Upgrade notes

This document contains information and notes about any changes that are required in the Ansible inventory or the IT infrastructure managed by DebOps to perform the upgrades between different stable releases.

Unreleased

v2.1.0 (2020-06-21)

Inventory variable changes

  • Some variables in the debops.ntp role have been removed:

    Old variable name New variable name Changed value
    ntp__timezone tzdata__timezone No

v2.0.0 (2020-01-30)

General

  • Official DebOps roles have been renamed and the debops. prefix has been dropped from the directory names. The custom playbooks and role dependencies that use DebOps roles will have to be updated accordingly to function correctly again.

  • The variables in various roles that hold the automatically generated passwords stored in the secret/ directory have been modified to use the inventory_hostname variable instead of the ansible_fqdn variable as a part of the path to the password file. The roles where these changes happened are:

    These changes will result in existing passwords or other generated data being automatically regenerated by Ansible on the next run of a given role. This might affect access to the services from other hosts if the new passwords are not applied everywhere. Make sure to re-run the affected roles on all relevant hosts in your infrastructure to update the passwords where necessary.

LDAP

  • The values of the authorizedService and host LDAP attributes expected by various DebOps roles have been changed. You will need to update your LDAP directory entries for the new values to take effect before applying these changes to the remote hosts, otherwise users and services might stop working correctly.

    Changes in the authorizedService attribute:

    Old value New value Notes
    * all Grants access to all services
    web-public web:public Grants access to publicly-reachable web services
    None shell Grants access to UNIX environment over SSH protocol

    Changes in the host attribute:

    Old value New value Notes
    * posix:all Grants access to POSIX environment on all hosts
    <fqdn> posix:<fqdn> Grants access to POSIX environment on a specific host based on its FQDN
    *.<domain> posix:*.<domain> Grants access to POSIX environment on a specific host based on its domain
    <hostname> Removed This scheme has been replaced by a more general purpose "URN-like" scheme. See Host-based access control for more details.

Inventory variable changes

v1.2.0 (2019-12-01)

Role configuration changes

  • In the debops.dnsmasq role, dnsmasq__interfaces variable configuration, the router_enabled parameter has been renamed to the router_state parameter, with changed value type.
  • In the debops.golang role, the golang__*_packages variables are used to define Go packages instead of simple list of APT packages, with entirely new syntax. Existing roles that rely on these variables might need to be updated. See the golang__packages documentation for more details.

Inventory variable changes

  • The debops.gitlab role has an improved LDAP support that uses the debops.ldap role infrastructure. Due to that, some of the default variables have been changed:

    Old variable name New variable name Changed value
    gitlab_ldap_activedirectory gitlab__ldap_activedirectory No
    gitlab_ldap_enable gitlab__ldap_enabled No
    gitlab_ldap_basedn gitlab__ldap_base_dn Yes
    gitlab_ldap_binddn gitlab__ldap_binddn Yes
    gitlab_ldap_domain Removed No
    gitlab_ldap_host gitlab__ldap_host No
    gitlab_ldap_label gitlab__ldap_label No
    gitlab_ldap_manage Removed No
    gitlab_ldap_method gitlab__ldap_encryption Yes
    gitlab_ldap_password gitlab__ldap_bindpw Yes
    gitlab_ldap_password_file Removed No
    gitlab_ldap_port gitlab__ldap_port No
    gitlab_ldap_uid gitlab__ldap_account_attribute Yes

    The location of the GitLab LDAP account object in the LDAP directory tree as well as the object class and its attributes has been changed, see the debops.gitlab LDAP DIT documentation page for more details.

    Some of the default configuration options have been changed to better integrate GitLab with the LDAP environment managed by DebOps:

    Variable name Old value New value
    gitlab__ldap_user_filter not defined too large; see the variable
    gitlab__ldap_label ldap.{{ ansible_domain }} LDAP

  • The debops.owncloud role has an improved LDAP support that uses the debops.ldap role infrastructure. Due to that, some of the default variables have been changed:

    Old variable name New variable name Changed value
    owncloud__ldap_create_user Removed No
    owncloud__ldap_domain Removed No
    owncloud__ldap_basedn owncloud__ldap_base_dn Yes
    owncloud__ldap_conf_map owncloud__ldap_default_config Yes
    owncloud__ldap_host owncloud__ldap_primary_server Yes
    owncloud__ldap_password owncloud__ldap_bindpw Yes
    owncloud__ldap_password_file Removed No

    The location of the Nextcloud LDAP account object in the LDAP directory tree as well as the object class and its attributes has been changed, see the debops.owncloud LDAP DIT documentation page for more details.

