The default installation provides an Apache2 config suitable for a simple LAVA
server at http://localhost/
once enabled.
See Packaging lava-server for distributions for more information or for debugging.
A LAVA instance
consists of two primary components - a master and a
worker. The simplest possible configuration is to run the master and
worker components on a single machine, but a larger instance can also be
configured to support multiple workers controlling a larger number of attached
devices.
Note
Although the Dispatcher interacts directly with the DUT, all the device configuration is sent from the server.
Note
LAVA is developed using Debian packaging to ensure that daemons and system-wide configuration is correctly updated with changes in the codebase. There is no support for pypi or python virtual environments or installing directly from a git directory. See Installing on a Debian system for detailed instructions.
We currently recommend installing LAVA on Debian jessie, stretch or
unstable. Installations using jessie (the current Debian stable release) should
use updates available in jessie-backports
.
Contributions to support other distributions are welcome as long as there is a commitment to maintain LAVA on those distributions.
If you’d like to help us provide support for other distributions, feel free to contact us using the lava-devel mailing list.
A small LAVA instance can be deployed on fairly modest hardware. We recommend at least 1GB of RAM to cover the runtime needs of the database server, the application server and the web server. For storage, reserve about 20GB for application data, especially if you wish to mirror the current public Linaro LAVA instance. LAVA uses append-only models, so storage requirements will grow over time.
If you are deploying many devices and expect to be running large numbers of jobs, you will obviously need more RAM and disk space.
Devices you wish to deploy in LAVA need to be:
If the instance is going to be sent any job submissions from third parties or if your own job submissions are going to use MultiNode, there are additional considerations for hardware requirements.
MultiNode is explicitly designed to synchronise test operations across multiple test devices and running MultiNode jobs on a particular instance will have implications for the workload of that instance. This can become a particular problem if the instance is running on virtualised hardware with shared I/O, a limited amount of RAM or a limited number of available cores.
Note
Downloading, preparing and deploying test images can result in a lot of synchronous I/O and if a single machine is running both the LAVA server and dispatcher, running synchronised MultiNode jobs can cause the load on that machine to rise significantly, possibly causing the server to become unresponsive. For this reason, it is strongly recommended that MultiNode instances use a separate dispatcher running on non-virtualised hardware so that the (possibly virtualised) server can continue to operate.
Also, consider the number of test devices connected to any one dispatcher. MultiNode jobs will commonly compress and decompress several large test image files in parallel. Even with a powerful multi-core machine, this can cause high load. It is worth considering matching the number of devices to the number of cores for parallel decompression, and matching the amount of available RAM to the number and size of test images which are likely to be in use.
The LAVA team makes regular releases (called production releases
),
typically monthly. These are installed onto Linaro’s central instance
https://validation.linaro.org/ and they are also uploaded to Debian unstable
and backports (see Installing on a Debian system). These production releases
are tracked in the release
branch of the upstream git repositories.
Interim releases are made available from the the staging-repo.
If in doubt, install the production
release of lava-server
from
official distribution mirrors. (Backports are included on Debian mirrors.)
The lava-dev
package includes scripts to assist in local developer builds
directly from local git working copies which allows for builds using unreleased
code, development code and patches under review.
A single instance runs the web interface, the database, the scheduler and the dispatcher on a single machine. If this machine is also running tests, the device (or devices) under test (DUT) will also need to be connected to this machine, possibly over the network, using USB or using serial cables.
To install a single master instance and create a superuser, refer to Installing on a Debian system installation.
LAVA V1 used to support a distributed_instance installation method. This has been deprecated in V2; instead there is a much improved architecture for remote workers using ZMQ.
Detailed instructions for setting up workers follows - first, think about the kind of configuration needed for your instance.
If you only wish to use LAVA V1, then you’re reading the wrong documentation - look at the V1 docs instead. But be aware that LAVA V1 will be reaching end of life soon, so this would be a frozen instance.
Warning
Installing any updates of lava-server
or lava-dispatcher
onto a frozen instance after the removal of V1 support will cause
permanent data loss.
