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"2009.01.17 - UNKNOWN, Unknown" by "Adrian Clark" on Flickr

Creating tagged AWS EC2 resources (like Elastic IPs) with Ansible

2020-12-012020-12-01 JonTheNiceGuy Leave a comment

This is a quick note, having stumbled over this one today.

Mostly these days, I’m used to using Terraform to create Elastic IP (EIP) items in AWS, and I can assign tags to them during creation. For various reasons in $Project I’m having to create my EIPs in Ansible.

To make this work, you can’t just create an EIP with tags (like you would in Terraform), instead what you need to do is to create the EIP and then tag it, like this:

  - name: Allocate a new elastic IP
    community.aws.ec2_eip:
      state: present
      in_vpc: true
      region: eu-west-1
    register: eip

  - name: Tag that resource
    amazon.aws.ec2_tag:
      region: eu-west-1
      resource: "{{ eip.allocation_id }}"
      state: present
      tags:
        Name: MyTag
    register: tag

Notice that we create a VPC associated EIP, and assign the allocation_id from the result of that module to the resource we want to tag.

How about if you’re trying to be a bit more complex?

Here I have a list of EIPs I want to create, and then I pass this into the ec2_eip module, like this:

- name: Create list of EIPs
  set_fact:
    region: eu-west-1
    eip_list:
    - demo-eip-1
    - demo-eip-2
    - demo-eip-3

  - name: Allocate new elastic IPs
    community.aws.ec2_eip:
      state: present
      in_vpc: true
      region: "{{ region }}"
    register: eip
    loop: "{{ eip_list | dict2items }}"
    loop_control:
      label: "{{ item.key }}"

  - name: Tag the EIPs
    amazon.aws.ec2_tag:
      region: "{{ item.invocation.module_args.region }}"
      resource: "{{ item.allocation_id }}"
      state: present
      tags:
        Name: "{{ item.item.key }}"
    register: tag
    loop: "{{ eip.results }}"
    loop_control:
      label: "{{ item.item.key }}"

So, in this instance we pass the list of EIP names we want to create as a list with the loop instruction. Now, at the point we create them, we don’t actually know what they’ll be called, but we’re naming them there because when we tag them, we get the “item” (from the loop) that was used to create the EIP. When we then tag the EIP, we can use some of the data that was returned from the ec2_eip module (region, EIP allocation ID and the name we used as the loop key). I’ve trimmed out the debug statements I created while writing this, but here’s what you get back from ec2_eip:

"eip": {
        "changed": true,
        "msg": "All items completed",
        "results": [
            {
                "allocation_id": "eipalloc-decafbaddeadbeef1",
                "ansible_loop_var": "item",
                "changed": true,
                "failed": false,
                "invocation": {
                    "module_args": {
                        "allow_reassociation": false,
                        "aws_access_key": null,
                        "aws_ca_bundle": null,
                        "aws_config": null,
                        "aws_secret_key": null,
                        "debug_botocore_endpoint_logs": false,
                        "device_id": null,
                        "ec2_url": null,
                        "in_vpc": true,
                        "private_ip_address": null,
                        "profile": null,
                        "public_ip": null,
                        "public_ipv4_pool": null,
                        "region": "eu-west-1",
                        "release_on_disassociation": false,
                        "reuse_existing_ip_allowed": false,
                        "security_token": null,
                        "state": "present",
                        "tag_name": null,
                        "tag_value": null,
                        "validate_certs": true,
                        "wait_timeout": null
                    }
                },
                "item": {
                    "key": "demo-eip-1",
                    "value": {}
                },
                "public_ip": "192.0.2.1"
            }
     ]
}

So, that’s what I’m doing next!

Featured image is “2009.01.17 – UNKNOWN, Unknown” by “Adrian Clark” on Flickr and is released under a CC-BY-ND license.

In Ansible, determine the type of a value, and casting those values to other types

2020-07-082021-05-23 JonTheNiceGuy 2 Comments

TL;DR? It’s possible to work out what type of variable you’re working with in Ansible. The in-built filters don’t always do quite what you’re expecting. Jump to the “In Summary” heading for my suggestions.

LATE EDIT: 2021-05-23 After raising a question in #ansible on Freenode, flowerysong noticed that my truth table around mappings, iterables and strings was wrong. I’ve amended the table accordingly, and have added a further note below the table.

One of the things I end up doing quite a bit with Ansible is value manipulation. I know it’s not really normal, but… well, I like rewriting values from one type of a thing to the next type of a thing.

For example, I like taking a value that I don’t know if it’s a list or a string, and passing that to an argument that expects a list.

Doing it wrong, getting it better

Until recently, I’d do that like this:

- debug:
    msg: |-
      {
        {%- if value | type_debug == "string" or value | type_debug == "AnsibleUnicode" -%}
           "string": "{{ value }}"
        {%- elif value | type_debug == "dict" or value | type_debug == "ansible_mapping" -%}
          "dict": {{ value }}
        {%- elif value | type_debug == "list" -%}
          "list": {{ value }}
        {%- else -%}
          "other": "{{ value }}"
        {%- endif -%}
      }

But, following finding this gist, I now know I can do this:

- debug:
    msg: |-
      {
        {%- if value is string -%}
           "string": "{{ value }}"
        {%- elif value is mapping -%}
          "dict": {{ value }}
        {%- elif value is iterable -%}
          "list": {{ value }}
        {%- else -%}
          "other": "{{ value }}"
        {%- endif -%}
      }

So, how would I use this, given the context of what I was saying before?

