Using a pre-defined Ansible node

[alahiff]

From looking at https://imdocs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/radl.html it seems to be possible to use a specified Ansible node (using the ansible keyword) as an alternative to using Ansible on the IM node.
What are the requirements of this node, besides being accessible by IM via ssh and having ssh access to nodes provisioned by IM? e.g. does it need to have a specific version of Ansible pre-installed and configured?

[micafer]

It needs to have Ansible version (2.0 or higher) installed and configured.

[alahiff]

Ok, that's what I've tried, using Ansible 2.7.6 with the same /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg as used in IM. I'm getting an error like this:

2019-01-28 09:59:08,400 - ConfManager - INFO - Inf ID: e34d7924-22e2-11e9-8482-0242ac110002: Waiting processes of step -1 to finish.
2019-01-28 09:59:12,941 - ConfManager - ERROR - Inf ID: e34d7924-22e2-11e9-8482-0242ac110002: Error in the ansible installation process
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/IM/ConfManager.py", line 822, in configure_master
    ssh.sftp_mkdir(remote_dir, 0o700)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/IM/retry.py", line 50, in f_retry
    return f(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/IM/SSHRetry.py", line 72, in sftp_mkdir
    return SSH.sftp_mkdir(self, directory, mode)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/IM/SSH.py", line 428, in sftp_mkdir
    sftp.mkdir(directory, mode)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/paramiko/sftp_client.py", line 460, in mkdir
    self._request(CMD_MKDIR, path, attr)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/paramiko/sftp_client.py", line 813, in _request
    return self._read_response(num)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/paramiko/sftp_client.py", line 865, in _read_response
    self._convert_status(msg)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/paramiko/sftp_client.py", line 894, in _convert_status
    raise IOError(errno.ENOENT, text)
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file
2019-01-28 09:59:13,404 - ConfManager - INFO - Inf ID: e34d7924-22e2-11e9-8482-0242ac110002: Configuration process of master node failed.

One definite (and bad) problem I've found is that the security groups generated by IM don't allow the Ansible node to access any of the VMs created by IM via ssh. Is there any way to specify a default security group or to add tcp port 22 from a specific host? (I'm currently testing this using OpenStack).

[micafer]

You are right I forgot that some IM files are copied into the master VM so, also de the IM must be installed in the ansible host.

Regarding the security groups issue. You can add the port 22 to the ourports keywork of the networs used, to assure that the port is opened in the SGs of all VMs:

network public (outbound = 'yes' and outports='22')
network private (outports='22')

[alahiff]

I've now installed IM on the Ansible host. I've also have tried changing:

network private ()

to

network private (outports='22')

but this unfortunately doesn't have any affect on the security groups created by IM. As a workaround I've therefore modified create_security_groups in IM/connectors/OpenStack.py in order to add a security group with port 22 open.

I still get the "No such file" error as before. I tried increasing LOG_LEVEL to DEBUG in im.cfg but it doesn't seem to provide any more information about what's going wrong.

[micafer]

The issue with port 22 is a bug in the connectors: see #771

[micafer]

I had time to test it.
There is a bug in the IM that does not create a needed directoy. It is fixed in commit: 7a198bd
The ansible host only needs to have ansible installed and the ansible.cfg configured as described in the IM README.md