Enable the HTTPS service for REST API¶
To improve the security between the REST API client and server, enabling the HTTPS service on the xCAT MN is recommended. And the REST API client should use the ‘https’ to access web server instead of the ‘http’.
[RHEL6/7 (x86_64/ppc64) and RHEL5 (x86_64)]
yum install mod_ssl service httpd restart yum install perl-JSON
[RHEL5 (ppc64)]
Uninstall httpd.ppc64 and install httpd.ppc:
rpm -e --nodeps httpd.ppc64 rpm -i httpd.ppc mod_ssl.ppc
[SLES10/11/12 (x86_64/ppc64)]
a2enmod ssl a2enflag SSL /usr/bin/gensslcert cp /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/vhost-ssl.template /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/vhost-ssl.conf Insert line 'NameVirtualHost *:443' before the line '## SSL Virtual Host Context' /etc/init.d/apache2 restart zypper install perl-JSON
[Ubuntu]
sudo a2enmod ssl ln -s ../sites-available/default-ssl.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ssl.conf sudo service apache2 restart # verify it is loaded: sudo apache2ctl -t -D DUMP_MODULES | grep ssl apt-get install libjson-perl
Enable the Certificate of HTTPs Server (Optional)¶
Enabling the certificate functionality of https server is useful for the Rest API client to authenticate the server.
The certificate for xcatd has already been generated when installing xCAT, it can be reused by the https server. To enable the server certificate authentication, the hostname of xCAT MN must be a fully qualified domain name (FQDN). The REST API client also must use this FQDN when accessing the https server. If the hostname of the xCAT MN is not a FQDN, you need to change the hostname first.
Typically the hostname of the xCAT MN is initially set to the NIC which faces to the cluster (usually an internal/private NIC). If you want to enable the REST API for public client, set the hostname of xCAT MN to one of the public NIC.
To change the hostname, edit /etc/sysconfig/network (RHEL) or /etc/HOSTNAME (SLES) and run:
hostname <newFQDN>
After changing the hostname, run the xcat command xcatconfig to generate a new server certificate based on the correct hostname:
xcatconfig -c
Notes: If you had previously generated a certificate for non-root userids to use xCAT, you must regenerate them using: /opt/xcat/share/xcat/scripts/setup-local-client.sh <username>
The steps to configure the certificate for https server:
export sslcfgfile=/etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf # rhel
export sslcfgfile=/etc/apache2/vhosts.d/vhost-ssl.conf # sles
export sslcfgfile=/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ssl.conf # ubuntu
sed -i 's/^\(\s*\)SSLCertificateFile.*$/\1SSLCertificateFile \/etc\/xcat\/cert\/server-cred.pem/' $sslcfgfile
sed -i 's/^\(\s*SSLCertificateKeyFile.*\)$/#\1/' $sslcfgfile
service httpd restart # rhel
service apache2 restart # sles/ubuntu
The REST API client needs to download the xCAT certificate CA from the xCAT http server to authenticate the certificate of the server.
cd /root
wget http://<xcat MN>/install/postscripts/ca/ca-cert.pem
When accessing the REST API, the certificate CA must be specified and the FQDN of the https server must be used. For example:
curl -X GET --cacert /root/ca-cert.pem 'https://<FQDN of xCAT MN>/xcatws/nodes?userName=root&userPW=<root-pw>'
Extend the Timeout of Web Server¶
Some operations like ‘create osimage’ (copycds) need a long time (longer than 3 minutes sometimes) to complete. It would fail with a timeout error (504 Gateway Time-out) if the timeout setting in the web server is not extended:
For [RHEL]
Edit "/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf" and change existing or add new entry: "Timeout 600"
service httpd restart
For [SLES]
Edit "/etc/apache2/httpd.conf" and change existing or add new entry: "Timeout 600"
service apache2 restart
Set Up an Account for Web Service Access¶
User needs a username and password to access the REST API. When the REST API request is passed to xcatd, the username and password will be verified based on the xCAT passwd Table, and then xcatd will look in the xCAT policy Table to see if the user is allowed to perform the requested operation.
The account with key of xcat will be used for the REST API authentication. The username and password should be passed in as the attirbutes of URL:
- userName: Pass the username of the account
- userPW: Pass the password of the account (xCAT 2.10)
- password: Pass the password of the account (xCAT earlier than 2.10)
You can use the root userid for your API calls, but we recommend you create a new userid (for example wsuser) for the API calls and give it the specific privileges you want it to have.
Use root Account¶
The certificate and ssh keys for root account has been created during the install of xCAT. The public ssh key also has been uploaded to compute node so that xCAT MN can ssh to CN without password. Then the only thing left to do is to add the password for the root in the passwd table.
tabch key=xcat,username=root passwd.password=<root-pw>
Use non-root Account¶
Create new user and setup the password and policy rules.
# create a user
useradd -u <wsuid> <wsuser>
# set the password
passwd <wsuser>
# add password to passwd table
tabch key=xcat,username=<wsuser> passwd.password=<wspw>
# add user to policy table
mkdef -t policy 6 name=<wsuser> rule=allow
Note: in the tabch command above you can put the salted password (from /etc/shadow) in the xCAT passwd table instead of the clear text password, if you prefer.
Identical user with the same name and uid need to be created on each compute node.
# create a user
useradd -u <wsuid> <wsuser>
# set the password
passwd <wsuser>
Create the SSL certificate under that user’s home directory so that user can be authenticated to xCAT. This is done by running the following command on the Management node as root:
/opt/xcat/share/xcat/scripts/setup-local-client.sh <wsuser>
When running this command you’ll see SSL certificates created. Enter “y” where prompted and take the defaults.
To enable the POST method of resources like nodeshell, nodecopy, updating and filesyncing for the non-root user, you need to enable the ssh communication between xCAT MN and CN without password. Log in as <username> and run following command:
xdsh <noderange> -K
Run a test request to see if everything is working:
curl -X GET --cacert /root/ca-cert.pem 'https://<xcat-mn-host>/xcatws/nodes?userName=<wsuser>&userPW=<wspw>'
or if you did not set up the certificate:
curl -X GET -k 'https://<xcat-mn-host>/xcatws/nodes?userName=<wsuser>&userPW=<wspw>'
You should see some output that includes your list of nodes.
If errors returned, check /var/log/httpd/ssl_error_log on xCAT MN.
Note: if passwords need to be changed in the future, make sure to update the xCAT passwd table. xCAT REST API uses passwords stored in that table to authenticate users.