Working with PuppetLabs Using Vagrant

While working as DevOps Engineer one of the tools by definition that we use more, often is Puppet. Guess most people will think that you are 100% expert, which is not always the case. So, I need to create this post and track record of my own experiments with Puppet and (PuppetLabs + Vagrant)

You might as what is Vagrant ?
==> "Vagrant is an open-source software product for building and maintaining portable virtual software development environments, e.g. for VirtualBox, Hyper-V, Docker, VMware, and AWS. ... Vagrant simplifies the necessary software configuration management in order to increase development productivity. " read more here: https://www.vagrantup.com/intro/index.html

The initial indentation was to gain better understanding puppet file structure. So, I decided to use Puppetlabs for this ...

So, basically. I did create installed

• Installed Vagrant
• Used the Vagrant init command to pull the puppetlabs ubuntu VM
• Which created a file "Vagrantfile"
• created a dir puppetlabs

And then started the Setup, so here are the Logs ..

Tdls-Air:puppetlabs psalms91$ vagrant up
Bringing machine 'default' up with 'virtualbox' provider...
==> default: Box 'puppetlabs/ubuntu-16.04-32-puppet' could not be found. Attempting to find and install...
    default: Box Provider: virtualbox
    default: Box Version: 1.0.0
==> default: Loading metadata for box 'puppetlabs/ubuntu-16.04-32-puppet'
    default: URL: https://vagrantcloud.com/puppetlabs/ubuntu-16.04-32-puppet
==> default: Adding box 'puppetlabs/ubuntu-16.04-32-puppet' (v1.0.0) for provider: virtualbox
    default: Downloading: https://vagrantcloud.com/puppetlabs/boxes/ubuntu-16.04-32-puppet/versions/1.0.0/providers/virtualbox.box
==> default: Successfully added box 'puppetlabs/ubuntu-16.04-32-puppet' (v1.0.0) for 'virtualbox'!
==> default: Importing base box 'puppetlabs/ubuntu-16.04-32-puppet'...
==> default: Matching MAC address for NAT networking...
==> default: Checking if box 'puppetlabs/ubuntu-16.04-32-puppet' is up to date...
==> default: Setting the name of the VM: puppetlabs_default_1506687306250_65705
==> default: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
==> default: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
    default: Adapter 1: nat
==> default: Forwarding ports...
    default: 22 (guest) => 2222 (host) (adapter 1)
==> default: Booting VM...
==> default: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
    default: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:2222
    default: SSH username: vagrant
    default: SSH auth method: private key
    default:
    default: Vagrant insecure key detected. Vagrant will automatically replace
    default: this with a newly generated keypair for better security.
    default:
    default: Inserting generated public key within guest...
    default: Removing insecure key from the guest if it's present...
    default: Key inserted! Disconnecting and reconnecting using new SSH key...
==> default: Machine booted and ready!
==> default: Checking for guest additions in VM...
    default: The guest additions on this VM do not match the installed version of
    default: VirtualBox! In most cases this is fine, but in rare cases it can
    default: prevent things such as shared folders from working properly. If you see
    default: shared folder errors, please make sure the guest additions within the
    default: virtual machine match the version of VirtualBox you have installed on
    default: your host and reload your VM.
    default:
    default: Guest Additions Version: 5.0.20
    default: VirtualBox Version: 5.1
==> default: Mounting shared folders...
    default: /vagrant => /Users/psalms91/Vagrant_VM/puppetlabs
Tdls-Air:puppetlabs psalms91$

Tdls-Air:puppetlabs psalms91$ vagrant ssh
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-21-generic i686)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/
vagrant@localhost:~$

After this I have my Puppet Labs VM running ... After this point was easy, I just needed to goo into the puppet installation dir and look into the dir structure.

done.. :-)

Some Things I've learnt about GNS3

I am in no way an expert on GNS3, just a trainee   below are a few things i have learnt lately. I thought it might be a good idea to produce something like this. If everyone replied to it and added a few tips of their own it could be turned into a CLN GNS3 tips and tricks document.

GNS3 Web Sites
http://www.gns3.net GNS3’s primary Web site
http://wiki.gns3.net GNS3’s Wiki site
http://www.ipflow.utc.fr/index.php/Cisco_7200_Simulator Dynamips – the actual emulator

http://www.ipflow.utc.fr/blog/ Dynamips blog
http://dyna-gen.sourceforge.net/ Dynagen
http://www.ipflow.utc.fr/bts/ Dynamips/Dynagen bug tracking
http://7200emu.hacki.at Hacki’s forum
===

1. GNS3 has less chance of crashing if the bin files are unzipped.

2. Currently images for 2600 routers must be uncompressed to work with Dynamips.

3. To dramatically reduce the load on your processor, right click on the router and choose idle, after a few moments it will give you a list to choose from.
Choose the one with a * against it, if you don't see a * in the choice run it again.

