Category: Linux

Renaming a network interface with systemd-networkd on Ubuntu 18.04

On a Ubuntu system where I’m creating a VXLAN Proof of Concept with CloudStack I wanted to rename the interface enp5s0 to cloudbr0.

I found many documentation on the internet on how to do this with *.link files, but I was missing the golden tip, which was you need to re-generate your initramfs.

/etc/systemd/network/50-cloudbr0.link

[Match]
MACAddress=00:25:90:4b:81:54

[Link]
Name=cloudbr0

After you create this file, re-generate your initramfs:

update-initramfs -c -k all

You can now use cloudbr0 in *.network files to use it like any other network interface.

In my case this is how my interfaces look like:

1: lo:  mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
6: cloudbr0:  mtu 9000 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:25:90:4b:81:54 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.0.11/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global cloudbr0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 2a00:f10:114:0:225:90ff:fe4b:8154/64 scope global dynamic mngtmpaddr noprefixroute 
       valid_lft 2591993sec preferred_lft 604793sec
    inet6 fe80::225:90ff:fe4b:8154/64 scope link 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
8: cloudbr1:  mtu 1450 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 86:fa:b6:31:6e:c1 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 172.16.0.11/24 brd 172.16.0.255 scope global cloudbr1
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::84fa:b6ff:fe31:6ec1/64 scope link 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
9: vxlan100:  mtu 1450 qdisc noqueue master cloudbr1 state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 56:df:29:8d:db:83 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

VXLAN with VyOS and Ubuntu 18.04

VXLAN

Virtual Extensible LAN uses encapsulation technique to encapsulate OSI layer 2 Ethernet frames within layer 4 UDP datagrams. More on this can be found on the link provided.

For a Ceph and CloudStack environment I needed to set up a Proof-of-Concept using VXLAN and some refurbished hardware. The main purpose of this PoC is to verify that VXLAN works with CloudStack, Ceph and Ubuntu 18.04

VyOS

VyOS is an open source network operating system based on Debian Linux. It supports VXLAN, so using this we were able to test VXLAN in this setup.

In production a other VXLAN capable router would be used, but for a PoC VyOS works just fine running on a regular server.

Configuration

The VyOS router is connected to ‘the internet’ with one NIC and the other NIC is connected to a switch.

Using static routes a IPv4 subnet (/24) and a IPv6 subnet (/48) are routed towards the VyOS router. These are then splitted and send to multiple VLANs.

As it took me a while to configure VXLAN under VyOS

I’m only posting that configuration.

interfaces {
    ethernet eth0 {
        address 31.25.96.130/30
        address 2a00:f10:100:1d::2/64
        duplex auto
        hw-id 00:25:90:80:ed:fe
        smp-affinity auto
        speed auto
    }
    ethernet eth5 {
        duplex auto
        hw-id a0:36:9f:0d:ab:be
        mtu 9000
        smp-affinity auto
        speed auto
        vif 300 {
            address 192.168.0.1/24
            description VXLAN
            mtu 9000
        }
    vxlan vxlan1000 {
        address 10.0.0.1/23
        address 2a00:f10:114:1000::1/64
        group 239.0.3.232
        ip {
            enable-arp-accept
            enable-arp-announce
        }
        ipv6 {
            dup-addr-detect-transmits 1
            router-advert {
                cur-hop-limit 64
                link-mtu 1500
                managed-flag false
                max-interval 600
                name-server 2a00:f10:ff04:153::53
                name-server 2a00:f10:ff04:253::53
                other-config-flag false
                prefix 2a00:f10:114:1000::/64 {
                    autonomous-flag true
                    on-link-flag true
                    valid-lifetime 2592000
                }
                reachable-time 0
                retrans-timer 0
                send-advert true
            }
        }
        link eth5.300
        mtu 1500
        vni 1000
    }
    vxlan vxlan2000 {
        address 109.72.91.1/26
        address 2a00:f10:114:2000::1/64
        group 239.0.7.208
        ipv6 {
            dup-addr-detect-transmits 1
            router-advert {
                cur-hop-limit 64
                link-mtu 1500
                managed-flag false
                max-interval 600
                name-server 2a00:f10:ff04:153::53
                name-server 2a00:f10:ff04:253::53
                other-config-flag false
                prefix 2a00:f10:114:2000::/64 {
                    autonomous-flag true
                    on-link-flag true
                    valid-lifetime 2592000
                }
                reachable-time 0
                retrans-timer 0
                send-advert true
            }
        }
        link eth5.300
        mtu 1500
        vni 2000
    }
}

VLAN 300 on eth5 is used to route VNI 1000 and 2000 in their own multicast groups.

The MTU of eth5 is set to 9000 so that the encapsulated traffic of VXLAN can still be 1500 bytes.

Ubuntu 18.04

To test if VXLAN was actually working on the Ubuntu 18.04 host I made a very simple script:

ip link add vxlan1000 type vxlan id 1000 dstport 4789 group 239.0.3.232 dev vlan300 ttl 5
ip link set up dev vxlan1000
ip addr add 10.0.0.11/23 dev vxlan1000
ip addr add 2a00:f10:114:1000::101/64 dev vxlan1000

That works! I can ping 10.0.0.11 and 2a00:f10:114:1000::1 from my Ubuntu 18.04 machine!

Testing with ConfigDrive and cloud-init

cloud-init

cloud-init is a very easy way to bootstrap/configure Virtual Machines running in a cloud environment. It can read it’s metadata from various data sources and configure for public SSH keys or create users for example.

Most large clouds support cloud-init to quickly deploy new Instances.

Config Drive

Config Drive is a data source which reads a local ‘CD-Rom’ device which contains the metadata for the Virtual Machine. This allows for auto configuration of Virtual Machines without them requiring network. My main use case for Config Drive is CloudStack which has support for Config Drive since version 4.11.

I wanted to test with Config Drive outside CloudStack to test some functionality.

meta_data.json

On my laptop I spun up a Ubuntu 18.04 Virtual Machine with cloud-init installed and I attached a ISO which I created.

/home/wido/Desktop/
             cloud-init/
               openstack/
                 latest/
                   meta_data.json

In meta_data.json I put:

{
  "hostname": "ubuntu-test",
  "name": "ubuntu-test",
  "uuid": "0109a241-6fd9-46b6-955a-cd52ad168ee7",
  "public_keys": [
      "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAwPKBJDJdlvOKIfilr0VSkF9i3viwLtO8GyCpxL/8TxrGKnEg19LPLN3lwKWbbTqBZgRmbrR3bgQfM4ffPoTCxSPv44eZCF8jMPv8PxpC0yVaTcqW4Q7woD7pjdIuGVImrmEls0U8rS3uGQDx7LhFphkAh+blfUtobqzyHvqcbtVEh+drESn8AXrKd1MZfGg6OB8Xrfdr6d959uHBHFJ8pOxxppYbInxKREPb3XmZzmoNQUmqFRN/VNVTreRHAxDcPM8pEPuNmr3Vp+vDVvfpA58yr2rZ21ASB4LlNOOSEx7vnLd6uH9rsqAJOtr0ZEE29fU609i4rd6Zda2HTGQO+Q== wido@wido-laptop",
      "ssh-rsa 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 wido@wido-desktop"
  ]
}

Using mkisofs I was able to create a ISO and attached it to the VM:

mkisofs -iso-level 3 -V 'CONFIG-2' -o /var/lib/libvirt/images/cloud-init.iso /home/wido/Desktop/cloud-init

The ISO was attached to the Virtual Machine and after reboot I could log in with the user ubuntu over SSH using my pubkey!