You can choose whether the master has devices configured locally or only uses devices via one or more remote workers. If you are installing and learning how to use LAVA for the first time, it is recommended to keep things simple and stick to a Single Master Instance installation to start with.
lava-server
and lava-dispatcher
packages installed.Once you are happy with your basic single-machine installation and are ready to expand beyond that, start adding workers one at a time. For this configuration:
lava-server
package installed, just as on a
Single Master Instance installation.lava-dispatcher
package installed. When prompted
during package installation, configure it for a pipeline installation.As you expand your setup, you will also need to do some configuration of communications between the master and the worker(s), which reliy on ZMQ as an underlying technology. Workers on the same (trusted) network as the master can work fine without using authentication and encryption, but if you are going to be hosting workers on a remote network then it is strongly recommended to configure authentication and encryption for their ZMQ messages.
See also
Configuring lava-slave in the notes on installing lava-dispatcher and Using ZMQ authentication and encryption.
Note
ZMQ supports buffering of messages, so the master and workers can be independently restarted without worrying about breaking existing network connections.
lava-slave
to look for the master
ZMQ port instead of localhost
.Warning
Administrators of instances which mix V1 and V2 must consider that V1 support will be removed during 2017, while V2 support will continue. If you are running a mixed installation, we strongly encourage you to get involved in the migration to V2 and subscribe to the support mailing lists to ensure a clean migration for your V1 devices before they stop working.
pipeline
support enabled in the django
administration interface. These devices will then accept both pipeline (YAML)
and V1 (JSON) job submissions.The mixed configuration is the most complex to setup as it requires knowledge of both V1 and V2.
If you are expecting to support MultiNode jobs in your LAVA setup, there is a third component needed. The LAVA Coordinator manages the extra message passing needed between the various nodes in a MultiNode group of devices. Nodes connect to the LAVA Coordinator daemon via TCP (default port: 3079). A single coordinator can manage groups from multiple instances if desired. If the network configuration uses a firewall, ensure that this port is open for connections from MultiNode dispatchers.
If multiple coordinators are necessary on a single machine (e.g. to test different versions of the coordinator during development), each coordinator needs to be configured for a different port.
If the dispatcher is installed on the same machine as the coordinator, the
dispatcher can use the packaged configuration file with the default hostname of
localhost
.
Each dispatcher then needs a copy of the LAVA Coordinator configuration file (JSON syntax), modified to point back to the hostname of the coordinator:
Example JSON, modified for a coordinator on a machine with a fully qualified domain name:
{
"port": 3079,
"blocksize": 4096,
"poll_delay": 3,
"coordinator_hostname": "control.lab.org"
}
An IP address can be specified instead, if appropriate.
Each dispatcher needs to use the same port number and blocksize as is configured for the Coordinator on the specified machine. The poll_delay is the number of seconds each node will wait before polling the coordinator again.
LAVA controls the DUT using a serial connection, except for emulated devices like QEMU.
See also
Serial console support for information about hardware.
Caution
Make sure your serial connection configuration is backed up as it can be an awkward process to manually establish which
path in /dev/serial/by-id
is which cable and therefore connected to
which device.
ser2net provides a way for a user to connect from a network connection to a serial port, usually over telnet.
http://ser2net.sourceforge.net/
ser2net
is a dependency of lava-dispatcher
, so will be
installed automatically.
Example config (in /etc/ser2net.conf):
#port:connectiontype:idle_timeout:serial_device:baudrate databit parity stopbit
7001:telnet:0:/dev/serial_port1:115200 8DATABITS NONE 1STOPBIT
Note
In the above example we have the idle_timeout as 0 which specifies a infinite idle_timeout value. 0 is the recommended value. If the user prefers to give a positive finite idle_timeout value, then there is a possibility that long running jobs may terminate due to inactivity on the serial connection.
udev rules:
SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0403", ATTRS{idProduct}=="6001", ATTRS{serial}=="ST167570", SYMLINK+="rack-usb02"
SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0403", ATTRS{idProduct}=="6001", ATTRS{serial}=="ST167569", SYMLINK+="rack-usb01"
SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0403", ATTRS{idProduct}=="6001", ATTRS{serial}=="ST167572", SYMLINK+="rack-usb04"
SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0403", ATTRS{idProduct}=="6001", ATTRS{serial}=="ST167571", SYMLINK+="rack-usb03"
This will create a symlink in /dev called rack-usb01 etc. which can then be addressed in the Ser2net daemon config file.
Please report bugs using Linaro’s Bugzilla: https://bugs.linaro.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=LAVA%20Framework
You can also report bugs using reportbug
and the Debian Bug Tracking
System: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=lava-server
Feel free to contact us at validation (at) linaro (dot) org and on
the #linaro-lava
channel on OFTC.