- assert:
    that:
    - value is string
    - value is not mapping
    - value is iterable
- some_module:
    some_arg: |-
      {%- if value is string -%}
        ["{{ value }}"]
      {%- else -%}
        {{ value }}
      {%- endif -%}

More details on finding a type

Why in this order? Well, because of how values are stored in Ansible, the following states are true:

⬇️Type \ ➡️Check	`is iterable`	`is mapping`	`is sequence`	`is string`
`a_dict` (e.g. {})	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌
`a_list` (e.g. [])	✔️	❌	✔️	❌
`a_string` (e.g. “”)	✔️	❌	✔️	✔️

A comparison between value types

So, if you were to check for is iterable first, you might match on a_list or a_dict instead of a_string, but string can only match on a_string. Once you know it can’t be a string, you can check whether something is mapping – again, because a mapping can only match a_dict, but it can’t match a_list or a_string. Once you know it’s not that, you can check for either is iterable or is sequence because both of these match a_string, a_dict and a_list.

LATE EDIT: 2021-05-23 Note that a prior revision of this table and it’s following paragraph showed “is_mapping” as true for a_string. This is not correct, and has been fixed, both in the table and the paragraph.

Likewise, if you wanted to check whether a_float and an_integer is number and not is string, you can check these:

⬇️Type \ ➡️Check	`is float`	`is integer`	`is iterable`	`is mapping`	`is number`	`is sequence`	`is string`
`a_float`	✔️	❌	❌	❌	✔️	❌	❌
`an_integer`	❌	✔️	❌	❌	✔️	❌	❌

A comparison between types of numbers

So again, a_float and an_integer don’t match is string, is mapping or is iterable, but they both match is number and they each match their respective is float and is integer checks.

How about each of those (a_float and an_integer) wrapped in quotes, making them a string? What happens then?

⬇️Type \ ➡️Check	`is float`	`is integer`	`is iterable`	`is mapping`	`is number`	`is sequence`	`is string`
`a_float_as_string`	❌	❌	✔️	❌	❌	✔️	✔️
`an_integer_as_string`	❌	❌	✔️	❌	❌	✔️	✔️

A comparison between types of numbers when held as a string

This is somewhat interesting, because they look like a number, but they’re actually “just” a string. So, now you need to do some comparisons to make them look like numbers again to check if they’re numbers.

Changing the type of a string

What happens if you cast the values? Casting means to convert from one type of value (e.g. string) into another (e.g. float) and to do that, Ansible has three filters we can use, float, int and string. You can’t cast to a dict or a list, but you can use dict2items and items2dict (more on those later). So let’s start with casting our group of a_ and an_ items from above. Here’s a list of values I want to use:

---
- hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: no
  vars:
    an_int: 1
    a_float: 1.1
    a_string: "string"
    an_int_as_string: "1"
    a_float_as_string: "1.1"
    a_list:
      - item1
    a_dict:
      key1: value1

With each of these values, I returned the value as Ansible knows it, what happens when you do {{ value | float }} to cast it as a float, as an integer by doing {{ value | int }} and as a string {{ value | string }}. Some of these results are interesting. Note that where you see u'some value' means that Python converted that string to a Unicode string.

⬇️Value \ ➡️Cast	value	value when cast as float	value when cast as integer	value when cast as string
`a_dict`	{“key1”: “value1”}	0.0	0	“{u’key1′: u’value1′}”
`a_float`	1.1	1.1	1	“1.1”
`a_float_as_string`	“1.1”	1.1	1	“1.1”
`a_list`	[“item1”]	0.0	0	“[u’item1′]”
`a_string`	“string”	0.0	0	“string”
`an_int`	1	1	1	“1”
`an_int_as_string`	“1”	1	1	“1”

Casting between value types

So, what does this mean for us? Well, not a great deal, aside from to note that you can “force” a number to be a string, or a string which is “just” a number wrapped in quotes can be forced into being a number again.

Oh, and casting dicts to lists and back again? This one is actually pretty clearly documented in the current set of documentation (as at 2.9 at least!)

Checking for miscast values

How about if I want to know whether a value I think might be a float stored as a string, how can I check that?

{{ vars[var] | float | string == vars[var] | string }}

What is this? If I cast a value that I think might be a float, to a float, and then turn both the cast value and the original into a string, do they match? If I’ve got a string or an integer, then I’ll get a false, but if I have actually got a float, then I’ll get true. Likewise for casting an integer. Let’s see what that table looks like:

⬇️Type \ ➡️Check	value when cast as float	value when cast as integer	value when cast as string
`a_float`	✔️	❌	✔️
`a_float_as_string`	✔️	❌	✔️
`an_integer`	❌	✔️	✔️
`an_integer_as_string`	❌	✔️	✔️

A comparison between types of numbers when cast to a string

So this shows us the values we were after – even if you’ve got a float (or an integer) stored as a string, by doing some careful casting, you can confirm they’re of the type you wanted… and then you can pass them through the right filter to use them in your playbooks!

