4.7.4. General Administration¶
This section provides information on the standard administrative techniques used when managing SIMP systems.
Various philosophical decisions are also covered to help users understand why SIMP does some of the things that it does.
Warning
While working with the system, keep in mind that Puppet does not work well with capital letters in host names.
DO NOT USE CAPITAL LETTERS IN HOST NAMES
4.7.4.1. Package Management¶
The SIMP infrastructure has a consistent philosophy that managed packages should be at the latest version in the available repositories whenever the system is brought into alignment by Puppet.
All SIMP produced modules should, by default, have their versions set to
present
but simp_options
, when set initially by simp config
, should
set that to latest
across the environment.
The rationale behind this is that it is far easier to update a set of repositories than it is to precisely pin versions of all packages managed on a given system. Since repositories are generally common packages, the ability to create a set of symlinks that represent the latest tested state of a system should be far simpler than doing minutia management across your Puppet code.
4.7.4.1.1. Workflow¶
The general workflow to keep your system properly up to date would be as follows.
Note
We highly recommend using Beaker for testing these scenarios
- Update the Test repository
- Assign a test node to the repository via a
yumrepo
resource - Run Puppet and evaluate the results
- Run a full system update and evaluate the results
- This simulates the Nightly Updates, if enabled
- If all goes well, migrate the changes to the Production repository
- Let Puppet do the rest
See Nightly Updates for more information on setting up the repositories and providing packages to your clients.
4.7.4.2. Nightly Updates¶
All SIMP systems are configured, by default, to do a YUM update of the entire system on a nightly basis. When the update task runs, it will pull ALL updates that the system is aware of.
Note
Refer to HOWTO Exclude YUM Repositories for additional configuration information.
Note
See HOWTO Modify the Nightly Update Schedule for information on changing the nightly update schedule or disabling the nightly updates altogether.
To use this effectively, packages that all systems will receive should be
placed into the Updates
repository provided with SIMP. Any packages that
will only go to specific system sets should then be placed into adjunct
repositories under /var/www/yum
and the user will point specific systems at
those repositories using the yumrepo
Puppet Type. Any common packages can
be either symlinked or hard linked between repositories for efficiency.
4.7.4.2.1. Changing the Default Repositories¶
By default, SIMP stores YUM information in the following directories:
/var/www/yum
The base SIMP repository is in /var/www/yum/SIMP
and it is highly unlikely
that you would want to modify anything in this directory.
By default, access to the YUM repository is restricted to the networks
contained in the simp_options::trusted_nets
parameter. For this section, we
will assume that this is sufficient.
4.7.4.2.2. The Operating System Repos¶
The default location for the Operating System (OS) repositories, on the
Puppet master, is /var/www/yum/<OSTYPE>/<MAJORRELEASE>/x86_64
.
An Updates
repository has been configured in this space. All OS updates
should be placed within this directory.
You should run the following in the Updates
directory after ANY package
addition or removal within that directory.
# createrepo .
# chown -R root.apache ./*
# find . -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;
# find . -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
4.7.4.2.3. Adding a Custom Repository¶
For this section, we will assume that you have a repository named foo
that
you would like to expose to your systems. To do this, perform the following:
# cd /var/www/yum # mkdir foo # cd foo # -- copy all RPMs into the folder # createrepo . # chown -R root.apache ./* # find . -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \; # find . -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
Note
For more information on managing YUM repos, please see the Red Hat local repository Documentation.
4.7.4.2.4. Configuring the Clients¶
Now that you have added this repository, you are going to want to add it to your clients.
The best way to do this is to make it part of your site profile. You can make it part of your module, but you will need to wrap it in a Defined Type so that the server parameter can be modified.
To add it to your clients, use the puppet yumrepo
Type. You can find more
information in the Puppet Type Reference.
The following is a basic yumrepo
example:
yumrepo { example:
baseurl => "http://your.server.fqdn/yum/foo",
enabled => 1,
enablegroups => 0,
gpgcheck => 0,
keepalive => 0,
metadata_expire => 3600
}
4.7.4.3. Session Auditing¶
Older versions of SIMP used Sudosh to enable logging of privileged user activities.
This has been replaced by Tlog for a more seamless user experience and
all activities should be able to be done without the need for additional
explicit sudo
commands from this point on.
By default, the actions of the root
user at a login shell are audited.
Please see the Tlog documentation and the SIMP Tlog Puppet Module
for additional details.
Note
The SIMP system does not allow the root
user to execute sudo
by
default per common configuration guidance.
Note
If you built your system from an ISO, you will probably have a local
simp
user that has the ability to run sudo su - root
directly.
The simp
user is meant as an emergency ‘break glass’ user and should be
removed or disabled once your environment is configured to your
satisfaction.
4.7.4.4. User Accounts¶
The SIMP team tests both local and LDAP account access to systems. Other modes of access may function but are not tested by the SIMP test suite at this time.
We recommend that LDAP be used for adding all human users so that there is no conflict with multiple system updates and synchronization. For more information on managing LDAP users, refer to the User Management chapter.
If you need to create local system accounts, you can use the user
and
group
Native Types.
4.7.4.5. Certificate Management¶
This section describes the two different types of certificates used in a SIMP environment and provides links to further information.
4.7.4.5.1. Puppet Certificates¶
Puppet certificates are issued and maintained strictly within Puppet. Communication between the master and agents is granted and secured with HTTPS, which requires valid identifying SSL certificates. The Puppet master acts as the certificate authority for managing these certificates.
The client will automatically send a certificate request to the server if it cannot find
a valid certificate. The Puppet master will automatically sign a certificate request if
the client’s name is in the autosign.conf
file, otherwise an administrator must sign
the request using the puppetserver ca
tool.
Note
By default, Puppet certificates expire every five (5) years.
4.7.4.5.2. Infrastructure Certificates¶
Infrastructure certificates, commonly referred to as server certificates, are the standard PKI certificates assigned by an official CA. These are used by all other applications that require certificates.
SIMP offers capabilities to help manage these certificates including a FakeCA utility that will provide self-signed certificates for use on testing systems or until official certificates can be obtained.
The modules in SIMP have been designed so that infrastructure certificates can be managed from a central location and SIMP will distribute them to the applications that need them.
For more information on how to manage infrastructure certificates and how to use the FakeCA utility refer to the Apply Certificates section of Client Management.
4.7.4.6. The SIMP Utility¶
The SIMP server provides a command line utility called simp
that is an
interface into SIMP-specific settings and subsystems.
You can get information on the simp
utility by running simp help
on
your SIMP server.
4.7.4.6.1. simp passgen¶
Throughout the SIMP codebase, you may find references to the simplib::passgen()
function. This function auto-generates passwords and stores them in
the Puppet master in a sub-directory in the SIMP Writable Environment:
/opt/puppetlabs/server/data/puppetserver/simp/environments/<environment>/simp_autofiles/gen_passwd
For more information, see the simplib::passgen() documentation.
4.7.4.7. Graphical User Interfaces¶
SIMP was designed as a minimized system, but you may occasionally need a GUI. Refer to the Graphical Desktop Setup documentation for information on setting up GUIs for the systems.