no way to enable dhcp other than interactive webui

[Scott Moser]

<smoser> so. after i installed maas from the ppa
<smoser> i dont have any isc-dhcp running
<smoser> should I ?
<roaksoax> smoser: not really unless you have it enabled on MAAS webiui
<roaksoax> as it is the one that controls the start/stop of the daemon
<smoser> how can i enable it?
<roaksoax> smoser: Settings on the WebUI
<roaksoax> smoser: note that you will find yourself with the bug that it is unablke to write /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
<smoser> no other way to enable?
<roaksoax> smoser: nope
<smoser> so it asks me about what settings i want for the dhcp server
<smoser> but not whether or not to run it
<smoser> nice.
<roaksoax> smoser: that's upstream issue
<roaksoax> smoser: the package simply sets up the master dhcp pool
<roaksoax> smoser: the only way to enable the dhcp server is by doing it from the webui
<roaksoax> smoser: i thnk that they were gonna change the default sto have the dhcp server enabled by default
<roaksoax> smoser: brb

There needs to be some way to put maas into that mode (maas cli or something) that does not involve clicking on a web ui.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

"<roaksoax> smoser: i thnk that they were gonna change the default sto have the dhcp server enabled by default"

This is not going to happen, it's rather invasive.

Why do you need to enable the DHCP stuff other than in the UI? What's the use case?

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

Use case: Test
I want to do stuff automatically, and set up maas for use in test without requiring a human to click buttons.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

The only things enabling that checkbox does is:
 * Generates a job to write out DHCP config when the master worker is configured
 * Enables jobs that poke static host maps into the DHCP server over OMAPI.

If you want to do the former, there's a utility script that you can run manually:
$ bin/maas-provision generate-dhcp-config

I doubt you will need the latter for any testing.

Is this enough?

[Gavin Panella (allenap)]

This is a symptom of the commingling of UI and API. If the UI were a consumer of the API this would be half solved already.

I think all MAAS operations, beyond initial bootstrap, should be available via the API. In fact, the web API should be *the* channel for achieving almost everything. The CLI and web UI should be a consumer of the API. This will concentrate our efforts into making the API better, and complete.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

On Friday 31 August 2012 08:01:18 you wrote:
> This is a symptom of the commingling of UI and API. If the UI were a
> consumer of the API this would be half solved already.
>
> I think all MAAS operations, beyond initial bootstrap, should be
> available via the API. In fact, the web API should be *the* channel for
> achieving almost everything. The CLI and web UI should be a consumer of
> the API. This will concentrate our efforts into making the API better,
> and complete.

Totally. This was our originaly intention in Budapest as well but ... time
...

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

> The only things enabling that checkbox does is:
> * Generates a job to write out DHCP config when the master worker is configured
> * Enables jobs that poke static host maps into the DHCP server over OMAPI.
>
> If you want to do the former, there's a utility script that you can run manually:
> $ bin/maas-provision generate-dhcp-config
>
> I doubt you will need the latter for any testing.

> Is this enough?

Well, I probably want that. I want to test maas and verify stuff works. I want to launch an instance (or provision hardware), and then *use* that maas as fully as possible. If I can't enable dhcp (or some portion of it) then I can't test dhcp.

I'm really surprised to hear any pushback on this.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

> Well, I probably want that. I want to test maas and verify stuff works.
> I want to launch an instance (or provision hardware), and then *use*
> that maas as fully as possible. If I can't enable dhcp (or some portion
> of it) then I can't test dhcp.

Ok I think we need to do something anyway because as it stands when installing
the maas package it also installs maas-dhcp, which should be separate.

Please see bug 1044229 because I think it's effectively a dupe of this one.

> I'm really surprised to hear any pushback on this.

I'm trying to fit a quart into a pint pot - we've got more work than we can
handle at the moment so I need to prioritise and the only way I can do that is
to probe deeply when someone files a bug.

Cheers.

[Raphaël Badin (rvb)]

Enabling the dhcp stuff is equivalent to setting the config parameter "manage_dhcp" to 'True'. This can be done in the UI but, as with all the configuration options, it's also exposed on the API: $api_url/maas/ op={set_config,get_config}.