Booleans

Last thing to check – boolean values – “True” or “False“. There’s a bit of confusion here, as a “boolean” can be: true or false, yes or no, 1 or 0, however, is true and True and TRUE the same? How about false, False and FALSE? Let’s take a look!

⬇️Value \ ➡️Check	`type_debug`	`is boolean`	`is number`	`is iterable`	`is mapping`	`is string`	value when cast as bool	value when cast as string	value when cast as integer
yes	bool	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌	True	True	1
Yes	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	False	Yes	0
YES	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	False	YES	0
“yes”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	True	yes	0
“Yes”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	True	Yes	0
“YES”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	True	YES	0
true	bool	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌	True	True	1
True	bool	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌	True	True	1
TRUE	bool	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌	True	True	1
“true”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	True	true	0
“True”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	True	True	0
“TRUE”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	True	TRUE	0
1	int	❌	✔️	❌	❌	❌	True	1	1
“1”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	True	1	1
no	bool	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌	False	False	0
No	bool	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌	False	False	0
NO	bool	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌	False	False	0
“no”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	False	no	0
“No”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	False	No	0
“NO”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	False	NO	0
false	bool	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌	False	False	0
False	bool	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌	False	False	0
FALSE	bool	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌	False	False	0
“false”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	False	false	0
“False”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	False	False	0
“FALSE”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	False	FALSE	0
0	int	❌	✔️	❌	❌	❌	False	0	0
“0”	AnsibleUnicode	❌	❌	✔️	❌	✔️	False	0	0

Comparisons between various stylings of boolean representations

So, the stand out thing for me here is that while all the permutations of string values of the boolean representations (those wrapped in quotes, like this: "yes") are treated as strings, and shouldn’t be considered as “boolean” (unless you cast for it explicitly!), and all non-string versions of true, false, and no are considered to be boolean, yes, Yes and YES are treated differently, depending on case. So, what would I do?

In summary

Consistently use no or yes, true or false in lower case to indicate a boolean value. Don’t use 1 or 0 unless you have to.
If you’re checking that you’re working with a string, a list or a dict, check in the order string (using is string), dict (using is mapping) and then list (using is sequence or is iterable)
Checking for numbers that are stored as strings? Cast your string through the type check for that number, like this: {% if value | float | string == value | string %}{{ value | float }}{% elif value | int | string == value | string %}{{ value | int }}{% else %}{{ value }}{% endif %}
Try not to use type_debug unless you really can’t find any other way. These values will change between versions, and this caused me a lot of issues with a large codebase I was working on a while ago!

Run these tests yourself!

Want to run these tests yourself? Here’s the code I ran (also available in a Gist on GitHub), using Ansible 2.9.10.

---
- hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: no
  vars:
    an_int: 1
    a_float: 1.1
    a_string: "string"
    an_int_as_string: "1"
    a_float_as_string: "1.1"
    a_list:
      - item1
    a_dict:
      key1: value1
  tasks:
    - debug:
        msg: |
          {
          {% for var in ["an_int", "an_int_as_string","a_float", "a_float_as_string","a_string","a_list","a_dict"] %}
            "{{ var }}": {
              "type_debug": "{{ vars[var] | type_debug }}",
              "value": "{{ vars[var] }}",
              "is float": "{{ vars[var] is float }}",
              "is integer": "{{ vars[var] is integer }}",
              "is iterable": "{{ vars[var] is iterable }}",
              "is mapping": "{{ vars[var] is mapping }}",
              "is number": "{{ vars[var] is number }}",
              "is sequence": "{{ vars[var] is sequence }}",
              "is string": "{{ vars[var] is string }}",
              "value cast as float": "{{ vars[var] | float }}",
              "value cast as integer": "{{ vars[var] | int }}",
              "value cast as string": "{{ vars[var] | string }}",
              "is same when cast to float": "{{ vars[var] | float | string == vars[var] | string }}",
              "is same when cast to integer": "{{ vars[var] | int | string == vars[var] | string }}",
              "is same when cast to string": "{{ vars[var] | string == vars[var] | string }}",
            },
          {% endfor %}
          }

