Deploying Machines with MaaS and Packer - Metal as a Service + Hashicorp Packer Tutorial

MaaS or Metal as a service from Canonical is a great way to provision bare metal machines as well as virtual machines.MaaS allows you to deploy Windows, Linux, ESXi, and many other operating systems to your systems helping you to build a bare metal cloud.You can even use Packer from Hashicorp to configure custom images too! We’ll cover all of this and more in this tutorial on how to install and configure MaaS from start to finish with Packer!

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Installing MaaS

MaaS can be installed via apt or snap.I had some issues with the apt version so I used snap for this install.

snap install

Be sure snap is installed

sudo apt install snapd

sudo snap install --channel=3.2 maas

apt install

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:maas/3.2
sudo apt update
sudo apt install maas

Installing a Test Database

(skip this step if you already have postgres in your environment)

This should be used if you want to use MaaS test database

sudo snap install maas-test-db

testing the database

sudo maas-test-db.psql

then list databases you should see maasdb there

postgres=# \l

Initializing MaaS

If you are using the test database above, initialize MaaS

sudo maas init region+rack --database-uri maas-test-db:///

If you already have postgres in your environment you can initialize MaaS using your existing postgres service.Be sure to create the database, user, and assign that user permissions before running the init command.

sudo maas init region+rack --database-uri "postgres://username:[email protected]/maas" # replace username /password / ip /db name

if you don’t wand to store your secrets in your terminal’s history, consider using ENV variables:

sudo maas init region+rack --database-uri "postgres://$MAAS_DBUSER:$MAAS_DBPASS@$HOSTNAME/$MAAS_DBNAME"

Create admin account

sudo maas createadmin

Here you can choose to import your LaunchPad or GitHub public key using gh:githubusername

Checking MaaS

sudo maas status

The output should like something similar to this:

bind9                            RUNNING   pid 1014, uptime 2 days, 10:52:40
dhcpd                            STOPPED   Not started
dhcpd6                           STOPPED   Not started
http                             RUNNING   pid 1477, uptime 2 days, 10:52:23
ntp                              RUNNING   pid 1143, uptime 2 days, 10:52:37
proxy                            RUNNING   pid 1454, uptime 2 days, 10:52:25
rackd                            RUNNING   pid 1017, uptime 2 days, 10:52:40
regiond                          RUNNING   pid 1018, uptime 2 days, 10:52:40
syslog                           RUNNING   pid 1144, uptime 2 days, 10:52:37

If you ever need to reinitialize MaaS

sudo maas init region

Configuring Packer Images

Install Packer

Get key ring

wget -O- https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg

Add keyring

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release --codename --short) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list

add Hashicorp Repo

sudo apt-add-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main" 

Install Packer

sudo apt update
sudo apt install packer

Update and install dependencies needed to build images

sudo apt update
sudo apt install qemu-utils qemu-system ovmf cloud-image-utils make curtain git

Building a custom image from canonical/packer-maas

Clone the canonical/packer-maas repo

git clone https://github.com/canonical/packer-maas.git

cd packer-maas
cd ubuntu
sudo packer init ubuntu-cloudimg.pkr.hcl
sudo make custom-cloudimg.tar.gz

check and change permissions of archive (change root to your username)

ls -l
sudo chown root:root ./custom-cloudimg.tar.gz

Uploading Packer image to MaaS

echo your MaaS api key to your home directory

sudo maas apikey --username=massadmin > ~/api-key-file

You can check with with

cat ~/api-key-file

Authenticate to MaaS with your api key

maas login massadmin http://localhost:5240/MAAS/api/2.0/ $(head -1  ~/api-key-file)

Upload the custom image we made to MaaS

maas massadmin boot-resources create name='custom/cloudimg-tgz' title='Ubuntu Custom TGZ' architecture='amd64/generic' filetype='tgz' content@=custom-cloudimg.tar.gz

Chapters

00:00 - What is MaaS (Metal as a Service) from Canonical?

02:00 - Micro Center / $25 Off CPUs! (Sponsor)

03:00 - Installing MaaS

06:56 - Initial MaaS Configuration

09:41 - Importing your SSH Key

10:23 - Networking Configuration & Discovery

14:05 - PXE & Network Boot with DHCP

15:33 - Commissioning a Machine (Initial Discovery)

18:45 - Power Types & Wake on LAN (WOL)

20:50 - Commissioning a Machine Part 2 (For real this time)

24:00 - Deploying Ubuntu

26:15 - SSH in to machine

26:54 - Creating Custom Images with Hashicorp Packer

33:40 - Uploading a Custom Image to MaaS

38:05 - What do I think of MaaS from Canonical?

39:57 - Stream Highlight - “100 + 50 subs dropped 🫳🎤”

Join the conversation

This past week I learned how to solve the challenge of imaging bare metal machines. I settled on MaaS (Metal as a Service) and custom images with Hashicorp Packer. This is the missing link for automation in my #homelab

Check out the video here 👇https://t.co/5rhHtwaLi4 pic.twitter.com/KgeYCgYzgt

— Techno Tim (@TechnoTimLive) January 28, 2023

Links

⚙️ See all the hardware I recommend at https://l.technotim.live/gear

🚀 Don’t forget to check out the 🚀Launchpad repo with all of the quick start source files