl-devel gcc make python-devel openssl-devel kernel-devel graphviz kernel-debug-devel autoconf automake rpm-build redhat-rpm-config libtool python-twisted-core python-zope-interface PyQt4 desktop-file-utils libcap-ng-devel groff checkpolicy selinux-policy-devel

Let’s add a new user and switch to that user:

adduser ovs; su - ovs

Let’s prepare the build environment and download the source code:

mkdir -p ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES
wget http://openvswitch.org/releases/openvswitch-2.5.0.tar.gz
cp openvswitch-2.5.0.tar.gz ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/
tar xfz openvswitch-2.5.0.tar.gz

Now go to the openvswitch directory

cd openvswitch-2.5.0

Let’s modify some lines in the old rhel6 spec file provided by Nicira (copy and paste):

sed -i "s/Requires: logrotate, python >= 2.7/Requires: logrotate/" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/$RPM_BUILD_ROOT\/usr\/bin\/ovs-test/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/$RPM_BUILD_ROOT\/usr\/bin\/ovs-l3ping/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/\/usr\/bin\/ovs-parse-backtrace/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/\/usr\/bin\/ovs-pcap/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/\/usr\/bin\/ovs-tcpundump/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/\/usr\/bin\/ovs-vlan-test/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/\/usr\/share\/man\/man8\/ovs-bugtool.8.gz/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/\/usr\/share\/openvswitch\/bugtool-plugins/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/\/usr\/share\/openvswitch\/scripts\/ovs-bugtool-*/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/\/usr\/share\/openvswitch\/python/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/\/usr\/share\/openvswitch\/scripts\/ovs-bugtool-*/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/\/usr\/bin\/ovs-dpctl-top/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
sed -i "/\/usr\/sbin\/ovs-bugtool/d" rhel/openvswitch.spec
echo "/usr/bin/ovs-testcontroller" >> rhel/openvswitch.spec

Finally let’s build the RPM packages… and have a cup of coffee as tests are being run! At least you can tell if it works… 😛

rpmbuild -bb rhel/openvswitch.spec

Once the build is finished, type exit.

exit

CentOS 6 already provides an openvswitch kernel module, so we’ve only compiled the binary tools.

[root@localhost ~]# modinfo openvswitch
filename: /lib/modules/2.6.32-642.3.1.el6.x86_64/kernel/net/openvswitch/openvswitch.ko
license: GPL
description: Open vSwitch switching datapath
srcversion: 00938868C288DBF055E30F3
depends: libcrc32c,vxlan
vermagic: 2.6.32-642.3.1.el6.x86_64 SMP mod_unload modversions

As root, we’ll install the RPM package.

 yum localinstall /home/ovs/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/openvswitch-2.5.0-1.x86_64.rpm -y

Finally, start the openvswitch service and check that it’s running

service openvswitch start
...output...
/etc/openvswitch/conf.db does not exist ... (warning).
Creating empty database /etc/openvswitch/conf.db [ OK ]
Starting ovsdb-server [ OK ]
Configuring Open vSwitch system IDs [ OK ]
Inserting openvswitch module [ OK ]
Starting ovs-vswitchd [ OK ]
Enabling remote OVSDB managers [ OK ]

service openvswitch status
...output...
ovsdb-server is running with pid 3404
ovs-vswitchd is running with pid 3416

If you want the openvswitch service to start at boot time:

chkconfig openvswitch on

Let’s check that the command-line tools are ready:

ovs-vsctl -V
...output...
ovs-vsctl (Open vSwitch) 2.5.0
Compiled Aug 31 2016 19:54:41
DB Schema 7.12.1

Done. I can’t be sure if it will work for you as I haven’t been using Open vSwitch with CentOS 6 for a long time… so any feedback is welcomed!

Cheers!

Installing latest RabbitMQ on CentOS 7

This post is a quick reminder for the future that may help you too.

If you want to install the latest RabbitMQ package for your CentOS 7 you can do it in only three steps:

sudo yum install epel-release -y
sudo curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-server/script.rpm.sh | sudo bash
sudo yum install rabbitmq-server -y

Then, as always, you can start it and enable the service:

sudo systemctl enable rabbitmq-server
sudo systemctl start rabbitmq-server

Check that the service is running either with:

sudo systemctl is-active rabbitmq-server

or:

sudo systemctl status rabbitmq-server

If serving to remote hosts, a firewalld rule may be useful:

firewall-cmd --add-port=5672/tcp --zone=public --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload

See ya!

Reference: https://www.rabbitmq.com/install-rpm.html

 

Installing CoreOS etcd server on CentOS 7

While I’m preparing a shell script or test some Ansible roles available at Ansible Galaxy so the installation is automatic, here I show you the steps I followed to install by hand the Etcd server on CentOS 7 as quick and fast as possible.

