FreeIPA Testing Lab Configuration

The goal of this project is to provide a tool to create the necessary configuration to experiment with FreeIPA scenarios using containers.

The tool ipalab-config generates the necessary files to create a compose of containers (using, for example, podman-compose) and deploy FreeIPA on it using the ansible-freeipa collection.

Installation and Usage

The tool can be installed through pip:

pip install ipalab-config

To experiment with the latest branch:

pip install git+https://github.com/rjeffman/ipalab-config

Usage of Python's virtual environment is encouraged.

The only dependency for the tool is ruamel.yaml. An optional dependency is Jinja2 (use ipalab-config[opt] to install it).

Although not a dependency, ansible-core will be required to run ansible-freeipa playbooks.

To create the configuration files simply invoke the tool with the path to the configuration file:

ipalab-config mycluster.yaml

For example, mycluster.yaml could define a cluster with three hosts, a primary server, a replica, and a client, all using the default distro:

---
lab_name: simple_cluster
ipa_deployments:
  - name: ipa_cluster
    domain: ipa.test
    realm:  IPA.TEST
    admin_password: SomeADMINpassword
    dm_password: SomeDMpassword
    cluster:
      servers:
        - name: server
          capabilities:
            - CA
            - DNS
        - name: replica
      clients:
        - name: client

The output is a directory simple_cluster (defined by the attribute lab_name) containing a compose configuration file (compose.yml), compatible with podman-compose (you may have to tweak it to use Docker compose), an inventory file (inventory.yml) customized for the created environment, a containerfiles directory with the container files recipes to allow FreeIPA deployment in containers, and a requirements file (requirements.yml) for Ansible if one wants to use ansible-freeipa to deploy the nodes.

To build and start the compose, use podman-compose:

podman-compose up -d --build

To run the deployment playbook you'll need Ansible and the two collections: containers.podman, to communicate with podman, and ansible-freeipa collection (again, a virtual environment is encouraged):

pip install ansible-core
ansible-galaxy collection install containers.podman freeipa.ansible_freeipa

Deploy the cluster with:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml ${HOME}/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/freeipa/ansible_freeipa/playbooks/install-cluster.yml

To dispose the environment use:

podman-compose down

To automatically mount each container /var/log to logs/<name> directory, so execution can be evaluated even if the containers are offline, either set the attribute mount_varlog or use the CLI option --mount-varlog.

The configuration file

The configuration file is a YAML file with attributes used to set both the compose and inventory files.

Global attributes

Name	Description	Required	Default
lab_name	The name of the cluster, used as the name of the target directory and to derive some other names in the compose file, for example, the pod name.	yes	-
subnet	A CIDR representing the subnet to be used for the containers.	no	"192.168.159.0/24"
containerfiles	A list of file relative or absolute paths to container files.	no	-
container_fqdn	Convert container names to FQDN using deployment domain name.	no	false
external	A list of nodes external to the FreeIPA deployment.	no	-
extra_data	A list of files and folders to copy into the generated target directory.	no	-
mount_varlog	Mount containers '/var/log' files to be accessible from the host.	no	False
ipa_deployments	A list of FreeIPA deployments. (See ipa-deployments.)	yes	-
network	The name of an external network or a dict with the network configuration.	no	-

network

The network may be defined as a string representing an external network name, and in this case, the global attribute subnet must be explicitly set. If the value holds a dictionary, no option is required, although at least one value must be set.

Name	Description	Default
name	The name of the network.	"ipanet"
subnet	A CIDR representing the subnet to be used for the containers.	"192.168.159.0/24"
external	When set to true, an external network will be used for the compose	False
driver	The network driver to use.	"bridge"
no_dns	When set to true disables the network DNS plugin.	false
dns	Set the address (str) or addresses (list) of DNS nameserver the network will use.	-

ipa_deployments

Each entry in the ipa_deployments list defines a FreeIPA cluster. All defined hosts will be composed in the same pod.

