Unlike most other python software, you must build or download an IPA ramdisk image before use. This is because it’s not installed in an operating system, but instead is run from within a ramdisk.
Two kinds of images are published on every commit from every branch of IPA:
If you need to build your own image, use the tools from the ironic-python-agent-builder project.
You can pass a variety of flags to IPA on start up to change its behavior.
--debug
: Enables debug logging.During its operation IPA makes HTTP requests to a number of other services, currently including
When these services are configured to require TLS-encrypted connections, IPA can be configured to either properly use such secure connections or ignore verifying such TLS connections.
Configuration mostly happens in the IPA config file
(default is /etc/ironic_python_agent/ironic_python_agent.conf
, can also
be any file placed in /etc/ironic-python-agent.d
)
or command line arguments passed to ironic-python-agent
,
and it is possible to provide some options via kernel command line arguments
instead.
Available options in the [DEFAULT]
config file section are:
ipa-insecure
kernel command line argument (converted to boolean).
The default for this kernel command line argument is taken to be False
.
Overriding it to True
by adding ipa-insecure=1
to the value of
[pxe]pxe_append_params
in ironic configuration file will allow running
the same IPA-based deploy ramdisk in a CI-like environment when services
are using secure HTTPS endpoints with self-signed certificates without
adding a custom CA file to the deploy ramdisk (see below).insecure
option being False
, see above),
operators should either ensure that certificates of those services
are verifiable by root CAs present in the deploy ramdisk,
or add a custom CA file to the ramdisk and set this IPA option to point
to this file at ramdisk build time.keyfile
option is also set.certfile
option is also set.Currently a single set of cafile/certfile/keyfile options is used for all HTTP requests to the other services.
Starting with the Victoria release, the API provided by ironic-python-agent can also be secured via TLS. There are two options to do that:
This option is enabled by default if no other options are enabled. If ironic supports API version 1.68, a new self-signed TLS certificate will be generated in runtime and sent to ironic on heartbeat.
No special configuration is required on the ironic side.
If you need to provide your own TLS certificate, you can configure it when building an image. Set the following options in the ironic-python-agent configuration file:
[DEFAULT]
listen_tls = True
advertise_protocol = https
# Disable automatic TLS.
enable_auto_tls = False
[ssl]
# Certificate and private key file paths (on the ramdisk).
cert_file = /path/to/certificate
# The private key must not be password-protected!
key_file = /path/to/private/key
# Optionally, authenticate connecting clients (i.e. ironic conductors).
#ca_file = /path/to/ca
If using DIB to build the ramdisk, use the ironic-python-agent-tls element to automate these steps.
On the ironic side you have two options:
If the certificate can pass host validation, i.e. contains the correct host name or IP address of the agent, add its path to each node with:
baremetal node set <node> --driver-info agent_verify_ca=/path/to/ca/or/certificate
Usually, the IP address of the agent is not known in advance, so you need to disable host validation instead:
baremetal node set <node> --driver-info agent_verify_ca=False
Hardware managers are how IPA supports multiple different hardware platforms in the same agent. Any action performed on hardware can be overridden by deploying your own hardware manager.
Custom hardware managers allow you to include hardware-specific tools, files and cleaning steps in the Ironic Python Agent. For example, you could include a BIOS flashing utility and BIOS file in a custom ramdisk. Your custom hardware manager could expose a cleaning step that calls the flashing utility and flashes the packaged BIOS version (or even download it from a tested web server).
Operators wishing to build their own hardware managers should reference the documentation available at Hardware Managers.
Except where otherwise noted, this document is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. See all OpenStack Legal Documents.