---
- hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: false
  vars:
    # true, True, TRUE, "true", "True", "TRUE"
    a_true: true
    a_true_initial_caps: True
    a_true_caps: TRUE
    a_string_true: "true"
    a_string_true_initial_caps: "True"
    a_string_true_caps: "TRUE"
    # yes, Yes, YES, "yes", "Yes", "YES"
    a_yes: yes
    a_yes_initial_caps: Tes
    a_yes_caps: TES
    a_string_yes: "yes"
    a_string_yes_initial_caps: "Yes"
    a_string_yes_caps: "Yes"
    # 1, "1"
    a_1: 1
    a_string_1: "1"
    # false, False, FALSE, "false", "False", "FALSE"
    a_false: false
    a_false_initial_caps: False
    a_false_caps: FALSE
    a_string_false: "false"
    a_string_false_initial_caps: "False"
    a_string_false_caps: "FALSE"
    # no, No, NO, "no", "No", "NO"
    a_no: no
    a_no_initial_caps: No
    a_no_caps: NO
    a_string_no: "no"
    a_string_no_initial_caps: "No"
    a_string_no_caps: "NO"
    # 0, "0"
    a_0: 0
    a_string_0: "0"
  tasks:
    - debug:
        msg: |
          {
          {% for var in ["a_true","a_true_initial_caps","a_true_caps","a_string_true","a_string_true_initial_caps","a_string_true_caps","a_yes","a_yes_initial_caps","a_yes_caps","a_string_yes","a_string_yes_initial_caps","a_string_yes_caps","a_1","a_string_1","a_false","a_false_initial_caps","a_false_caps","a_string_false","a_string_false_initial_caps","a_string_false_caps","a_no","a_no_initial_caps","a_no_caps","a_string_no","a_string_no_initial_caps","a_string_no_caps","a_0","a_string_0"] %}
            "{{ var }}": {
              "type_debug": "{{ vars[var] | type_debug }}",
              "value": "{{ vars[var] }}",
              "is float": "{{ vars[var] is float }}",
              "is integer": "{{ vars[var] is integer }}",
              "is iterable": "{{ vars[var] is iterable }}",
              "is mapping": "{{ vars[var] is mapping }}",
              "is number": "{{ vars[var] is number }}",
              "is sequence": "{{ vars[var] is sequence }}",
              "is string": "{{ vars[var] is string }}",
              "is bool": "{{ vars[var] is boolean }}",
              "value cast as float": "{{ vars[var] | float }}",
              "value cast as integer": "{{ vars[var] | int }}",
              "value cast as string": "{{ vars[var] | string }}",
              "value cast as bool": "{{ vars[var] | bool }}",
              "is same when cast to float": "{{ vars[var] | float | string == vars[var] | string }}",
              "is same when cast to integer": "{{ vars[var] | int | string == vars[var] | string }}",
              "is same when cast to string": "{{ vars[var] | string == vars[var] | string }}",
              "is same when cast to bool": "{{ vars[var] | bool | string == vars[var] | string }}",
            },
          {% endfor %}
          }

Featured image is “Kelvin Test” by “Eelke” on Flickr and is released under a CC-BY license.

"vieux port Marseille" by "Jeanne Menjoulet" on Flickr

Networking tricks with Multipass in Virtualbox on Windows (Bridged interfaces and Port Forwards)

2020-02-062020-05-27 JonTheNiceGuy 15 Comments

TL;DR? Want to “just” bridge one or more interfaces to a Multipass instance when you’re using Virtualbox? See the Bridging Summary below. Want to do a port forward? See the Port Forward section below. You will need the psexec command and to execute this as an administrator. The use of these two may be considered a security incident on your computing environment, depending on how your security processes and infrastructure are defined and configured.

Ah Multipass. This is a tool created by Canonical to create a “A mini-cloud on your Mac or Windows workstation.” (from their website)…

I’ve often seen this endorsed as the tool of choice from Canonical employees to do “stuff” like run Kubernetes, develop tools for UBPorts (previously Ubuntu Touch) devices, and so on.

So far, it seems interesting. It’s a little bit like Vagrant with an in-built cloud-init Provisioner, and as I want to test out the cloud-init files I’m creating for AWS and Azure, that’d be so much easier than actually building the AWS or Azure machines, or finding a viable cloud-init plugin for Vagrant to test it out.

BUT… Multipass is really designed for Linux systems (running LibVirt), OS X (running HyperKit) and Windows (running Hyper-V). Even if I were using Windows 10 Pro on this machine, I use Virtualbox for “things” on my Windows Machine, and Hyper-V steals the VT-X bit, which means that VirtualBox can’t run x64 code…. Soooo I can’t use the Hyper-V mode.

Now, there is a “fix” for this. You can put Multipass into Virtualbox mode, which lets you run Multipass on Windows or OS X without using their designed-for hypervisor, but this has a downside, you see, VirtualBox doesn’t give MultiPass the same interface to route networking connections to the VM, and there’s currently no CLI or GUI options to say “bridge my network” or “forward a port” (in part because it needs to be portable to the native hypervisor options, apparently). So, I needed to fudge some things so I can get my beloved bridged connections.

I got to the point where I could do this, thanks to the responses to a few issues I raised on the Multipass Github issues, mostly #1333.

The first thing you need to install in Windows is PsExec, because Multipass runs it’s Virtual Machines as the SYSTEM account, and talking to SYSTEM account processes is nominally hard. Get PsExec from the SysInternals website. Some IT Security professionals will note the addition of PsExec as a potential security incident, but then again, they might also see the running of a virtual machine as a security incident too, as these aren’t controlled with a central image. Anyway… Just bear it in mind, and don’t shout at me if you get frogmarched in front of your CISO.

I’m guessing if you’re here, you’ve already installed Multipass, (but if not, and it seems interesting – it’s over at https://multipass.run. Get it and install it, then carry on…) and you’ve probably enabled the VirtualBox mode (if not – open a command prompt as administrator, and run “multipass set local.driver=virtualbox“). Now, you can start sorting out your bridges.

Sorting out bridges

First things first, you need to launch a virtual machine. I did, and it generated a name for my image.

C:\Users\JON>multipass launch
Launched: witty-kelpie

Fab! We have a running virtual machine, and you should be able to get a shell in there by running multipass shell "witty-kelpie" (the name of the machine it launched before). But, uh-oh. We have the “default” NAT interface of this device mapped, not a bridged interface.

