unsw-cfrc/misc-online-whatif-install

Online WhatIf installation

whatif_install

Launches an Online WhatIf server using the automatic installation script.

Terms

In the doco below:  
* ENV = dev | test | prod
* ORG = asu | cityfutures

Installing WhatIf

Clone this repo to an Ansible control server.

Set variables

Check and edit variable values in the inventory file ENV_ORG and corresponding group vars group_vars/ORG and group_vars/ENV_ORG.

Create a new admin password and encrypt it before saving to group_vars/ENV_ORG. The password may contain only lower case letters and digits, judging from the example passwords in the /etc/aurin/envision-combined.properties file:

ansible-vault encrypt_string 'PASSWORD' where PASSWORD is the new password.

Key pair

Use the AWS Console to create a key pair called 'WhatIf' in your AWS EC2 VPN.

Save the key file and copy it to your Ansible control server as ~/.ssh/WhatIf_ORG_ENV.pem.

Make it read-only with chmod 0600 ~/.ssh/WhatIf_ORG_ENV.pem.

Security certificate

Generate a security certificate or request it from your network service provider.

Once available, copy the certificate and private key files to the Ansible Control server, into the sub-directory roles/install_certificate/files.

Build whatif server

Launch the playbook to create and install the whatif server:

ansible_playbook -i ENV_ORG playbook.yml --ask-vault-pass

This will run a collection of playbooks:

• stack.yml: Create server
• prep.yml: Prepare server
• whatif.yml: Install whatif
• cert.yml: Install security certificate
• check.yml: Check site is up before exiting

The install process takes about 45 minutes. Most of this is running mvn clean package ... within the installation script install.sh called from the task:

TASK [install_whatif : Install whatif]

You may SSH to the server to check progress on the install. To confirm it is still running:

ps -ef | grep 'clean package'

You should see output like:

root     31761  7899  1 17:08 pts/1    00:00:06 /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java -classpath /usr/share/maven/boot/plexus-classworlds-2.x.jar -Dclassworlds.conf=/usr/share/maven/bin/m2.conf -Dmaven.home=/usr/share/maven org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher clean package -Ddeployment=development -Dsystem=ali-dev -Daurin.dir=/etc/aurin

Configuration

Once completed you may login to the workbench:

URL: https://SERVER/workbenchauth
Username: aurin
Password: admin password as set above

Where SERVER is the fully qualified domain name of the server.

Register new users. They will receive an email with instructions for resetting their temporary password and logging in.

User login is at https://SERVER which redirects to https://SERVER/whatif/login.

Troubleshooting

Use view /var/log/tomcat7/catalina.out to check the Tomcat logs for errors.