Announcing improvements to how NDS Labs Environments are launched and managed

[Mike Freemon <mfreemon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Now easier than ever to start and use NDS Labs Environments!

I am happy to announce the completion of a series of changes that makes 
it significantly easier for anyone to create and use their own NDS Labs 
Environment.  The new step-by-step instructions can be found here (and 
copied inline below for your convenience):

https://bitbucket.org/nds-org/nds-labs/src/2428a7e3cee839afe50fa0aa4868471e459c2c15/LAUNCHING?at=dev

This information will be incorporated in a more formal way with the 
existing documentation later, but I wanted to get this out to everyone 
quickly to get some early feedback.

We are also working on a web interface that will further simplify the 
process.

Please let me know of any questions, problems, concerns.

Thank you.

- Mike


***

This document describes the steps needed to start up a new NDS Labs 
Environment.

NOTES

* The defaults are set to work on the NCSA VLAD OpenStack cluster.

* All of these steps should be performed from a shell on the
  vlad-mgmt.ncsa.illinois.edu node.  This is not a requirement,
  but does make some things a bit more convenient.

PREREQUISITES

* OpenStack credentials (userid and password)

PROCEDURE

1.  Generate new key pair (or use an existing one if you prefer)

    ssh-keygen

2.  Start an ssh agent and load the key

    eval $(ssh-agent -s)
    ssh-add

3.  Clone the nds-labs source code repository

    hg clone https://bitbucket.org/nds-org/nds-labs
    cd nds-labs

4.  Update OS_USERNAME in script NDS-openrc.sh

    vim NDS-openrc.sh

5.  Copy your public key created in Step 1 to ssh-key.pub

    cp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ssh-key.pub

    This is the key that will be dropped into the authorized_keys files.

6.  Review and update as desired the values in the script run_startup.sh

    Note: The "--name" parameter should definitely be changed to something
          uniquely identifiable, such as your username.

7.  Execute the startup script

    ./run_startup.sh

    You will be asked for your OpenStack password.  This is your NCSA
    Kerberos password if you are on the VLAD system.

8.  Check for the existence of the fleetctl binary.  If "which fleetctl"
    comes up empty, just copy the binary (the single file) from any other
    machine to _this_ machine.

    scp wherever:/usr/bin/fleetctl ~/
    alias fleetctl='~/fleetctl'        <-- optional, but convenient

9.  Edit setfleet.sh and set the FLEETCTL_TUNNEL to the public IP address
    assigned by the startup script in Step 7.

    vim setfleet.sh

10. Source setfleet.sh to set the FLEETCTL environment variables.

    source setfleet.sh

11. Launch the master service.  This starts various services inside the
    NDS Labs Environment to bring it to a fully functional state.

    fleetctl start master.service
    fleetctl status master.service

12. Your NDS Labs Environment is now up and running.

    You can ssh to any of your OpenStack instances:
    fleetctl list-machines
    fleetctl ssh <machine-id>

    You can see the status of all the services in your environment:
    fleetctl list-units

    You can ssh into the master service:
    ssh -p 80 root@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx   <-- the public IP address that was 
assigned

    You can start and stop additional services as desired, from either your
    local machine or from the NDS Labs master service.  For example,

    fleetctl start rstudio.service

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