Name	Description	Required	Default
name	The cluster name, used to identify one cluster in the inventory file.	yes	-
domain	The domain for the cluster. FreeIPA rules for domain names apply.	no	"ipalab.local"
realm	The realm for the cluster.	no	Uppercase domain
admin_password	The FreeIPA admin password.	no	"SomeADMINpassword"
dm_password	The FreeIPA LDAP Directory Manager password.	no	"SomeDMpassword"
distro	The containerfile/image to use by default, on this deployment.	no	fedora
cluster	A dict with the configuration for the nodes of the cluster. (See Cluster Nodes.)	yes	-
dns	An IP address or a node hostname to use as nameserver.	no	-

Cluster Nodes

The cluster nodes are defined for each deployment, and may have servers or clients. At least one "server" should always be defined. If no server or client is defined, an error is returned.

The servers list is a list of the servers for the deployment. The order is important, as the first server configuration will be used as the initial server, and will always have CA capabilities. It will also be the initial CA renewal server of the deployment. The other servers can have any configuration, and will be considered replicas (in ansible-freeipa idiom).

These are the available options to configure the first server and the replicas:

Name	Description	Required	Default
name	The name of the server.	yes	-
hostname	The server hostname.	no	.
distro	The containerfile or local image to use.	no	fedora
image	The container image to use. (Overrides distro.)	no	-
volumes	A list of bind volume specifications.	no	-
dns	An IP address or a node hostname to use as nameserver.	no	-
capabilities	A list of capabilities to be deployed on the server. Available options are CA (certificate authority), DNS (nameserver), KRA, AD (AD trust), RSN (Random Serial Numbered certificates, server only) and HIDDEN (replicas only).	no	For the first server CA is set.
memory	The maximum amount of memory to use defined as an integer number and a unit. The unit can be b, k or kb, m or mb, or g or gb (case insensitive).	no
nolog	Do not mount /var/log on the host.	no	False
no_limit_uid	Do not automatically limit deployment idrange to safe values for rootless containers. Only evaluated on the first server of the deployment.	no	false
vars	Dict of variables to use in the deployment of the server or replica. Check ansible-freeipa roles documentation for valid values	no	-

The clients attribute is similar to the servers attribute, as it can be defined as a list of clients with its attributes, but it may also be defined with a dictionary containing:

Name	Description	Required	Default
hosts	The list of client nodes.	no	-
vars	Dict of variables to use in the deployment of all clients. Check ansible-freeipa ipaclient documentation for valid values	no	-

To configure the clients, these are the available attributes:

Name	Description	Required	Default
name	The name of the client node.	yes	-
hostname	The node hostname.	no	.
distro	The containerfile or local image to use.	no	fedora
image	The container image to use. (Overrides distro.)	no	-
volumes	A list of bind volume specifications.	no	-
dns	An IP address or a node hostname to use as nameserver.	no	-
nolog	Do not mount /var/log on the host.	no	False
vars	Dict of variables to use in the deployment of this client node. Check ansible-freeipa ipaclient documentation for valid values	no	-

See the available examples.

external

Used to define nodes external to the FreeIPA deployment.

Name	Description	Required	Default
domain	The domain for all the external hosts.	no	"ipalab.local"
hosts	The list of external nodes. (See External Nodes)	no	-

External Nodes

These are nodes that are not part of the FreeIPA deployment, and may or may not have a specific role in the environment. The following options are available:

Name	Description	Required	Default
name	The name of the node.	yes	-
hostname	The node hostname.	no	.
distro	The containerfile/image to use.	no	fedora
volumes	A list of bind volume specifications.	no	-
dns	An IP address or a node hostname to use as nameserver.	no	-
role	A specific role that will add predefined configuration to the node and the environment. Any role configuration will overwrite other options.	no	-
nolog	Do not mount /var/log on the host.	no	False
options	A dictionary of configurations specific to the available roles.	no	-

External Roles

External nodes with a defined role can have a set of specific attributes set.

Role addc

The node with role: addc provides a Samba AD DC server that can be used as a Samba AD DC or to simulate, with the expected limitation, a Windows Active Directory Server. The node is provided with a very basic image, and the Samba AD DC deployment can be performed with the provided Ansible playbook deploy_addc.yml.