C:\Users\JON>multipass shell "witty-kelpie"
Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-76-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Thu Feb  6 10:56:38 GMT 2020

  System load:  0.3               Processes:             82
  Usage of /:   20.9% of 4.67GB   Users logged in:       0
  Memory usage: 11%               IP address for enp0s3: 10.0.2.15
  Swap usage:   0%


0 packages can be updated.
0 updates are security updates.


To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

ubuntu@witty-kelpie:~$

So, exit the machine, and issue a multipass stop "witty-kelpie" command to ask Virtualbox to shut it down.

So, this is where the fun[1] part begins.
[1] The “Fun” part here depends on how you view this specific set of circumstances 😉

We need to get the descriptions of all the interfaces we might want to bridge to this device. I have three interfaces on my machine – a WiFi interface, a Ethernet interface on my laptop, and an Ethernet interface on my USB3 dock. At some point in the past, I renamed these interfaces, so I’d recognise them in the list of interfaces, so they’re not just called “Connection #1”, “Connection #2” and so on… but you should recognise your interfaces.

To get this list of interfaces, open PowerShell (as a “user”), and run this command:

PS C:\Users\JON> Get-NetAdapter -Physical | format-list -property "Name","DriverDescription"

Name              : On-Board Network Connection
DriverDescription : Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I219-LM

Name              : Wi-Fi
DriverDescription : Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260

Name              : Dock Network Connection
DriverDescription : DisplayLink Network Adapter NCM

For reasons best known to the Oracle team, they use the “Driver Description” to identify the interfaces, not the name assigned to the device by the user, so, before we get started, find your interface, and note down the description for later. If you want to bridge “all” of them, make a note of all the interfaces in question, and in the order you want to attach them. Note that Virtualbox doesn’t really like exposing more than 8 NICs without changing the Chipset to ICH9 (but really… 9+ NICs? really??) and the first one is already consumed with the NAT interface you’re using to connect to it… so that gives you 7 bridgeable interfaces. Whee!

So, now you know what interfaces you want to bridge, let’s configure the Virtualbox side. Like I said before you need psexec. I’ve got psexec stored in my Downloads folder. You can only run psexec as administrator, so open up an Administrator command prompt or powershell session, and run your command.

Just for clarity, your commands are likely to have some different paths, so remember that wherever “your” PsExec64.exe command is located, mine is in C:\Users\JON\Downloads\sysinternals\PsExec64.exe, and wherever your vboxmanage.exe is located, mine is in C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\vboxmanage.exe.

Here, I’m going to attach my dock port (“DisplayLink Network Adapter NCM”) to the second VirtualBox interface, the Wifi adaptor to the third interface and my locally connected interface to the fourth interface. Your interfaces WILL have different descriptions, and you’re likely not to need quite so many of them!

C:\WINDOWS\system32>C:\Users\JON\Downloads\sysinternals\PsExec64.exe -s "c:\program files\oracle\virtualbox\vboxmanage" modifyvm "witty-kelpie" --nic2 bridged --bridgeadapter2 "DisplayLink Network Adapter NCM" --nic3 bridged --bridgeadapter3 "Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260" --nic4 bridged --bridgeadapter4 "Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I219-LM"

PsExec v2.2 - Execute processes remotely
Copyright (C) 2001-2016 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

c:\program files\oracle\virtualbox\vboxmanage exited on MINILITH with error code 0.

An error code of 0 means that it completed successfuly and with no issues.

If you wanted to use a “Host Only” network (if you’re used to using Vagrant, you might know it as “Private” Networking), then change the NIC you’re interested in from --nicX bridged --bridgeadapterX "Some Description" to --nicX hostonly --hostonlyadapterX "VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter" (where X is replaced with the NIC number you want to swap, ranged between 2 and 8, as 1 is the NAT interface you use to SSH into the virtual machine.)

Now we need to check to make sure the machine has it’s requisite number of interfaces. We use the showvminfo flag to the vboxmanage command. It produces a LOT of content, so I’ve manually filtered the lines I want, but you should spot it reasonably quickly.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>C:\Users\JON\Downloads\sysinternals\PsExec64.exe -s "c:\program files\oracle\virtualbox\vboxmanage" showvminfo "witty-kelpie"

PsExec v2.2 - Execute processes remotely
Copyright (C) 2001-2016 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com


Name:                        witty-kelpie
Groups:                      /Multipass
Guest OS:                    Ubuntu (64-bit)
<SNIP SOME CONTENT>
NIC 1:                       MAC: 0800273CCED0, Attachment: NAT, Cable connected: on, Trace: off (file: none), Type: 82540EM, Reported speed: 0 Mbps, Boot priority: 0, Promisc Policy: deny, Bandwidth group: none
NIC 1 Settings:  MTU: 0, Socket (send: 64, receive: 64), TCP Window (send:64, receive: 64)
NIC 1 Rule(0):   name = ssh, protocol = tcp, host ip = , host port = 53507, guest ip = , guest port = 22
NIC 2:                       MAC: 080027303758, Attachment: Bridged Interface 'DisplayLink Network Adapter NCM', Cable connected: on, Trace: off (file: none), Type: 82540EM, Reported speed: 0 Mbps, Boot priority: 0, Promisc Policy: deny, Bandwidth group: none
NIC 3:                       MAC: 0800276EA174, Attachment: Bridged Interface 'Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260', Cable connected: on, Trace: off (file: none), Type: 82540EM, Reported speed: 0 Mbps, Boot priority: 0, Promisc Policy: deny, Bandwidth group: none
NIC 4:                       MAC: 080027042135, Attachment: Bridged Interface 'Intel(R) Ethernet Connection I219-LM', Cable connected: on, Trace: off (file: none), Type: 82540EM, Reported speed: 0 Mbps, Boot priority: 0, Promisc Policy: deny, Bandwidth group: none
NIC 5:                       disabled
NIC 6:                       disabled
NIC 7:                       disabled
NIC 8:                       disabled
<SNIP SOME CONTENT>

