nojava-ipmi-kvm 0.9.1

Access Java based ipmi kvm consoles without a local Java installation.

NoJava-IPMI-KVM

Version incompatibility notice (upgrading from v0.8.1)

Users upgrading from version v0.8.1 or earlier must rewrite their config files. The previously used ini format was not flexible enough for adding HTML5 KVM support and was replaced with a YAML file.

Use the converter script convert_config_file.py to convert your old ini config file to the new YAML format.

Introduction

nojava-ipmi-kvm is a tool for running Java-based IPMI-KVM consoles without a local Java installation. It runs a Docker container in the background, starts a suitable Java Webstart version (from OpenJDK or Oracle) and connects to the container with noVNC. By using Docker, Java Webstart is sandboxed automatically and you don't need to install old Java versions on your Desktop machines.

Starting with version v0.9.0, nojava-ipmi-kvm also supports HTML5 based kvm viewers.

This project is based on ideas from solarkennedy/ipmi-kvm-docker.

Deploying as a web service

If you would like to access IPMI-KVM consoles with a browser only (without Java plugins and a local installation of nojava-impi-kvm), see nojava-ipmi-kvm-server which encapsulates nojava-ipmi-kvm in a web service.

Local Installation

The latest version can be obtained from PyPI and runs with Python 3.5+:

python3 -m pip install nojava-ipmi-kvm

Install Docker on your local machine if not done already (or Podman with Docker emulation).

If you run an Arch-based system, you can also install nojava-ipmi-kvm from the AUR:

yay -S nojava-ipmi-kvm-docker

If you prefer Podman to Docker use the Podman version instead:

yay -S nojava-ipmi-kvm-podman

Usage

Configuration file

First, create a file ~/.nojava-ipmi-kvmrc.yaml and add a template for each kvm host type you want to connect to, for example:

templates:
  kvm-openjdk-7u51:
    skip_login: False
    login_user: ADMIN
    login_endpoint: rpc/WEBSES/create.asp
    allow_insecure_ssl: False
    user_login_attribute_name: WEBVAR_USERNAME
    password_login_attribute_name: WEBVAR_PASSWORD
    send_post_data_as_json: False
    session_cookie_key: SessionCookie
    download_endpoint: Java/jviewer.jnlp
    java_version: 7u51
    format_jnlp: False

• skip_login: Skip the login to the KVM host (should be False in most cases). If the login is skipped, you can omit login_user, login_endpoint, user_login_attribute_name and password_login_attribute_name.

• login_user: User to login to the web admin view (default: ADMIN)

• login_endpoint: Relative POST url of the login form. Is needed to create a login session.

• allow_insecure_ssl: Allow SSL certificates that cannot be validated when logging in and downloading the KVM viewer.

• user_login_attribute_name: Name of the user login field in the login form (use the web inspector of your favorite browser to find out the field names).

• password_login_attribute_name: Name of the password field in the login form.

• send_post_data_as_json: Send the login POST request with JSON data as data payload (not needed in most cases)

• extra_login_form_fields: Comma-separated list of key/value pairs which will be sent as additional data on the login request. Key and value must be separated by colon (example: method:login).

• session_cookie_key: Workaround for web applications that do not set session cookies directly (for example with Javascript). If a login attempt does not set a session cookie, the HTTP reply body is scanned for a potential session cookie value. If a value is found, it will be stored under the name session_cookie_key. In most cases you can simply obmit this configuration key. This config value must also be set if format_jnlp is set to true.

• Java-specific configuration keys:

  • download_endpoint: Relative download url of the Java KVM viewer.
  • java_version: Java version that is needed to run Java KVM viewer. Currently, 7u51, 7u79, 7u181, 8u91, 8u242, 7u80-oracle and 8u251-oracle are available (default: 7u181). The -oracle versions are special cases which require to build a Docker image yourself because of license restrictions. See Using Oracle Java for more details.
  • format_jnlp: Replace "{base_url}" and "{session_key}" in the jnlp file (not needed in most cases)

• HTML5-specific configuration keys:

  • html5_endpoint: Relative url of the HTML5 kvm console.