The available vars that can be used to customize the node through the inventory file are:

Name	Description	Default
forwarder	Should always be set to one of the available nameservers (Unbound or IPA).	-
admin_pass	The "Administrator" password.	Secret123
krb5_pass	Samba KRB5 password.	same as admin_pass
install_packages	If the default package list for the role is to be installed.	true

Some other variables are inferred from the node configuration:

• ad domain: Domain part of the host name
• ad realm: ad domain, in uppercase.
• netbios name: First group of the hostname, in uppercase.

If using the default image configuration, to setup a trust from IPA side, use:

$ ipa dnsforward-zone <ad domain> --forwarder=<addc.ip_address>
$ ipa trust-add <ad domain> --admin=Administrator --password <<< <admin_pass>

Role dns

The node with role: dns provides a nameserver for the whole environment, and all the nodes in the environment will have DNS search set to use this node. The node uses Alpine Linux, and provides the Unbound nameserver. The container accepts a volume containing the unbound configuration mounted at /etc/unbound. Note that the name of the main configuration file must be unbound.conf.

The available options for dns are the zones, a list of zone configuration that must have a file attribute, with the path to a zone file, and a name attribute with the zone name. For arpa zones (reverse zones with PTR records), instead of name the attribute reverse_ip with a network CIDR value can be used and the reverse zone name is automatically generated.

Example using zone files:

- name: nameserver
  role: dns
  options:
    zones:
    - name: ipa.test
      file: ipa.zone
    - reverse_ip: "10.1.2.0/24"
      file: ipa_PTR.zone

Example using zone volumes:

- name: nameserver
  role: dns
  volumes: ["/hostPath:/etc/unbound:Z"]

Role Keycloak

The node with role: keycloak provides a node with a Keycloak deployment.

Some scripts are provided under the keycloak directory to aid the configuration for using the node as an external identity provider (external IdP) for the IPA deployment. The available scripts are:

• trust_keycloak.sh: Must be called on all IPA nodes so that the Keycloak self-signed certificate is trusted by the node.
• keycloak_add_oidc_client.sh: Add an OIDC client to the Keycloak master realm. Requires the IPA primary server hostname, the OIDC client ID and the OIDC client password.
• keycloak_add_user.sh: Add a user to the Keycloak master realm, given its username, email and password.

The Keycloak HTTPS server runs on port 8443 and it must be reflected on the IPA IDP configuration (base-url).

Output Files

In the output directory the following files and directories are present:

File	Usage
compose.yml	The compose file to use with podman-compose
inventory.yml	An Ansible inventory file for the cluster with ansible-freeipa variables
hosts	A list with ip-hostnames pairs to be added to the host /etc/hosts so the nodes are accessible by name
requirements.yml	The Ansible collection requirements to deploy the cluster
containerfiles	A collection of containerfiles for some Linux images where FreeIPA server and/or client is known to work with this configuration

About the Ansible inventory file

The nodes in the inventory file are grouped in:

• external: All the hosts external to IPA deployments
• ipaserver: All the first servers in each IPA deployment
• ipareplicas: All but the first server in each IPA deployment
• ipaclients: All clients in IPA deployments
• <deployment name>: All IPA nodes in the IPA deployment with name: <deployment name>

To select a specific group of clients or server, one can use host filtering in an Ansible Playbook, for example, given two deployments m1 and m2, with nodes with the same name, server-1 and server-2, to select the ipaserver of deployment m2 one could set hosts: "ipaserver:&m2" on the playbook, and the playbook would only run on server-1 of m2.

Playbooks

It is possible to provide a set of Ansible playbooks along with the configurations files by using the -p/--playbook command line option. This will add any file to the output playbooks directory.

If passing a directory as an argument to -p, the directory will be searched recursively for *.yml and *.yaml files and add them to the playbooks directory.

Note that the playbooks directory is flat, so if your files share the same file name, the last file will overwrite the other files with the same name.