First of all we have to create some directories (/var/lib/etcd and /etc/etcd) and add the etcd user and group

mkdir /var/lib/etcd;mkdir /etc/etcd; groupadd -r etcd; useradd -r -g etcd -d /var/lib/etcd -s /sbin/nologin -c "etcd user" etcd;chown -R etcd:etcd /var/lib/etcd

Now we have to add a systemd service definition for our etcd service

cat << EOT > /usr/lib/systemd/system/etcd.service
[Unit]
Description=etcd service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=notify
WorkingDirectory=/var/lib/etcd/
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/etcd/etcd.conf
User=etcd
ExecStart=/usr/bin/etcd
LimitNOFILE=65536

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOT

Warning: The etcd service needs a configuration file, we install a really simple one that should be modified according to your needs, e.g add urls with your server’s IP address or DNS names so your server is not only useful for localhost and secure client requests. Read https://github.com/coreos/etcd for more info.

cat << EOT > /etc/etcd/etcd.conf
 # [member]
 ETCD_NAME=default
 ETCD_DATA_DIR="/var/lib/etcd/default.etcd"
 #ETCD_SNAPSHOT_COUNTER="10000"
 #ETCD_HEARTBEAT_INTERVAL="100"
 #ETCD_ELECTION_TIMEOUT="1000"
 #ETCD_LISTEN_PEER_URLS="http://localhost:2380,http://localhost:7001"
 ETCD_LISTEN_CLIENT_URLS="http://localhost:2379"
 ETCD_ADVERTISE_CLIENT_URLS="http://localhost:2379"
 #ETCD_MAX_SNAPSHOTS="5"
 #ETCD_MAX_WALS="5"
 #ETCD_CORS=""
 #
 #[cluster]
 #ETCD_INITIAL_ADVERTISE_PEER_URLS="http://localhost:2380,http://localhost:7001"
 # if you use different ETCD_NAME (e.g. test), set ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER value for this name, i.e. "test=http://..."
 #ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER="default=http://localhost:2380,default=http://localhost:7001"
 #ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_STATE="new"
 #ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_TOKEN="etcd-cluster"
 #ETCD_ADVERTISE_CLIENT_URLS="http://localhost:2379,http://localhost:4001"
 #ETCD_DISCOVERY=""
 #ETCD_DISCOVERY_SRV=""
 #ETCD_DISCOVERY_FALLBACK="proxy"
 #ETCD_DISCOVERY_PROXY=""
 #
 #[proxy]
 #ETCD_PROXY="off"
 #
 #[security]
 #ETCD_CA_FILE=""
 #ETCD_CERT_FILE=""
 #ETCD_KEY_FILE=""
 #ETCD_PEER_CA_FILE=""
 #ETCD_PEER_CERT_FILE=""
 #ETCD_PEER_KEY_FILE=""
 EOT

Time to download and install etcd binaries for Linux x86_64, the following commands should be good for any Linux distro. It downloads the latest stable version available, creates a directory for any downloaded version and changes the symbolinc link accordingly. It runs etcd with the version argument to check that the binary works fine.

ETCD_VERSION=`curl -s -L https://github.com/coreos/etcd/releases/latest | grep linux-amd64\.tar\.gz | grep href | cut -f 6 -d '/' | sort -u`; ETCD_DIR=/opt/etcd-$ETCD_VERSION; mkdir $ETCD_DIR;curl -L https://github.com/coreos/etcd/releases/download/$ETCD_VERSION/etcd-$ETCD_VERSION-linux-amd64.tar.gz | tar xz --strip-components=1 -C $ETCD_DIR; ln -sf $ETCD_DIR/etcd /usr/bin/etcd && ln -sf $ETCD_DIR/etcdctl /usr/bin/etcdctl; etcd --version

We can enable and start the etcd server with:

systemctl enable etcd; systemctl start etcd

Check etcd service status

systemctl status etcd

● etcd.service – etcd service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/etcd.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since lun 2016-08-01 10:05:51 UTC; 2s ago
Main PID: 31051 (etcd)
CGroup: /system.slice/etcd.service
└─31051 /usr/bin/etcd

ago 01 10:05:51 localhost.localdomain etcd[31051]: ready to serve client requests
ago 01 10:05:51 localhost.localdomain etcd[31051]: serving insecure client requests on localhost:2379, this is strongly discouraged!
ago 01 10:05:51 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Started etcd service.

As you may notice there’s a warning about “serving insecure client requests on localhost:2379, this is strongly discouraged!” once again please change the configuration for your needs and set it safely.

I’ll try update this post so you may follow this blog.

Cheers!