Tag Archives: SSH

too easy to bare metal? Ansible just works with OpenCrowbar

Posted on by
2

2012-01-15_10-21-12_716I’ve talked before about how OpenCrowbar distributes SSH keys automatically as part of its deployment process.  Now, it’s time to unleash some of the subsequent magic!

[5/21 Update: We added the “crowbar-access” role to the Drill release that allows you to inject/remove keys on a per node basis from the API or CLI at any point in the node life-cycle]

If you provision servers with your keys in place, then Ansible will just work with truly minimal configuration (one line in a file!).

Video Demo (steps bellow):

Here are my steps:

  1. Install OpenCrowbar and run some nodes to ready state [videos]
  2. Install Ansible [simple steps]
  3. Add hosts range “192.168.124.[81:83]  ansible_ssh_user=root” to the
    “/etc/ansible/hosts” file
  4. If you are really lazy, add “[Default] // host_key_checking = False” to your “~/.ansible.cfg” file
  5. now ping the hosts, “ansible all -m ping”
  6. pat yourself on the back, you’re done.
  7. to show off:
    1. touch all machines “ansible all -a “/bin/echo hello”
    2. look at types of Linux “ansible all -a “uname -a”

Further integration work can make this even more powerful.  

I’d like to see OpenCrowbar generate the Ansible inventory file from the discovery data and to map Ansible groups from deployments.  Crowbar could also call Ansible directly to use playbooks or even do a direct hand-off to Tower to complete an install without user intervention.

Wow, that would be pretty handy!   If you think so too, please join us in the OpenCrowbar community.

Resolving Git via ssh asking for password on Windows (valid key, Gitolite repo)

Posted on by
2

Sigh, I just spent several hours poking myself in the eye with a stick over a Git client issue.

I have a Win7 system (Dell, of course) with TortoiseSVN, PuTTY, and GIT all happily configured.  I’ve been using Github via HTTP without any issues.

We recently spun up Gitolite to maintain a local clone of our public repos.  For this inside-the-firewall repo, we are only allowing SSH connections.   The SSH key bits are well documented; however, I encountered an error that did not surrender to Google.

I was able to verify my key using SSH “ssh -T gitolite@[host]” with a return that included all the available repos.  That showed me that my public key was correctly registered and my private key was correctly stashed.

HOWEVER, When I run “git clone gitolite@[host]:crowbar” I would get prompted for a password for gitolite.

The resolution turned out to be simple: Git could not use the TortoiseSVN Plink!

When I inspected the environment variable GIT_SSH, it gave me the path for plink.exe.

I removed the GIT_SSH setting (using “set GIT_SSH=”) and that immediately resolved the issue.