Configured memory balloon size: 0MB

c:\program files\oracle\virtualbox\vboxmanage exited on MINILITH with error code 0.

Fab! We now have working interfaces… But wait, let’s start that VM back up and see what happens.

C:\Users\JON>multipass shell "witty-kelpie"
Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-76-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Thu Feb  6 11:31:08 GMT 2020

  System load:  0.1               Processes:             84
  Usage of /:   21.1% of 4.67GB   Users logged in:       0
  Memory usage: 11%               IP address for enp0s3: 10.0.2.15
  Swap usage:   0%


0 packages can be updated.
0 updates are security updates.


Last login: Thu Feb  6 10:56:45 2020 from 10.0.2.2
To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

ubuntu@witty-kelpie:~$

Wait, what….. We’ve still only got the one interface up with an IP address… OK, let’s fix this!

As of Ubuntu 18.04, interfaces are managed using Netplan, and, well, when the VM was built, it didn’t know about any interface past the first one, so we need to get Netplan to get them enabled. Let’s check they’re detected by the VM, and see what they’re all called:

ubuntu@witty-kelpie:~$ ip link
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
2: enp0s3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 08:00:27:3c:ce:d0 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: enp0s8: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 08:00:27:30:37:58 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
4: enp0s9: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 08:00:27:6e:a1:74 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
5: enp0s10: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 08:00:27:04:21:35 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
ubuntu@witty-kelpie:~$

If you compare the link/ether lines to the output from showvminfo we executed before, you’ll see that the MAC address against enp0s3 matches the NAT interface, while enp0s8 matches the DisplayLink adapter, and so on… So we basically want to ask NetPlan to do a DHCP lookup for all the new interfaces we’ve added to it. If you’ve got 1 NAT and 7 physical interfaces (why oh why…) then you’d have enp0s8, 9, 10, 16, 17, 18 and 19 (I’ll come back to the random numbering in a tic)… so we now need to ask Netplan to do DHCP on all of those interfaces (assuming we’ll be asking for them all to come up!)

If we want to push that in, then we need to add a new file in /etc/netplan called something like 60-extra-interfaces.yaml, that should contain:

network:
  ethernets:
    enp0s8:
      optional: yes
      dhcp4: yes
      dhcp4-overrides:
        route-metric: 10
    enp0s9:
      optional: yes
      dhcp4: yes
      dhcp4-overrides:
        route-metric: 11
    enp0s10:
      optional: yes
      dhcp4: yes
      dhcp4-overrides:
        route-metric: 12
    enp0s16:
      optional: yes
      dhcp4: yes
      dhcp4-overrides:
        route-metric: 13
    enp0s17:
      optional: yes
      dhcp4: yes
      dhcp4-overrides:
        route-metric: 14
    enp0s18:
      optional: yes
      dhcp4: yes
      dhcp4-overrides:
        route-metric: 15
    enp0s19:
      optional: yes
      dhcp4: yes
      dhcp4-overrides:
        route-metric: 16

Going through this, we basically ask netplan not to assume the interfaces are attached. This stops the boot process for waiting for a timeout to configure each of the interfaces before proceeding, so it means your boot should be reasonably fast, particularly if you don’t always attach a network cable or join a Wifi network on all your interfaces!

We also say to assume we want IPv4 DHCP on each of those interfaces. I’ve done IPv4 only, as most people don’t use IPv6 at home, but if you are doing IPv6 as well, then you’d also need the same lines that start dhcp4 copied to show dhcp6 (like dhcp6: yes and dhcp6-overrides: route-metric: 10)

The eagle eyed of you might notice that the route metric increases for each extra interface. This is because realistically, if you have two interfaces connected (perhaps if you’ve got wifi enabled, and plug a network cable in), then you’re more likely to want to prioritize traffic going over the lower numbered interfaces than the higher number interfaces.

Once you’ve created this file, you need to run netplan apply or reboot your machine.

So, yehr, that gets you sorted on the interface front.

Bridging Summary

To review, you launch your machine with multipass launch, and immediately stop it with multipass stop "vm-name", then, as an admin, run psexec vboxmanage modifyvm "vm-name" --nic2 bridged --bridgedadapter2 "NIC description", and then start the machine with multipass start "vm-name". Lastly, ask the interface to do DHCP by manipulating your Netplan configuration.