If more complex structure of playbooks directory is needed, one can use global extra_data option in the cluster definition to copy that:

lab_name: somelab
extra_data:
  - playbooks

The target directory then will contain somelab/playbooks as a copy of the playbooks folder of the source directory.

jinja2 templating

There is optional support for Jinja2 templating, which is enabled if Jinja2 is available on the host.

The jinja2 dependency is part of the extra opt, and can be installed with

pip install ipalab-config[opt]

Custom Filters

• ENV:
  • Dictionary providing access to environment variables.
  • Accessing the value of an environment variable: '{{ ENV["PWD"] }}'
  • Accessing the value of an environment variable, with a default value in case the variable is not set: '{{ ENV.get("CONFIG_DIR", "path/to/default") }}'
  • If the environment variable is not set an empty value will be returned, if get is not used

Examples

These are some simple configuration examples. More examples can be found on the examples directory.

A simple cluster with a server and a replica

This example provides an initial server with embedded DNS nameserver, and a replica with KRA support.

---
lab_name: simple_cluster
ipa_deployments:
  - name: server_replica_cluster
    domain: ipa.test
    realm: IPA.TEST
    admin_password: SomeADMINpassword
    dm_password: SomeDMpassword
    cluster:
      servers:
        - name: server
          capabilities:
            - CA   # optional, first server is always CA
            - DNS
        - name: replica
          capabilities:
            - KRA

Testing Active Directory Trust

This example provides a single IPA server and an external node running Samba AD DC so that most trust operations can be tested. It is important, in this case, to define the network subnet and the node IP addresses, to ease environment deployment.

Note that when setting up a trust, it is easier to have the right configuration if you use different subdomains for the AD DC and IPA nodes.

Ideally, the subdomains would use different networks, but this is not yet supported by ipalab-config.

---
lab_name: ipa-ad-trust
subnet: "192.168.13.0/24"
external:
  hosts:
    - name: addc
      hostname: dc.ad.ipa.test
      role: addc
      ip_address: 192.168.13.250
      vars:
        forwarder: 192.168.13.100
        admin_pass: "Secret123"
        krb5_pass: "admin_realm"  # Samba KRB5 password
ipa_deployments:
  - name: ipa
    domain: linux.ipa.test
    admin_password: SomeADMINpassword
    dm_password: SomeDMpassword
    cluster:
      servers:
        - name: server
          ip_address: 192.168.13.100
          capabilities: ["DNS", "AD"]
          vars:
            ipaserver_netbios_name: IPA

Testing with an external DNS nameserver

This example uses an external to provide a DNS nameserver, and does not use the IPA embedded nameserver. The DNS role for an external node uses Unbound as the nameserver.

---
lab_name: external-dns
network: external_dns
subnet: "192.168.53.0/24"
domain: ipa.test
external:
  hosts:
  - name: nameserver
    hostname: unbound.ipa.test
    role: dns
    options:
      zones:
        - name: ipa.test
          file: "examples/unbound/ipa.test.zone"
        - reverse_ip: "192.168.53.0/24"
          file: "examples/unbound/53.168.192.in-addr.arpa.zone"
ipa_deployments:
  - name: ipacluster_external_dns
    realm: IPA.TEST
    admin_password: SomeADMINpassword
    dm_password: SomeDMpassword
    cluster:
      servers:
        - name: server
        - name: replica
      clients:
        - name: client

Environment with an IPA server and a non-enrolled host

If you need to have an IPA server, and a generic host that will be configured later, you can use this example:

---
lab_name: external-generic
external:
  hosts:
  - name: nameserver
    hostname: generic.example.com
    distro: centos
ipa_deployments:
  - name: ipacluster_external_dns
    domain: ipa.test
    realm: IPA.TEST
    admin_password: SomeADMINpassword
    dm_password: SomeDMpassword
    cluster:
      servers:
        - name: server
          capabilities: ["DNS"]

Contributing

Issue tracker and repository are hosted on Github.

Use them to report issues or propose changes.

Known Issues

See ISSUES.md

License

The code is released under the 0BSD (BSD Zero Clause License).

Author

Rafael Jeffman (@rjeffman)