Monthly Archives: June 2015

Parsing OpenStack config files with susti

In this post I introduce my “susti” python script for easily parsing options in the “.ini” config files of OpenStack in an easy and elegant way.

Since I started working with OpenStack about one year ago, I found that the configuration files of all components have that terrible Windows-like syntax called “ini”, which I personally strongly dislike.

“ini” files contain “sections” which contain keywords, but those keywords may be repeated in several sections, providing completely independent functions. For example, if you grep the keyword “admin_password” in a nova.conf file you will get at least 3 matches, in the sections “keystone_authtoken”, “neutron” and “ironic”.

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Setting up a CentOS 7 PXE server

PXE (or Pixie) boot is a very convenient way to start machines by providing custom operative systems trough the network.

Furthermore, in this post I will also explain how to set up a kickstarter file to perform a fully unatended CentOS 7 installation.

The idea is very simple: a machine with PXE boot enabled will boot up and search for a PXE enabled DHCP server on it’s network, and when found, it will request an IP and network configuration. Together with this network configuration, it will receive some booting instructions including the “iso” file of the operative system which is going to boot.

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