Interface Names in VirtualBox

Just a quick note on the fact that the interface names aren’t called things like eth0 any more. A few years back, Ubuntu (amongst pretty much all of the Linux distribution vendors) changed from using eth0 style naming to what they call “Predictable Network Interface Names”. This derives the names from things like, what the BIOS provides for on-board interfaces, slot index numbers for PCI Express ports, and for this case, the “geographic location of the connector”. In Virtualbox, these interfaces are provided as the “Geographically” attached to “port 0” (so enp0 are all on port 0), but for some reason, they broadcast themselves as being attached to the port 0 at “slots” 3, 8, 9, 10, 16, 17, 18 and 19… hence enp0s3 and so on. shrug It just means that if you don’t have the interfaces coming up on the interfaces you’re expecting, you need to run ip link to confirm the MAC addresses match.

Port Forwarding

Unlike with the Bridging, we don’t need to power down the VM to add the extra interfaces, we just need to use psexec (as an admin again) to execute a vboxmanage command – in this case, it’s:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>C:\Users\JON\Downloads\sysinternals\PsExec64.exe -s "c:\program files\oracle\virtualbox\vboxmanage" controlvm "witty-kelpie" --natpf1 "myport,tcp,,1234,,2345"

OK, that’s a bit more obscure. Basically it says “Create a NAT rule on NIC 1 called ‘myport’ to forward TCP connections from port 1234 attached to any IP associated to the host OS to port 2345 attached to the DHCP supplied IP on the guest OS”.

If we wanted to run a DNS server in our VM, we could run multiple NAT rules in the same command, like this:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>C:\Users\JON\Downloads\sysinternals\PsExec64.exe -s "c:\program files\oracle\virtualbox\vboxmanage" controlvm "witty-kelpie" --natpf1 "TCP DNS,tcp,127.0.0.1,53,,53" --natpf1 "UDP DNS,udp,127.0.0.1,53,,53"

If we then decide we don’t need those NAT rules any more, we just (with psexec and appropriate paths) issue: vboxmanage controlvm "vm-name" --natpf1 delete "TCP DNS"

Using `ifupdown` instead of `netplan`

Late Edit 2020-04-01: On Github, someone asked me how they could use the same type of config with netplan, but instead on a 16.04 system. Ubuntu 16.04 doesn’t use netplan, but instead uses ifupdown instead. Here’s how to configure the file for ifupdown:

You can either add the following stanzas to /etc/network/interfaces, or create a separate file for each interface in /etc/network/interfaces.d/<number>-<interface>.cfg (e.g. /etc/network/interfaces.d/10-enp0s8.cfg)

allow-hotplug enp0s8
iface enp0s8 inet dhcp
  metric 10

To re-iterate, in the above netplan file, the interfaces we identified were: enp0s8, enp0s9, enp0s10, enp0s16, enp0s17, enp0s18 and enp0s19. Each interface was incrementally assigned a route metric, starting at 10 and ending at 16, so enp0s8 has a metric of 10, while enp0s16 has a metric of 13, and so on. To build these files, I’ve created this brief shell script you could use:

export metric=10
for int in 8 9 10 16 17 18 19
do
  echo -e "allow-hotplug enp0s${int}\niface enp0s${int} inet dhcp\n  metric $metric" > /etc/network/interfaces.d/enp0s${int}.cfg
  ((metric++))
done

As before, you could reboot to make the changes to the interfaces. Bear in mind, however, that unlike Netplan, these interfaces will try and DHCP on boot with this configuration, so boot time will take longer if every interface attached isn’t connected to a network.

Using NAT Network instead of NAT Interface

Late update 2020-05-26: Ruzsinsky contacted me by email to ask how I’d use a “NAT Network” instead of a “NAT interface”. Essentially, it’s the same as the Bridged interface above, with one other tweak first, we need to create the Net Network, with this command (as an Admin)

C:\WINDOWS\system32>C:\Users\JON\Downloads\sysinternals\PsExec64.exe -s "c:\program files\oracle\virtualbox\vboxmanage" natnetwork add --netname MyNet --network 192.0.2.0/24

Next, stop your multipass virtual machine with multipass stop "witty-kelpie", and configure your second interface, like this:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>C:\Users\JON\Downloads\sysinternals\PsExec64.exe -s "c:\program files\oracle\virtualbox\vboxmanage" modifyvm "witty-kelpie" --nic2 natnetwork --nat-network2 "MyNet"

PsExec v2.2 - Execute processes remotely
Copyright (C) 2001-2016 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

c:\program files\oracle\virtualbox\vboxmanage exited on MINILITH with error code 0.

Start the vm with multipass start "witty-kelpie", open a shell with it multipass shell "witty-kelpie", become root sudo -i and then configure the interface in /etc/netplan/60-extra-interfaces.yaml like we did before:

network:
  ethernets:
    enp0s8:
      optional: yes
      dhcp4: yes
      dhcp4-overrides:
        route-metric: 10

And then run netplan apply or reboot.

What I would say, however, is that the first interface seems to be expected to be a NAT interface, at which point, having a NAT network as well seems a bit pointless. You might be better off using a “Host Only” (or “Private”) network for any inter-host communications between nodes at a network level… But you know your environments and requirements better than I do :)

Featured image is “vieux port Marseille” by “Jeanne Menjoulet” on Flickr and is released under a CC-BY-ND license.

