Instructor Guide

What to do During the Workshop

Four total images are built by the provisioner and all added to the same rpm-ostree repo on the edge_manager node. As students progress through the workshop, you’ll need to move the ref within the repo to the correct version.

The provisioner will automatically set the active image to version 1.0.0 during provisioning. Once everyone’s devices have been kickstarted and students approach Exercise 4.1, set the active image to version 2.0.0:

ansible-playbook provisioner/set-active-image.yml --inventory /path/to/workshop/inventory.ini --extra-vars "desired_image_version=2.0.0"

Repeat this process according to the following:

Students at Exercise	Active Image Version
Exercise 3.1	1.0.0
Exercise 4.1	2.0.0
Exercise 5.1	3.0.0
Exercise 6.1	4.0.0

The provisioner generates an SSH keypair and an inventory file for you within the provisioner/ directory by default. If you also have a local system, the command above will take multiple inventories:

ansible-playbook provisioner/set-active-image.yml --inventory /path/to/workshop/inventory.ini --inventory /path/to/local/inventory.yml --extra-vars "desired_image_version=2.0.0"

Checking On Workshop Services

There’s a few different services involved in this workshop. They all should be up and available after provisioning, but if they need convincing use the information below. Remember to connect to the approriate node when attempting to interact with services.

• Ansible Controller: sudo automation-controller-service restart
• rpm-ostree Web Server: sudo systemctl restrt httpd
• Gitea: podman pod start gitea
• Signup Page: sudo systemctl restart nginx php-fpm
• dnsmasq: sudo systemctl restart dnsmasq

Gitea is not running as root, it runs as whatever user Ansible authenticates to the system as, so you don’t need sudo.

dnsmasq likes to think it’s running, but won’t pick up on interface changes, so if you connect to a wireless network/new ethernet connection, restart the service.

Useful Resources

After the workshop is up and running, a list of students currently signed in will be available at ec2_name_prefix.workshop_dns_zone/list.php. Enter the admin_password to view the list.

Building Local Edge Managers

A local edge manager can be built for on-site edge device management. Right now, the requirements for this device are:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7
• Internet connection during provisioning
• Enough CPU/memory to run Controller (4 cores/16gb memory)

What’s installed and configured on the system depends on group membership within the inventory.

Ansible Group	Installed components
controller	Ansible Controller installed and populated
edge_management	Image Builder installed, images composed, rpm-ostree hosted on port 80, Gitea installed and populated
local	Some non-aws specific conditionals set
local/dns	dnsmasq installed, configured, and started, with some DNS records configured

For example: in this inventory file, the host edge-managaer-local is a member of edge_management, controller, and local/dns.

all:
  children:
    edge_management:
      hosts:
        edge-manager-local:
    controller:
      hosts:
        edge-manager-local:
    local:
      hosts:
        edge-manager-local:
      children:
        dns:
          hosts:
            edge-manager-local:
          vars:
            local_domains:
              controller:
                domain: "controller.your-workshop-domain.lcl"
              cockpit:
                domain: "cockpit.your-workshop-domain.lcl"
              gitea:
                domain:  "gitea.your-workshop-domain.lcl"
              edge_manager:
                domain: "edge-manager.your-workshop-domain.lcl"
  vars:
    ansible_host: 192.168.200.10
    ansible_user: ansible
    ansible_password: your-password
    ansible_become_password: your-password