Question regarding non-SSH user-data template deployment

[Nicolas_Odermatt]

I have one question to the VMware notes section in the current Foreman doc: If I make the adjustments for SSH-less configuration (using user-data template), how does Foreman/VMware apply the user-data template to the freshly created VM?

I found an interesting sequence diagram that visualizes how the image based approach works, but it doesn’t reflect the non-ssh way - atleast I don’t understand it.

There are a lot of topics regarding user-data templates and non-SSH deployment, though none fully cleared my misunderstanding. Apologies in advance if I add to the stack unnecessarily

Some of the posts I studied (for reference)

VMware Template Provisioning with Static IP

I’m currently working on improving some small bits, but sure, let’s move this to core once we have improved unattended controller.

Problem provisionning Host on VMWare from Image

Hello again, I manage to solve my issue with this little hack (I’m not a developper, and I don’t know ruby so forgive me… ) In the file /usr/share/foreman/app/models/compute_resources/foreman/model/vmware.rb, inside the clone_vm function, I added those lines : templates = client.list_templates templates.each { |t| if t[‘id’] == args[:image_id] opts[‘template_path’] = t[‘name’] end } This way, before calling the Fog vm_clone function, it replace UUID by Template name for template…

Provisioning using (image based) VMWare Templates

Hi, I have a "vmware template" available I've been trying to follow this guide: http://theforeman.org/manuals/1.9/index.html#5.2.9VMwareNotes Originally I tried taking the ssh approach which involves making using of a finish template. I couldn't get this to work because foreman (v1.9) appears to just does a "clone" of the vmware template rather than "Deploy virtual machine from this Template…". Therefore when the new VM is created on vsphere (v5.5), it doesn't have any networking, and the…

Foreman finish template is not getting resolve when user-data of the image is enabled

Can't I install a puppet module with finish-template? Installing packages through Puppet modules (I think this is what you mean) is something that will happen after your finish-template goes in. Is user_data is compulsory to pull the template ( i.e reading the template from foreman )? I don't understand the question, user_data is pushed from Foreman to the Compute Resource. Do you think I went wrong in my configuration? No, it's just fine. I haven't read your user_data template in…

[TimoGoebel]

@Nicolas_Odermatt: Have you seen this? The foreman_userdata plugin was migrated to Foreman core. But the README should describe the intended workflow.

Let me know if you have more questions.

[Nicolas_Odermatt]

Thanks Timo, that page certainly helps the non-ssh deployment in more detail.

Since the userdata plugin is now part of Foreman core, should the curl command mentioned in the debugging section work “out of the box”? (assumed a VM was deployed with the given IP)

curl -D - -H 'X-FORWARDED-FOR: 192.168.1.1' http://localhost:3000/userdata/user-data

Because I get a connection refused error applying the command to my setup:

support@v000398:~$ curl -D - -H 'X-FORWARDED-FOR: 10.35.147.110' http://localhost:3000/userdata/user-data
curl: (7) Failed to connect to localhost port 3000: Connection refused
support@v000398:~$
support@v000398:~$ telnet localhost 3000

I can’t find a setting to enable port 3000 in any file in foreman or foreman-proxy/ and I don’t think its the templates.yaml file, no?

[TimoGoebel]

Because I get a connection refused error applying the command to my setup:

localhost:3000 means your foreman server, e.g. curl -D - -H 'X-FORWARDED-FOR: 10.35.147.110' https://foreman.example.com/userdata/user-data

[Nicolas_Odermatt]

Riiight, I coul’ve tried this on my own, thanks again.

One more question if you don’t mind: It seems Foreman searches for hosts using the requests IP even though the X-FORWARDED-FOR header is applied. Does the command work for you?

curl -D -verbose -H 'X-FORWARDED-FOR: 10.35.147.110' http://v000398/userdata/user-data
Could not find host for request 10.51.6.160

2019-11-22T15:15:07 [I|app|a4951657] Started GET "/userdata/user-data" for 10.51.6.160 at 2019-11-22 15:15:07 +0000
2019-11-22T15:15:07 [I|app|a4951657] Processing by UserdataController#userdata as TEXT
2019-11-22T15:15:07 [E|app|a4951657] Could not find host for request *10.51.6.160*
2019-11-22T15:15:07 [I|app|a4951657]   Rendering text template
2019-11-22T15:15:07 [I|app|a4951657]   Rendered text template (0.0ms)
2019-11-22T15:15:07 [I|app|a4951657] Filter chain halted as :find_host rendered or redirected
2019-11-22T15:15:07 [I|app|a4951657] Completed 404 Not Found in 16ms (Views: 0.5ms | ActiveRecord: 7.1ms)

Have a great weekend

[Nicolas_Odermatt]

Note from @Izap on Github:

The username and password for SSH login are supposed to be added on the Image details:

[Nicolas_Odermatt]

So it turns out Vmware deploys the rendered template to the newly provisioned instance, but doesn’t apply the changes. I can see two files in the /etc/netplan/ directory:

99-netcfg-vmware.yaml

# Generated by VMWare customization engine.
network:
  version: 2
  renderer: networkd
  ethernets:
    ens192:
      dhcp4: no
      dhcp6: no
      addresses:
        - 10.35.147.250/24
      gateway4: 10.35.147.1
      nameservers:
        search:
          - domain.tld
        addresses:
          - 10.51.2.232
          - 10.51.2.233                        

netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml

network:
    ethernets:
        ens192:
            addresses:
            - 10.35.147.114/24
            gateway4: 10.35.147.1
            nameservers:
                addresses:
                - 10.51.2.232
                - 10.51.2.233
                search:
                - domain.tld
            optional: true
    version: 2

And it seems that the cloud init template is applied instead of the vmware netcfg. I don’t know about netplan, so I will pursue some more research on how to select a default.

[Nicolas_Odermatt]

After I removed the 50-cloud-init.yaml file and rebootet, the VM used the remaining netplan file to configure the interface. I created a new template based on that change and redeployed a test VM. Result: All good now.