4. If you don't need any special routers then use the same type on the whole lab, this will use far less processing power and memory.

5. To print out the diagram of your network click file then export, you can export all or just what is visible.

6. To move your router/routers/links etc click the left mouse button and draw around what you want to move, you can then move everything that is inside that shape.

7. I find that if you move around the interface identities they eventually go back to their original position. I don't move them anymore as it looks a bit
messy when that happens.

8. You can't use GNS3 for the SWITCH studies, GNS3 only has basic switch capabilities.

9. You can create computers and run ping's/telnet with VPC, the document attached shows you how, its very simple to follow. I did find that it takes a few times for it to accept being a cloud, once you click ok just open it back up and check it.

10. I personally find that it is best to connect your links between routers when they are switched off, sometimes i find it fails otherwise.

11. You can create a router to act like a pc, this is shown below but it is also in the document.

Router(config)# no ip routing         Turns off IP routing function
Router(config)# interface fa0/0      Switches to FastEthernet interface
Router(config-if)# ip address address subnet_mask Assigns IP address and subnet mask to interface
Router(config-if)# no shutdown      Turns interface on
Router(config-if)# exit                     Returns to global configuration mode
Router(config)# ip default-gateway gateway_address Configures the default gateway
Router(config)# ip http server         Optional – starts http server process
===

12. You can connect GNS3 to real equipment, i have not done this yet myself, it is in the document attached how to do this.

13. When using windows 64 bit GNS3 will default to program files (x86). GNS3 is a 32 bit program for windows so point it to program files not the (x86).

14. I have a Lenovo Thinkpad with a i7 processor and 4GB of RAM. With 7 routers of the same type my processor is running between 8 and 15 %, my RAM consumption is around 2.3 to 2.8 GB. That is also using a few other programs on my laptop at the sometimes.

Solve VMWare Workstation 9 Error on Linux Kernel 3.8.0-26

I have VMware Workstations 9 installed on my uBuntu 13 machine and today without any apparent reason it stop working throwing me the following error, every time I've tried to boot up any VM machine.

To solver the problem .. here is what I have done ... created bash script to handle problems with VMware Player on 13.04 ...

#!/bin/bash

if [[ $UID != 0 ]]; then

    echo "Please run this script with sudo:"

    echo "sudo $0 $*"

    exit 1

fi

sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/include/linux/version.h

cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source

sudo tar -xf vmci.tar

cd vmci-only

sudo sed '127s/.*/   .remove = vmci_remove_device,/' driver.c > driver.c.tmp

mv driver.c.tmp driver.c

sudo sed '1753s/.*/static int/' driver.c > driver.c.tmp

mv driver.c.tmp driver.c

sudo sed '1981s/.*/static void/' driver.c > driver.c.tmp

mv driver.c.tmp driver.c

cd ..

sudo tar -cf vmci.tar vmci-only/

sudo rm vmci-only/ -Rf

sudo vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

sudo rm /usr/src

Before write the script I've open the terminal and type " #sudo kate " then when kate opened I entered the script and saved on " /usr/src/open-vm-tools-xxxx.xx.xx" (replace the x with year month and day) and save it. Then close Kate

The Open terminal again and do the following;

after you should have VMware workstation running...

This is another posting showing "how to do computing" for everyday computer usages... For a general public

XAMPP: Another web server daemon with SSL is already running

This is a peculiar error you will get if you run XAMPP in LINUX.

Assumption: XAMPP is unzipped @ /opt/ folder.

If you get the error "XAMPP: Another web server daemon with SSL is already running" when you run "./lampp start". Simply follow the steps below to get rid of this error:

1. Open the file /opt/lampp/etc/httpd.conf
2. Search the "Listen 80" and change it to some other port (e.g. Listen 2145)  (Line No. 40)
3. Open the file /opt/lampp/etc/extra/httpd-ssl.conf
4. Search the "Listen 443" and change it to some other port (e.g. Listen 16443) (Line No. 39)
5. Open the file "/opt/lampp/lampp"
6. Search for the port "testport 80" and replace it to "testport 2145". Also change the "testport 443" to "testport 16443". (Happens to be the Line No. 197, 214)
7. Now go and run "/opt/lampp/lampp start". (It should work now).

Hope this Helps :-)

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