    The default connection method used by Nextcloud to connect to the LDAP directory has been changed from ssl to tls.

    The LDAP configuration method was rewritten and now uses custom DebOps filter plugins to allow merging of configuration from the role defaults and inventory variables. See owncloud__ldap_config for more details.

    Some of the default configuration options have been changed to better integrate Nextcloud with the LDAP environment managed by DebOps:

    Variable name Old value New value  
    owncloud__ldap_login_filter (&(|(objectclass=inetOrgPerson))(uid=%uid)) too large; see the variable
    owncloud__ldap_group_filter (&(|(objectclass=posixGroup))) too large; see the variable
    owncloud__ldap_group_assoc_attribute memberUid member

    Support for the memberOf overlay has also been enabled by default, since the overlay is included in debops.slapd role.

  • In the debops.ferm role, some of the connection tracking parameters have been renamed:

    Old parameter name New parameter name Changed value
    item.active_target item.tracking_active_target No
    item.invalid_target item.tracking_invalid_target No
    item.module item.tracking_module No

    See The 'connection_tracking' type for more details about connection tracking.

v1.1.0 (2019-08-25)

GPG key management changes

The debops.keyring centralizes management of the APT keyring and various GPG keyrings in unprivileged UNIX accounts. Various DebOps roles have been modified to use this role instead of performing the GPG key management on their own. If you use custom Ansible playbooks with these roles, you will need to update them to include the debops.keyring role.

List of modified DebOps roles:

NodeJS and NPM changes

  • By default, the debops.nodejs role will install the NodeJS and NPM packages from the OS (Debian or Ubuntu) repositories. On the Debian Oldstable release (currently Stretch), the packages backported from the Stable release will be used. The role supports an automatic upgrade to the upstream NodeJS package when the support for NodeSource repositories is enabled using the nodejs__node_upstream variable.

    On existing installations, status of the upstream APT repository should be preserved, however note that the Ansible local fact name that tracks this has been changed to ansible_local.nodejs.node_upstream, along with the default variable name. You might want to update the Ansible inventory to reflect the desired status of the NodeJS and NPM upstream support.

Inventory variable changes

  • The debops.rsnapshot role has been redesigned and all of its rsnapshot_* variables have been renamed to rsnapshot__* to contain them in their own namespace. You will have to update your inventory.

    The configuration of the hosts to back up has also been redesigned; the role does not use Ansible inventory groups to define the hosts to back up implicitly; you now have to explicitly specify hosts to back up using the rsnapshot__hosts variables. There is a way to replicate the previous usage of inventory groups to define hosts to back up as well, see the provided examples.

  • The debops.docker role has been renamed to debops.docker_server. The docker__* variables have been renamed to docker_server__*. You will have to update your inventory variables and move all hosts to the new inventory group [debops_service_docker_server] to continue using this role.

    Also, the Docker server no longer listens on a TCP port by default, even if debops.pki is enabled. You must set docker_server__tcp to True and configure an IP address whitelist in docker_server__tcp_allow if you want to connect to the Docker server over a network. It is recommended to use debops.pki to secure the connection with TLS.

  • The debops.lxc role uses different names of the container configuration options depending on the LXC version used on the host. The name parameters used in the configuration might change unexpectedly between LXC versions, which might lead to wrong configuration entries being merged and broken LXC configuration.

    If you have configured lxc__configuration variables in the Ansible inventory, review them before applying the role configuration on LXC hosts. You can check the lxc__default_configuration variable to see which name parameters can change.

  • The lxc__net_interface_fqdn variable has been renamed to lxc__net_fqdn to conform to the variable naming scheme for domain and FQDN names used in different DebOps roles. The new variable defines the FQDN name of the lxcbr0 interface. The lxc__net_domain variable which has done that previously is now used to define the DNS domain for the internal LXC subnet, and the new lxc__net_base_domain variable defines the base DNS domain for the lxc. subdomain.

