Automatic population of managed networks for eth1 and beyond

[Adam Collard]

When using MAAS on a flat network where each node is plugged into the same LAN (no VLANs in play for simplicity's sake) and has multiple NICs on that LAN, I expect MAAS to automatically (i.e. at commissioning) link those MAC addresses to the network.

At the moment it links the MAC address for eth0 (because it DHCPs) and will link eth1 (and beyond) when they DHCP too.

[Andres Rodriguez (andreserl)]

Hi Adam,

This needs some thought, as this could potentially break more things than desired, since we only do auto-population on the only NIC that MAAS knows of, which is the NIC that MAAS PXE Boot's from. I'll wait from Julian to get back from holiday to discuss this further.

That being said, the desired approach right now is for MAAS to only discover the network where it PXE boots from, as we only exercise this interface when we do commissioning/enlistment. We are not yet looking for networks on different interfaces, because this is something that's being planned for next cycle.

[Dean Henrichsmeyer (dean)]

Hi Andres,

This is a necessity for the cloud installer and one of the things we discussed in Nuremberg. I understand that exploring other networks other than the MAAS managed network is for another cycle. What we're asking for is knowing which NICs on MAAS managed machines are on the MAAS managed network. We don't care about other networks and understand that is out of scope.

We would just like for MAAS to dhclient on discovered NICs and find out if they're on the MAAS network and populate the defined network accordingly. Make sense?

[Dean Henrichsmeyer (dean)]

Just to be clear, we're not looking for *any* configuration of extra interfaces or for MAAS to change any MAAS configuration (including DNS, etc) based on the extra interfaces.

All we need is for the commissioning process to dhclient all interfaces and if MAAS dishes out an IP (meaning it's on the same MAAS managed network) the Networks tab is populated with that MAC address just like you do right now for the interface that PXE boots.

The end result is we'll know which interfaces are on the MAAS managed network and which are not (by omission).

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

I'm surprised the ephemeral environment doesn't already dhclient all interfaces.

[Christian Reis (kiko)]

It doesn't. Jeroen is looking at this, but meanwhile, Dean, Adam, you can actually implement this through a commissioning script that you provide to MAAS. In the interest of time, would you like to try that out?

[Dean Henrichsmeyer (dean)]

No. As Dan stated this morning, we can't ship with custom commissioning scripts. We need the feature to be complete in MAAS.

[Jeroen T. Vermeulen (jtv)]

Andres tells us you agreed that this is now off the table for 1.7, so I'm removing the milestone.

[Dean Henrichsmeyer (dean)]

No No No. :)

The management network (the one MAAS manages) needs to be populated in the networks tab for 1.7. This includes any interfaces that are on that network.

The only thing that is out of scope is detection and population of additional networks (IE, network discovery).

Thanks.

[Christian Reis (kiko)]

jtv, please don't touch the milestone field.

[Jason Hobbs (jason-hobbs)]

This is causing issues on networks where people have N nodes, and have allocated a dynamic pool of size N, expecting to be able to commission all nodes with that many IPs (as worked previously).

Since commissioning now DHCPs on all interfaces, systems with two interfaces on MAAS's managed network now require 2 dynamic IPs to commission, meaning the dynamic pool needs to have 2N ips available in order to commission all nodes.