Offline (local repository) CORD Install

It is possible to install CORD using a local Ubuntu application repository. This can be useful for several use cases including

  • CORD deployments that don't allow Internet access
  • Deploying CORD multiple times if your Internet access is slow

To enable the install of CORD using a local repository you must first build a mirror of all the repositories utilized by the CORD install procedure locally. The CORD head/compute nodes must be able to access the host that is acting as a mirror using http. If the head node host has enough disk space, it can be the mirror repository.

Creating the Mirror

To create the mirror you will need a host running Ubtunu 14.04LTS Server that has access, at least temporarily, to the Internet. On this host apt-mirror and docker-engine should be installed. apt-mirror is a utility used to download the Debian packages and index files for the mirror and docker-engine is used to front the mirror using an nginx container.

Installing apt-mirror

To install apt-mirror the following commands should suffice.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y apt-mirror

Installing docker-engine

To install docker-engine please follow the directions provided by Docker at https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/linux/ubuntulinux/.

apt-mirror Configuration

apt-mirror takes a configuration that downloads the Debian packages and indexes to support a mirror. Save the following apt-mirror configuration to a local file, e.g., cord-mirror.list. This will create a mirror for machines using the amd64 architecture. If you need the i386 architecture you can configure that via the defaultarch setting or by duplicating each repository line, replacing deb with deb-i386.

The goal is to create a minimal mirror repository as the downloading of the artifacts is quite time and space consuming. If you already have an existing mirror in your enterprise it is possible to augment that to pull in the additional repositories required by CORD, but this is an exercise left up to the reader.

############# config ##################
#
# set base_path    /var/spool/apt-mirror
#
# set mirror_path  $base_path/mirror
# set skel_path    $base_path/skel
# set var_path     $base_path/var
# set cleanscript $var_path/clean.sh
# set postmirror_script $var_path/postmirror.sh
set run_postmirror 0
set defaultarch amd64
set nthreads     20
set _tilde 0
#
############# end config ##############

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty main universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-updates main universe
deb http://apt.dockerproject.org/repo ubuntu-trusty main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu trusty main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ansible/ansible/ubuntu trusty main universe
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/maas/stable/ubuntu trusty main
deb http://linux.dell.com/repo/community/ubuntu trusty openmanage
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/juju/stable/ubuntu trusty main

clean http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
clean http://apt.dockerproject.org/repo
clean http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu
clean http://ppa.launchpad.net/ansible/ansible/ubuntu
clean http://ppa.launchpad.net/maas/stable/ubuntu
clean http://linux.dell.com/repo/community/ubuntu
clean http://ppa.launchpad.net/juju/stable/ubuntu

After the apt-mirror configuration is ready, you can start the mirroring process using the command

sudo apt-mirror cord-mirror.list

Be sure to replace the cord-mirror.list parameter with the path to the file in which you saved the apt-mirror configuration.

NOTE: The mirroring process can take quite a while (3+ hours) and is highly dependent on your Internet access speed. The mirroring process will download and process about 90 Gigabytes of data. So get a cup of coffee, take a nap, enjoy the great out doors, or simply spend some time on Facebook or Netflix.

Staring the HTTP Archive Server

Before the archive server is started, the nginx docker image should be downloaded from dockerhub.com. Once this image is download the host should no longer require Internet access and thus the install of CORD can be completed offline. To download (pull) the nginx image use the following command:

sudo docker pull nginx:1.10

The following command can be used to start an nginx docker container that will front the mirror over HTTP so that the the head/compute nodes can access the archive. This command will present the archive server on port 8888 of the host machine. This can be changed by modifying the command line option -p. The command line option -v is used to specify the location where the mirror files were downloaded, /var/spool/apt-mirror by default.

sudo docker run \
    --name local-repository \
    --restart unless-stopped \
    -p 8888:80 \
    -v /var/spool/apt-mirror/:/usr/share/nginx/html \
    -d nginx:1.10

Using the Local Repository

To use a local repository to deploy CORD, the POD deployment configuration must be modified to point to the mirror or local repository that you will be using. This is done by setting the following variables in the POD deployment configuration. In the example below the values are set assuming the host IP of the repository is 10.10.10.10 and the mirror was created per the instructions above. If you are using a different repository these values may have to be customized for you deployment. The simple way of looking at these values is that this is the value that will be used in the Ansible apt_repository task under the parameter repo.

seedServer
  extraVars:
    - ubuntu_apt_repo="deb [arch=amd64] http://10.10.10.10:8888/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty main universe"
    - ubuntu_updates_apt_repo="deb [arch=amd64] http://10.10.10.10:8888/mirror/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-updates main universe"
    - docker_apt_repo="deb [arch-amd64] http://10.10.10.10:8888/mirror/apt.dockerproject.org/repo ubuntu-trusty main"
    - java_apt_repo="deb [arch-amd64] http://10.10.10.10:8888/mirror/ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu trusty main"
    - ansible_apt_repo="deb [arch-amd64] http://10.10.10.10:8888/mirror/ppa.launchpad.net/ansible/ansible/ubuntu trusty main"
    - maas_apt_repo="deb [arch-amd64] http://10.10.10.10:8888/mirror/ppa.launchpad.net/maas/stable/ubuntu trusty main"
    - dell_apt_repo="deb [arch-amd64] http://10.10.10.10:8888/mirror/linux.dell.com/repo/community trusty openmanage"
    - juju_apt_repo="deb [arch-amd64] http://10.10.10.10:8888/mirror/ppa.launchpad.net/juju/stable/ubuntu trusty main"