  • The debops.ipxe role default variables have been renamed to move them to their own ipxe__* namespace; you will have to update the Ansible inventory.

  • The core__keyserver variable and its corresponding local fact have been replaced by the keyring__keyserver with a corresponding local fact.

  • The debops.nginx role no longer defaults to limiting the allowed HTTP request methods to GET, HEAD and POST on PHP-enabled websites. Use the item.php_limit_except parameter if you want to keep limiting the request methods.

  • The nodejs__upstream* variables in the debops.nodejs role have been renamed to nodejs__node_upstream* to better indicate their purpose and differentiate them from the nodejs__yarn_upstream* variables.

  • The dokuwiki__main_domain variable has been renamed to dokuwiki__fqdn to fit the naming scheme in other DebOps roles.

v1.0.0 (2019-05-22)

Redesigned OpenLDAP support

  • The debops.slapd role has been redesigned from the ground up, everything is new. Existing OpenLDAP servers/clusters will break if the new role is applied on them, don't do it. Set up a new OpenLDAP server/cluster and import the LDAP directory afterwards. See the role documentation for more details.

Changes to the UNIX group and account management

  • The debops.users Ansible role has been modernized and it now uses the custom Ansible filter plugins included in DebOps to manage the UNIX groups and accounts. The group and account management now uses the same merged list of entries, which means that two new parameters have been added to control when groups or accounts are created/removed. You might need to update your inventory configuration if you use the role to create UNIX groups without corresponding accounts, or you put UNIX accounts in shared primary groups.

    By default, debops.users will create user private groups if item.group parameter is not specified; if you want to add accounts to the users primary group, you need to specify it explicitly.

    The user parameter can be used to disable the account management, so that only UNIX group is created. The private_group parameter controls the management of the UNIX group for a given configuration entry. See the role documentation for more details.

  • The users__default_system variable has been removed from the debops.users role. The UNIX groups and accounts created by the role on hosts with the LDAP support will be normal accounts, not "system" accounts, and will use UID/GID >= 1000. This can be controlled per-user/per-group using the item.system parameter.

  • The item.createhome parameter has been renamed to item.create_home in accordance with the renamed parameter of the user Ansible module.

  • The users__resources, users__group_resources and users__host_resources variables have been removed. Their functionality has been reimplemented as the item.resources parameter of the users__*_accounts variables. See the role documentation for more details.

  • The management of the admin accounts has been removed from the debops.users role and is now done in the debops.system_users role. See the system_users__default_accounts for a list of the default admin accounts created on the remote hosts.

Inventory variable changes

v0.8.1 (2019-02-02)

Subordinate UID/GID ranges for root

  • The debops.root_account role will register a set of UID/GID ranges for the root account in the /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid databases. Depending on the OS distribution and release, these databases might contain existing UID/GID ranges which might interfere with the default set of 100000-165536 UID/GID range selected for the root account.

    In that case you should either disable this functionality, or recreate the host, at which point the UID/GID ranges for root will be reserved first, and any new accounts created by the system will use subsequent UIDs/GIDs. You can also update the UID/GID ranges manually, or select different UID/GID ranges for the root account in the role defaults.

Changes to Redis support in GitLab

  • The Redis support has been removed from the debops.gitlab playbook. Since GitLab still requires Redis to work properly, you need to enable debops.redis_server role explicitly for the GitLab host. GitLab installation instructions have been updated to reflect this fact.
  • To manage Redis on existing GitLab installations, you should enable the debops.redis_server role on them and run the Redis and GitLab playbooks afterwards. The existing Redis instance will be stopped and new Redis instance will be set up, with the same TCP port and password. Since the database will be empty, Gitaly service might stop working. After running the Redis Server and GitLab playbooks, restart the entire GitLab slice to re-populate Redis. You might expect existing GitLab sessions to be invalid and users to have to log in again.
  • The debops.redis_server role will configure APT preferences on Debian Stretch to install Redis from the stretch-backports repository. The playbook run on existing installations will not upgrade the packages automatically, but you might expect it on normal system upgrade.

