Console doesn't work by default

[Pen Gale]

Bug from github, originally posted by @sethdc

Perhaps the console isn't supposed to work by default, but I've tried microstack on 16.04 and 18.10 in several browsers. I continue to receive the error "127.0.0.1 refused to connect."

Is this expected?

If there are instructions for configuring the console with microstack, please point me to them.

Thank you.

[Pen Gale (pengale)]

Github comment from @javacruft:

I don't think we've tested the console; sounds like a good improvement to make to microstack itself.

[David A. Desrosiers (setuid)]

Seconded. There doesn't appear to be any way to expose the VNC console in the current (candidate, edge, beta) builds nor to forward the correct ports to make that work.

[Nic30 (nic30)]

The console does not appear to be configured (I can not `grep -R` any "\[spice\]" or "\[vnc\]" or "\[rdp\]" in the system).
I tried an example configs from https://docs.openstack.org/nova/latest/admin/remote-console-access.html but I `netstat -plnt` I do see any running console service.

I tried to put the configs everywhere in `/var/snap/microstack/common/etc/` but the config does not seems to be applied or does not work at all.

Is `/var/snap/microstack/common/etc/` a correct etc directory with configs for microstack?

[Brandon (c0nd4)]

I am also having the same issue on Ubuntu 18.04. Has anyone found a work around to get the console working in the mean time?

[INMD (lyw5415)]

I am now rejected in 127.0.0.1. So how do I change the ip to try?

[Pen Gale (pengale)]

Brief update on this: getting the console working is still on the roadmap, but it's behind several other priorities.

I believe that we need to add a vnc server as a component to MicroStack to get things working. I'd be happy to review any contributions to that effect. Meanwhile, we will definitely update this bug when the core MicroStack team pushes fixes for the console.

[INMD (lyw5415)]

Are you saying it's hard to use now?Or is there any other way to use it? I'm going to micro-stack the Windows server.

[Pen Gale (pengale)]

@INMD: with the current build of MicroStack, I believe that console is broken. To fix it, we'd need to add a daemon to the snapcraft.yaml.

[David Field (mightywomble)]

From a webinterface point of view, if this isn't working, how would I do access the console from the command line? Without a console installing machines is a bit of a problem surely?

[Pen Gale (pengale)]

@mightywomble: when you create an instance, you can add an ssh key to it (MicroStack automagically does this if you use the microstack.launch command), and then you can ssh to the machine with the key. Since cloud instances often don't have a default password, this is often more useful than a console.

Troubleshooting borked machine installs is definitely harder without a console. You can find console logging output in the /var/snap/microstack/log tree. But things will definitely be nicer once this bug is addressed.

[Cyber XML (cyberxml)]

Work around for console access (local)

# find the vnc console in the qemu process
ps -ef | grep qemu-system | grep -E -o "vnc.{0,32}"

# connect with tiger vncviewer as the logged in user (or define X env variables)
vncviewer 127.0.0.1:0

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Change abandoned by Dmitrii Shcherbakov (<email address hidden>) on branch: master
Review: https://review.opendev.org/751178
Reason: Abandoning in favor of https://review.opendev.org/#/c/738242/