Tips on installing XO

olivierlambert

It's meant to run in a VM, but if you want to tinker with the sources, you can install it on a physical machine, no problem.

jasonnix

Hi @olivierlambert,
If there are several hosts and XO is installed as a VM, then if the host on which XO is installed has a problem, the management of all hosts will have a problem!

olivierlambert

No, they won't have a problem, you won't be able to interact with your VMs, but all VMs will run fine without it. If you lose XOA VM, just re-deploy one and that's it.

jasonnix

Hi @olivierlambert,
According to https://xen-orchestra.com/docs/installation.html#from-the-sources:

You need to use the git source code manager to fetch the code. Ideally, you should run XO as a non-root user, and if you choose to, you need to set up sudo to be able to mount NFS remotes.

But to install, you need a root account. It's true?

CJ

@jasonnix I've found the master host to be more of a limitation than XO as a VM. That said, unless you use XO Proxy, all of your backups will go through XO so you'll want it to have fast network access.

olivierlambert

@jasonnix No. You can rely on a non-root install with a regular Linux users, with enough permissions to deal with "usually restricted" features by default.

jasonnix

Hi @olivierlambert,
What is meant by enough permissions? If I want to clone XO under the /usr/local/src, then I need the root permission!
If I use the root account to install, will there be a problem?
I tried to clone the XO several times, but I got the following error:

# git clone -b master https://github.com/vatesfr/xen-orchestra.git
Cloning into 'xen-orchestra'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 122975, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (2950/2950), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (1307/1307), done.
error: 1124 bytes of body are still expected MiB | 162.00 KiB/s 
fetch-pack: unexpected disconnect while reading sideband packet
fatal: early EOF
fatal: fetch-pack: invalid index-pack output

What is wrong?

john.c

@jasonnix The Linux distribution operating system restricts certain commands, operations and/or path (location) to the root account, as well as the location owner.

The path your trying to write to is just one such location as the location is read only to non-root users. If you really wish to write to /usr/local/src then root account is required.

If you use the root account to install then the directory and the Xen Orchestra files will be owner by root. You would need to create a non-root user for the xen orchestra server process. As well as change ownership of the Xen Orchestra files and folders to that non-root account. Though at least the ones which Xen Orchestra should be able to modify as required, when needed.

As well as provide the necessary sudo permissions for the necessary commands to that account.

Using root account to run exposes any vulnerabilities present to the capacity of being exploited as root (aka Administrator) privileges.

Also how good is your internet connection and your connection to GitHub? Cause you could be experiencing a time out packet loss connection issue.

jasonnix

Hello @john-c,
Thank you so much for your advices.
1- I had used the root account for this, so there is no permission issue. Now, I realized that root account is not suitable for this. Which directory is suitable for cloning?

2- Is there a problem if I download the file from Github as a zip file and install it?

olivierlambert

You can but it's less convenient.

john.c

@olivierlambert said in Tips on installing XO:

You can but it's less convenient.

As well as more tricky when updated as you will need to create a zip and then re-download it. If however you can clone it especially by the git command then you can use it to update it as needed and/or use other methods to speed it up.

Additionally you can have a script to update the instance and handle any instances of ownership changes.

DustinB

@john-c said in Tips on installing XO:

@olivierlambert said in Tips on installing XO:

You can but it's less convenient.

As well as more tricky when updated as you will need to create a zip and then re-download it. If however you can clone it especially by the git command then you can use it to update it as needed and/or use other methods to speed it up.

Additionally you can have a script to update the instance and handle any instances of ownership changes.

That seems like an insane way to install and update this XO.

jasonnix

Hello,
You said that I should not do the installation with the root account, which directory is suitable for cloning?

Cheers.

jasonnix

Hello,
No idea?

Cheers.

lawrencesystems

@jasonnix

I have. a tutorial here on how to build from sources using https://github.com/ronivay/XenOrchestraInstallerUpdater which can be done using a sudo user.

https://youtu.be/fuS7tSOxcSo

jasonnix

Hi @lawrencesystems,
Some people said that I should not use the root account. Which directory is suitable for cloning?

lawrencesystems

@jasonnix

use an account that is in the sudo list.

jasonnix

Thanks @lawrencesystems.
If I want to clone it manually, then which directory is OK? For example, "/home", "/tmp", etc.

lawrencesystems

@jasonnix

If you are going to do it manually then choose whatever you want, but /tmp might not make much sense to put something important.

jasonnix

Hi @lawrencesystems,
Thanks again.
I want to clone XO under the /usr/local/src directory, but this directory requires root access. Is there a problem if I do this with the sudo command?