Installing Foreman and Puppet Agent on Multiple VMs Using Vagrant and VirtualBox

Automatically install and configure Foreman, the open source infrastructure life-cycle management tool, and multiple Puppet Agent VMs using Vagrant and VirtualBox. Project is part of my blog post, Installing Foreman and Puppet Agent on Multiple VMs Using Vagrant and VirtualBox.

The centos7 branch was created 8/20/2015 to reflect changes to original blog post in the master branch. Changes were required to fix incapability issues with the latest versions of Puppet and Foreman. For details, see Puppet Compatibility. Additionally, the version of CentOS on all VMs was updated from 6.6 to 7.1 and the version of Foreman was updated from 1.7 to 1.9.

Vagrant Plug-ins

This project requires the Vagrant vagrant-hostmanager plugin to be installed. The Vagrantfile uses the vagrant-hostmanager plugin to automatically ensure all DNS entries are consistent between guests as well as the host, in the /etc/hosts file. An example of the modified /etc/hosts file is shown below.

## vagrant-hostmanager-start id: c472843a-e854-4e58-8a13-856b3b0766f2
192.168.35.5  theforeman.example.com
192.168.35.10 agent01.example.com
192.168.35.20 agent02.example.com
## vagrant-hostmanager-end

You can manually run vagrant hostmanager to update /etc/hosts at anytime.

This project also requires the Vagrant vagrant-vbguest plugin is also used to keep the vbguest tools updated.

vagrant plugin install vagrant-hostmanager
vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest

JSON Configuration File

The Vagrantfile retrieves multiple VM configurations from a separate nodes.json JSON file. All VM configuration is contained in that JSON file. You can add additional VMs to the JSON file, following the existing pattern. The Vagrantfile will loop through all nodes (VMs) in the nodes.json file and create the VMs. You can easily swap configuration files for alternate environments since the Vagrantfile is designed to be generic and portable.

Instructions

Provision the Foreman VM first, before the agents. It will takes several minutes to fully provision the VM.

vagrant up theforeman.example.com

Important, when the provisioning is complete, note the output from Vagrant. The output provides the admin login password and URL for the Foreman console. Example output below.

==> theforeman.example.com:   Success!
==> theforeman.example.com:   * Foreman is running at https://theforeman.example.com
==> theforeman.example.com:       Initial credentials are admin / 7x2fpZBWgVEHvzTw
==> theforeman.example.com:   * Foreman Proxy is running at https://theforeman.example.com:8443
==> theforeman.example.com:   * Puppetmaster is running at port 8140
==> theforeman.example.com:   The full log is at /var/log/foreman-installer/foreman-installer.log

Log into Foreman's browser-based console using the information provided in the output from Vagrant (example above). Change the admin account password, and/or set-up your own admin account(s).

Next, build two puppet agent VMs. Again, it will takes several minutes to fully provision the two VMs.

vagrant up agent01.example.com agent02.example.com

Next, complete the CSR process. Read the blog post for complete instructions.

# ssh into first agent node
vagrant ssh agent01.example.com
# initiate certificate signing request (CSR)
sudo puppet agent -t -w=60
# sign certificate within foreman to complete CSR

exit

# ssh into second agent node
vagrant ssh agent02.example.com
# initiate certificate signing request (CSR)
sudo puppet agent -t -w=60
# sign certificate within foreman to complete CSR

You can always force a puppet run on a node using sudo puppet agent -t.

Forwarding Ports

To expose forwarding ports, add them to the 'ports' array. For example:

 "ports": [
        {
          ":host": 1234,
          ":guest": 2234,
          ":id": "port-1"
        },
        {
          ":host": 5678,
          ":guest": 6789,
          ":id": "port-2"
        }
      ]

Errors

Error: Unknown configuration section 'hostmanager'. => Solution: Install the vagrant-hostmanager plugin with vagrant plugin install vagrant-hostmanager

Useful Multi-VM Commands

The use of the specific name is optional in most cases.

• vagrant up <machine>
• vagrant reload <machine>
• vagrant destroy -f <machine> && vagrant up <machine>
• vagrant status <machine>
• vagrant ssh <machine>
• vagrant global-status

Useful Logs for Debugging Project Issues

Some logs require sudo access

• sudo tail -50 /var/log/syslog
• sudo tail -50 /var/log/puppet/masterhttp.log
• sudo tail -50 /var/log/foreman/production.log
• sudo tail -50 /var/log/foreman-installer/foreman-installer.log
• sudo tail -50 /var/log/foreman-proxy/proxy.log
• tail -50 ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/<machine>/Logs/VBox.log