Public bug reported:

The last days I tried to install xcp-xapi on Ubuntu but not with the
absolutely common way which means use eth0, a /24 network and bridged
network.

Instead I have an eth1 management interface (eth0 is reserved for later
use), /23 network and I wanted to use openvswitch.

Here is a series of problems I encountered. Most of them are just
polishing issues in my opinion, which is hard to find documentation and
solutions.

1. When using openvswitch, if you do not issue the "xe pif-reconfigure-
ip" command, you lose network connectivity and there is no way to reach
the machine if you do not have physical access.

2. When I fixed the network with the following two commands, still I could not 
access the network. Due to bug 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xen-api/+bug/1195821
the xe pif-reconfigure-ip command would set a /24 subnet mask, so the xcp 
ubuntu server could not reach the gateway which is the topmost IP in my /23 
network.

PIF_UUID=`xe pif-list device=eth1 --minimal`
xe pif-reconfigure-ip uuid=$PIF_UUID mode=static IP=10.0.0.5 
netmask=255.255.254.0 gateway=10.0.1.254 DNS=10.0.1.254

3. After I applied a patch (compiled using apt-get source) to fix issue
No2 I faced the situation where I could not connect to my XCP server
using OpenXenManager because it would only listen to 127.0.0.1:80 (I
could connect using ssh to 10.0.0.5). The only existing configuration
file after the installation is /etc/xcp/xapi.conf and it doesn't contain
anything (not even some examples or a pointer to some documentation). It
just says that it is "intentionally left blank". An online search trying
to find directives accepted by this configuration file was not fruitful,
neither some questions I asked in forums.

# cat xapi.conf 
# The xapi config file
# (intentionally left blank)

4. I coincidentally found the solution when after some times I ran "service 
xcp-xapi restart" a file /etc/xcp/inventory appeared in the configuration 
directory (the inventory file is not there right after the installation). This 
file contains a "MANAGEMENT_INTERFACE" directive which is set by default to 
xenbr0.
xenbr0 in my case has no IP address. When I changed this directive to xenbr1 
which is the interface with the assigned IP address, then I had to restart 
xcp-xapi service for one more time and two more files appeared. 
/etc/xcp/xapi-ssl.conf and /etc/xcp/xapi-ssl.pem. Eventually after this the 
service was configured automatically to listen to the external IP address.

# cat inventory 
BUILD_NUMBER='0'
CONTROL_DOMAIN_UUID='31629484-98c1-86eb-ad99-19acd80887fb'
INSTALLATION_UUID='5416184d-c45e-6389-4db9-b60f5e85c5aa'
MANAGEMENT_INTERFACE='xenbr1'

# cat xapi-ssl.conf
; Autogenerated by init.d/xapissl
pid = /var/run/xapissl.pid
socket = r:TCP_NODELAY=1
socket = a:TCP_NODELAY=1
socket = l:TCP_NODELAY=1
compression = zlib

[localhost-xapi]
accept = 127.0.0.1:443
connect = 80
cert = /etc/xcp/xapi-ssl.pem
ciphers = 
!SSLv2:RSA+AES256-SHA:RSA+AES128-SHA:RSA+RC4-SHA:RSA+RC4-MD5:RSA+DES-CBC3-SHA

[xapi]
accept = 10.0.0.5:443
connect = 80
cert = /etc/xcp/xapi-ssl.pem
ciphers = 
!SSLv2:RSA+AES256-SHA:RSA+AES128-SHA:RSA+RC4-SHA:RSA+RC4-MD5:RSA+DES-CBC3-SHA
TIMEOUTclose = 0


Some suggestions:
1. During the installation ask the user which is their primary network 
interface and set the corresponding xenbr device in the /etc/xcp/inventory file.

2. During the installation, you are asked to choose either bridged or
openvswitch networking. When choosing openvswitch, the network
configuration should be prepared from the installer (the xe pif-
reconfigure-ip command) based on the management interface chosen in
suggestion 1. It should also give a warning to the user that their
network is now managed by "xe" and /etc/network/interfaces is not really
needed. If they lose connectivity, what they need to do to fix this
situation (provide a link to documentation).

3. Provide some sample configuration and a link to some documentation
with accepted configuration directives in /etc/xcp/xapi.conf file which
is there by default. The "(intentionally left blank)" is not much of
use.

** Affects: xen-api (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: polishing usability xen-api

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1197314

Title:
  xcp-xapi needs polishing/proper documentation

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