Redesigned DNSmasq support

  • The debops.dnsmasq role has been redesigned from the ground up. The configuration is now merged from multiple sources (role defaults, Ansible inventory), role defines separate subdomains for each of the network interfaces, and automatically enables support for local Consul DNS service or LXC subdomain if they are detected on the host.
  • Most of the dnsmasq__* default variables that defined the dnsmasq configuration have been removed. Their functionality is exposed either as parameters of network interface configuration, or can be easily changed via the main configuration pipeline. See the documentation of dnsmasq__configuration or dnsmasq__interfaces for more details. If you use DNSmasq on a host managed by DebOps, you will have to modify your Ansible inventory.
  • The generated dnsmasq configuration has been split from a single 00_main.conf configuration file into multiple separate files stored in the /etc/dnsmasq.d/ directory. The old 00_main.conf configuration file will be automatically removed if found, to avoid issues with duplicated configuration options.
  • The role provides an easy to use way to define DHCP clients with IP address reservation, as well as DNS resource records. See dnsmasq__dhcp_hosts, dnsmasq__dns_records documentation for examples and more details.
  • The configuration of TCP Wrappers for the TFTP service has been removed from the debops.dnsmasq role, and is now done via the debops.tcpwrappers Ansible role and its dependent variables.

Inventory variable changes

  • The debops.grub role was redesigned, most of the grub_* default variables have been removed and the new configuration method has been implemented. The role variables have been namespaced, the role now uses grub__* variable naming scheme. Check the role documentation for details about configuring GRUB via Ansible inventory.

  • Variables related to dhcp_probe in the debops.dhcpd role have been replaced with the variables from the debops.dhcp_probe role. They are now namespaced and mostly with the same value types.

    The new debops.dhcp_probe role utilizes systemd templated instances, and might not work correctly on older Debian/Ubuntu releases.

  • The variables related to packet forwarding in the debops.ferm role and related roles have been removed:

    • ferm__forward
    • ferm__forward_accept
    • ferm__external_interfaces
    • ferm__internal_interfaces
    • libvirtd__ferm__forward
    • lxc__ferm__forward

    The related Ansible local fact ansible_local.ferm.forward has also been removed.

    You can use the debops.ifupdown role to configure packet forwarding per network interface, in the firewall as well as via the kernel parameters.

  • Host and domain management has been removed from the debops.bootstrap role. This functionality is now done via the debops.netbase role, included in the bootstrap playbook. Some of the old variables have their new equivalents:

    Old variable name New variable name Changed value
    bootstrap__hostname_domain_config_enabled netbase__hostname_config_enabled No
    bootstrap__hostname netbase__hostname No
    bootstrap__domain netbase__domain No
    bootstrap__etc_hosts Removed No
    bootstrap__hostname_v6_loopback Removed No

    Support for configuring IPv6 loopback address has been removed entirely. This was required when some of the DebOps roles relied on the ansible_fqdn value for task delegation between hosts. Since then, task delegation has been updated to use the inventory_hostname values and ensuring that the IPv6 loopback address resolves to a FQDN address of the host is no longer required.

  • The netbase__*_hosts variables in the debops.netbase role have been redesigned to use YAML lists instead of dictionaries. See netbase__hosts for more details.

  • The resources__group_name variable has been removed in favor of using all the groups the current hosts is in. This change has been reflected in the updated variable resources__group_templates. If you need to use a specific group update the resources__group_templates accordingly. Read the documentation about resources__templates for more details on templating with debops.resources.

v0.8.0 (2018-08-06)

UNIX account and group configuration

  • Configuration of UNIX system groups and accounts included in the admins UNIX group has been removed from the debops.auth role. This functionality is now done by the debops.system_groups role. The variable names and their values changed, see the debops.system_groups role documentation for details.

GitLab gitaly installation

  • The debops.gitlab role will now build and install the gitaly service using unprivileged git UNIX account instead of root. To perform the update correctly, you might need to remove directories

    /usr/local/src/gitlab/gitlab.com/gitaly.git/
/var/local/git/gitaly/

    Some files in these directories are owned by root and that can prevent the correct build of the Go binaries. You might also want to stop the gitlab-gitaly.service service and start it afterwards.