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Working around the fact that Ansible’s URI module doesn’t honour the no_proxy variable…

2019-05-142019-05-14 JonTheNiceGuy Leave a comment

An Ansible project I’ve been working on has tripped me up this week. I’m working with some HTTP APIs and I need to check early whether I can reach the host. To do this, I used a simple Ansible Core Module which lets you call an HTTP URI.

- uri:
    follow_redirects: none
    validate_certs: False
    timeout: 5
    url: "http{% if ansible_https | default(True) %}s{% endif %}://{{ ansible_host }}/login"
  register: uri_data
  failed_when: False
  changed_when: False

This all seems pretty simple. One of the environments I’m working in uses the following values in their environment:

http_proxy="http://192.0.2.1:8080"
https_proxy="http://192.0.2.1:8080"
no_proxy="10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16, 192.0.2.0/24, 198.51.100.0/24, 203.0.113.0/24"

And this breaks the uri module, because it tries to punt everything through the proxy if the “no_proxy” contains CIDR values (like 192.0.2.0/24) (there’s a bug raised for this)… So here’s my fix!

- set_fact:
    no_proxy_match: |
      {
        {% for no_proxy in (lookup('env', 'no_proxy') | replace(',', '') ).split() %}
          {% if no_proxy| ipaddr | type_debug != 'NoneType' %}
            {% if ansible_host | ipaddr(no_proxy) | type_debug != 'NoneType' %}
              "match": "True"
            {% endif %}
          {% endif %}
        {% endfor %}
      }

- uri:
    follow_redirects: none
    validate_certs: False
    timeout: 5
    url: "http{% if ansible_https | default(True) %}s{% endif %}://{{ ansible_host }}/login"
  register: uri_data
  failed_when: False
  changed_when: False
  environment: "{ {% if no_proxy_match.match | default(False) %}'no_proxy': '{{ ansible_host }}'{% endif %} }"

So, let’s break this down.

The key part to this script is that we need to override the no_proxy environment variable with the IP address that we’re trying to address (so that we’re not putting 16M addresses for 10.0.0.0/8 into no_proxy, for example). To do that, we use the exact same URI block, except for the environment line at the end.

In turn, the set_fact block steps through the no_proxy values, looking for IP Addresses to check ({% if no_proxy | ipaddr ... %}‌ says “if the no_proxy value is an IP Address, return it, but if it isn’t, return a ‘None’ value”) and if it’s an IP address or subnet mask, it checks to see whether the IP address of the host you’re trying to reach falls inside that IP Address or Subnet Mask ({% if ansible_host | ipaddr(no_proxy) ... %} says “if the ansible_host address falls inside the no_proxy range, then return it, otherwise return a ‘None’ value”). Both of these checks say “If this previous check returns anything other than a ‘None’ value, do the next thing”, and on the last check, the “next” thing is to set the flag ‘match’ to ‘true’. When we get to the environment variable, we say “if match is not true, it’s false, so don’t put a value in there”.

So that’s that! Yes, I could merge the set_fact block into the environment variable, but I do end up using that a fair amount. And really, if it was merged, that would be even MORE complicated to pick through.

I have raised a pull request on the Ansible project to update the documentation, so we’ll see whether we end up with people over here looking for ways around this issue. If so, let me know in the comments below! Thanks!!

Weirdness with Bash functions and Curl

2010-10-102010-10-10 JonTheNiceGuy Leave a comment

I’m writing a script (for $NEW_PROJECT) which, due to my inability to figure out how to compile a certain key library on Dreamhost, runs SSH to a remote box (with public/private keys and a limitation on what that key can *actually* achieve) to perform an off-box process of some data.

After it’s all done, I am using curl to call the API of the project like this:

curl --fail -F "file=@`pwd`/file" -F "other=form" -F "options=are_set" http://user:password@server/api/function

Because I’m making a few calls against the API, I wrote a function like this:

function callAPI() { API=$1 if [ "$2" != "" ] then API=$API/$2 fi if [ "$3" != "" ] then API=$API/$3 fi if [ "${OPTION}" != "" ] then FORM="${OPTION}" else FORM="" fi if [ $DEBUG == "1" ] then echo "curl --fail ${FORM} http://${USER}:**********@${SITE}/api/${API}" fi eval `curl --fail ${FORM} http://${USER}:${PASS}@${SITE}/api/${API} 2>/dev/null` }

and then call it like this:

OPTION="-F \"file=@filename\" -F \"value=one\" -F \"value=two\"" callAPI function

For all the rest of my API calls (those which ask for data, rather than supply it, these calls work *fine*, but as soon as I tell it to post a form containing a file, it throws this error:

curl: (26) failed creating form post data

I did some digging around, and found that this means that the script can’t read from the file. The debug line, when run outside of the script processed the command perfectly, so what’s going on?

To be honest, in the end, I just copied the command into the body of the code, and I’m praying that I can figure out why I can’t compile this library on Dreamhost, before I need to work out why running that curl line doesn’t work from inside a function.

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Doing it wrong, getting it better

More details on finding a type

Changing the type of a string

Checking for miscast values

Booleans

In summary

Run these tests yourself!

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Sorting out bridges

Bridging Summary

Interface Names in VirtualBox

Port Forwarding

Using ifupdown instead of netplan

Using NAT Network instead of NAT Interface

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Using `ifupdown` instead of `netplan`