Troubleshooting and Build System Internals

Debugging make target Failures

make targets that are built will create a per-target log file in the logs directory. These are prefixed with a timestamp which is the same for every target in a single run of make - re-running make will result in additional sets of logs, even for the same target.

If you have a build failure and want to know which targets completed, running:

ls -ltr milestones ; ls -ltr logs

And looking for logfiles without a corresponding milestone will point you to the make target(s) that failed.

Config Generation Overview

All configuration in CORD is driven off of YAML files which contain variables used by Ansible, make, and Vagrant to build development and production environments. A glossary of build system variables is available which describes these variables and where they are used.

When a command to generate config such as make PODCONFIG=rcord-mock.yml config is run, the following steps happen:

  1. The POD Config file is read, in this case genconfig/rcord-mock.yml, which specifies the scenario and profile.
  2. The Scenario config file is read, in this case scenario/mock/config.yml.
  3. The contents of these files are combined into a master config variable, with the POD Config overwriting any config set in the Scenario.
  4. The entire master config is written to genconfig/config.yml.
  5. The inventory_groups variable is used to generate an ansible inventory file and put in genconfig/inventory.ini.
  6. Various variables are used to generate the makefile config file genconfig/config.mk. This sets the targets invoked by make build

Note that the combination of the POD and Scenaro config in step #3 is not a merge. If you define an item in the root of the POD Config that has subkeys, it will overwrite every subkey defined in the Scenario. This is most noticeable when setting the inventory_groups or docker_image_whitelist variable. If changing either in a POD Config, you must recreate the entire structure or list. This may seem inconvenient, but other list or tree merging strategies lack a way to remove items from a tree structure.

Build Process Overview

The build process is driven by running make. The two most common makefile targets are config and build, but there are also utility targets that are handy to use during development.

config make target

config requires a PODCONFIG argument, which is a name of a file in the podconfig directory. PODCONFIG defaults to invalid, so if you get errors claiming an invalid config, you probably didn't set it, or set it to a filename that doesn't exist.

Examples: make config

make PODCONFIG=rcord-local.yml config

make PODCONFIG=opencloud-mock.yml config

build make target

make build performs the build process, and takes no arguments. It may run different targets specified by the scenario.

Most of the build targets in the Makefile don't leave artifacts behind, so we write a placeholder file (aka "sentinels" or "empty targets") in the milestones directory.

Utility make targets

There are various utility targets:

  • printconfig: Prints the configured scenario and profile.

  • xos-teardown: Stop and remove a running set of XOS docker containers, removing the database.

  • xos-update-images: Rebuild the images used by XOS, without tearing down running XOS containers.

  • collect-diag: Collect detailed diagnostic information on a deployed head and compute nodes, into diag-<datestamp> directory on the head node.

  • compute-node-refresh: Reload compute nodes brought up by MaaS into XOS, useful in the cord virtual and physical scenarios

  • pod-test: Run the platform-install/pod-test-playbook.yml, testing the virtual/physical cord scenario.

  • vagrant-destroy: Destroy Vagrant containers (for mock/virtual/physical installs)

  • clean-images: Have containers rebuild during the next build cycle. Does not actually delete any images, just causes imagebuilder to be run again.

  • clean-genconfig: Deletes the make config generated config files in genconfig, useful when switching between podconfigs

  • clean-onos: Stops the ONOS containers on the head node

  • clean-openstack: Cleans up and deletes all instances and networks created in OpenStack.

  • clean-profile: Deletes the cord_profile directory

  • clean-all: Runs vagrant-destroy, clean-genconfig, and clean-profile targets, removes all milestones. Good for resetting a dev environment back to an unconfigured state.

  • clean-local: clean-all but for the local scenario - Runs clean-genconfig and clean-profile targets, removes local milestones.

The clean-* utility targets should modify the contents of the milestones directory appropriately to cause the steps they clean up after to be rerun on the next make build cycle.

Development workflow

Updating XOS Container Images on a running pod

To rebuild and update XOS container images, run:

make xos-update-images
make -j4 build

This will build new copies of all the images, then when build is run the newly built containers will be restarted.

If you additionally want to stop all the XOS containers, clear the database, and reload the profile, use xos-teardown:

make xos-teardown
make -j4 build

This will teardown the XOS container set, tell the build system to rebuild images, then perform a build and reload the profile.