    The above steps shouldn't impact new GitLab installations.

UTF8 encoding in MariaDB

Inventory variable changes

  • The console_preferred_editors list has been removed, configuration of the preferred vim editor is now done in the debops.apt_install role which also installs it.

  • The console_custom_files variable has been removed along with the functionality in debops.console role. Use the debops.resources role variables to copy custom files instead. The role is also included in the common playbook, although a bit earlier, which shouldn't impact normal use cases.

  • The management of the /etc/hosts file has been removed from the debops.console role and is now done via the debops.netbase role which has to be enabled through the Ansible inventory. The variables have been renamed:

    Old variable name New variable name Changed value
    console_hosts netbase__hosts No
    console_group_hosts netbase__group_hosts No
    console_host_hosts netbase__host_hosts No

  • Configuration of the APT autoremove options has been moved from the debops.apt role to the debops.apt_mark role, because the latter role has more specific scope. The variable names as well as their default values have been changed to correctly reflect the meaning of the corresponding APT configuration options:

    Old variable name New variable name Changed value
    apt__autoremove_recommends apt_mark__autoremove_recommends_important Yes, to True
    apt__autoremove_suggests apt_mark__autoremove_suggests_important Yes, to True

    By default the APT packages installed via Recommends or Suggests dependencies will not be considered for autoremoval. If the user sets any package configuration via debops.apt_mark role, the autoremoval will be enabled automatically.

  • The bootstrap__sudo and bootstrap__sudo_group variables have been removed from the debops.bootstrap role. The bootstrap.yml playbook now uses the debops.sudo role to configure sudo service on a host, use its variables instead to control the service in question.

  • The bootstrap__admin_groups variable will now use list of UNIX groups with root access defined by the debops.system_groups via Ansible local facts.

  • The contents of the sshd__allow_groups variable have been moved to the new sshd__default_allow_groups variable. The new variable also uses the debops.system_groups Ansible local facts as a data source.

  • The bootstrap__raw and bootstrap__mandatory_packages variables have been removed. See the debops.python role documentation for their equivalents.

  • The apt_install__python_packages variable has been removed from the debops.apt_install role. Use the debops.python Ansible role to install Python packages.

  • The nodejs__upstream_version variable has been renamed to nodejs__node_upstream_release to better represent the contents, which is not a specific NodeJS version, but a specific major release.

  • The gitlab_domain variable, previously used to set the FQDN of the GitLab installation, now only sets the domain part; it's value is also changed from a YAML list to a string.

    The gitlab__fqdn variable is now used to set the GitLab FQDN and uses the gitlab_domain value as the domain part.

v0.7.2 (2018-03-28)

No changes.

v0.7.1 (2018-03-28)

X.509 certificate changes

  • The debops.pki role now generates the default X.509 certificate for the domain PKI realm with a wildcard entry for the host's FQDN (for example, *.host.example.org). This will be true by default on new hosts introduced to the cluster; if you want your old hosts to have the new X.509 certificates, you need to recreate the domain PKI realm by removing the /etc/pki/realms/domain/ directory on the remote hosts and re-running the debops.pki role against them.

    The change is done in the pki_default_realms variable, if you redefined it in the Ansible inventory, you might want to update your version to include the new SubjectAltName entry.

  • The latest acme-tiny Python script uses ACMEv2 API by default, and the debops.pki role is now compatible with the upstream changes. The ACME certificates should work out of the box in new PKI realms, after the acme-tiny installation is updated.

    The existing PKI realms will stop correctly regenerating Let's Encrypt certificates, because their configuration is not updated automatically by the role. The presence of the acme/error.log file will prevent the acme-tiny script from requesting the certificates to not trip the Let's Encrypt rate limits.

    Easiest way to fix this is to remove the entire PKI realm (/etc/pki/realms/*/ directory) and re-run the debops.pki role against the host. The role will create a new PKI realm based on the previous configuration and ACME certificates should start working again. Services like nginx that have hooks in the /etc/pki/hooks/ directory should be restarted automatically, you might need to manually restart other services as needed.

    Alternatively, you can update the Let's Encrypt API URL in the realm's config/realm.conf file by replacing the line:

    config['acme_ca_api']='https://acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org'

    with:

    config['acme_ca_api']='https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory'

    This should tell the pki-realm script to send requests for new certificates to the correct URL. You still need to run the debops.pki role against the host to install the updated pki-realm script and update the acme-tiny script.

Role changes

  • The debops.debops role now uses the debops.ansible role to install Ansible instead of doing it by itself. The relevant code has been removed, see the debops.ansible role documentation for new variables.

  • The debops-contrib.kernel_module role has been replaced by the debops.kmod role. All of the variable names have been changed, as well as their usage. See the documentation of the new role for more details.

  • The debops.proc_hidepid role was modified to use a static GID 70 for the procadmins group to allow synchronization between host and LXC containers on that host. The role will apply changes in the /etc/fstab configuration file, but it will not change existing /proc mount options. You need to remount the filesystem manually, with a command:

    ansible all -b -m command -a 'mount -o remount /proc'

    The /proc filesystem mounted inside of LXC containers cannot be remounted this way, since it's most likely mounted by the host itself. You will need to check the LXC container configuration in the /var/lib/lxc/*/config files and update the mount point options to use the new static GID. Restart the LXC container afterwards to remount the /proc filesystem.

    You will also need to restart all services that rely on the procadmins group, for example snmpd, to activate the new GID.

  • The debops.sysctl configuration has been redesigned. The role now uses YAML lists instead of YAML dictionaries as a base value of the sysctl__*_parameters default variables. The kernel parameter configuration format has also been changed to be easy to override via Ansible inventory. Role can now configure multiple files in /etc/sysctl.d/ directory. Refer to the role documentation for details.

Inventory variable changes

  • The debops.netbox role has been updated, some variable names were changed:

    Old variable name New variable name Changed value
    netbox__config_netbox_username netbox__config_napalm_username No
    netbox__config_netbox_password netbox__config_napalm_password No

  • The variables that specify files to ignore in the new debops.etckeeper role have been renamed from their old versions in debops-contrib.etckeeper role, and their value format changed as well. See the documentation of the new role for details.

v0.7.0 (2018-02-11)

This is mostly a maintenance release, dedicated to reorganization of the DebOps git repository and expanding documentation.

Role changes

  • The debops.nodejs role now installs NPM using a script in upstream git repository. This might cause issues with already installed NPM package, because of that it will be automatically removed by the role if found. You should verify that the role behaves correctly on existing systems before applying it in production.
  • The debops.gunicorn role has rewritten configuration model based on systemd instanced units. The existing configuration shouldn't interfere, however you might need to update the Ansible inventory configuration variables to the new syntax.

Inventory variable changes

  • The localization configuration previously located in the debops.console role is now located in the debops.locales role. List of default variables that were affected:

    Old variable name New variable name Changed value
    console_locales locales__default_list No
    console_locales_default locales__system_lang No

    There are also new localization variables for all hosts, group of hosts, specific hosts and dependent roles.

  • The /etc/issue and /etc/motd configuration has been removed from the debops.console role and is now done by the debops.machine role. List of default variables that were affected:

    Old variable name New variable name Changed value
    console_issue machine__organization No
    console_motd machine__motd No

    The support for dynamic MOTD has been implemented by the debops.machine role, you might want to use that instead of the static MOTD file.

  • Configuration of the /proc hidepid= option has been removed from the debops.console and is now available in the new debops.proc_hidepid Ansible role. List of default variables that were affected:

    Old variable name New variable name Changed value
    console_proc_hidepid proc_hidepid__enabled No
    console_proc_hidepid_level proc_hidepid__level No
    console_proc_hidepid_group proc_hidepid__group No

    The logic to enable/disable the hidepid= configuration has been moved to the proc_hidepid__enabled variable to be more accessible. The role creates its own set of Ansible local facts with new variable names, you might need to update configuration of the roles that relied on them.

  • Configuration of the sysnews package has been removed from the debops.console role, it's now available in the debops.sysnews Ansible role. There were extensive changes in the variable names and parameters, read the documentation of the new role for details.

v0.6.0 (2017-10-21)

This is an initial release based off of the previous DebOps roles, playbooks and tools located in separate git repositories. There should be no changes needed between the old and the new infrastructure and inventory.