  • rewrites: List of transformations / patches which must be applied to the HTML5 kvm console code for embedding into another web root. Every transformation is described by a dictionary containing the keys search (regular expression), replace and path_match (regular expression which specifies which urls will be patched). The placeholder {subdirectory} contains the new root path.

    Example:

    rewrites:
    - search: 'var path=""'
      replace: 'var path="{subdirectory}"'
      path_match: "/novnc/include/nav_ui\\.js$"
    

Then, add a definition for every single kvm host by reusing the previously defined templates:

hosts:
  mykvmhost:
    based_on: kvm-openjdk-7u51
    full_hostname: mykvmhost.org

• based_on: Template to use for this host configuration
• full_hostname: Fully qualified name of your KVM host

Template configuration values can be overwritten in the host section.

In addition, you can create a general section to configure more general settings, e.g.:

general:
  run_docker_with_sudo: False
  x_resolution: 1600x1200

• run_docker_with_sudo: Set to True if the docker command must be called with sudo (needed on Linux if your user account is not a member of the docker group, defaults to False).
• x_resolution: Resolution of the X server and size of the VNC window (default: 1024x768).
• java_docker_image: Docker image for Java-based kvm consoles (default: sciapp/nojava-ipmi-kvm:v{version}-{java_provider}-{java_major_version}).
• html5_docker_image: Docker image for Java-based kvm consoles (default: sciapp/nojava-ipmi-kvm:v{version}-html5).

Unless you want to use custom docker images, you can omit the config keys java_docker_image and html5_docker_image.

Using the command line tool

After configuring, you can call nojava-ipmi-kvm from the command line:

nojava-ipmi-kvm mykvmhost

You can start nojava-ipmi-kvm multiple times to connect to different machines in parallel. The background Docker container will be shutdown automatically after to you closed the VNC window (if invoked with the --use-gui flag) or sent <Ctrl-C> on the command line.

Options:

usage: nojava-ipmi-kvm [-h] [--debug] [-f CONFIG_FILEPATH] [-g]
                       [--print-default-config] [-V]
                       [hostname]

nojava-ipmi-kvm is a utility to access Java based ipmi kvm consoles without a local java installation.

positional arguments:
  hostname              short hostname of the server machine; must be
                        identical with a hostname in `.nojava-ipmi-kvmrc` (for
                        example `mykvmserver`)

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --debug               print debug messages
  -f CONFIG_FILEPATH, --config-file CONFIG_FILEPATH
                        login user (default: ~/.nojava-ipmi-kvmrc)
  -g, --use-gui         automatically open a PyQt5 browser window. Requires
                        PyQt5 to be installed
  --print-default-config
                        print the default config to stdout and exit
  -V, --version         print the version number and exit

Using Oracle Java

Because of license restrictions we cannot provide pre-built docker images for Oracle Java. However, you can build an Oracle Java image yourself:

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone [e-mail]:sciapp/nojava-ipmi-kvm.git
   

2. Visit the Java download page and get the Linux x64 tar archive of Oracle Java version 8u251. Save it to the docker subdirectory of the previously cloned repository as jre-8u251-linux-x64.tar.gz. If you would like to also use Oracle Java 7, get jre-7u80-linux-x64.tar.gz from Oracle's Java archive (this requires an free Oracle account).

3. Open a terminal and go to the root of the project clone. Run

   git pull
   make build-oracle
   

   to build a Docker image with Oracle Java. When you install an updated version of nojava-ipmi-kvm repeat these commands.

4. Use java_version: 8u251-oracle (or 7u80-oracle) in your ~/.nojava-ipmi-kvmrc.yaml configuration.

Command line completion

This repository offers a completion script for bash and zsh (only hostnames currently, no options).

Bash

Download the Bash completion file and source it in your .bashrc, for example by running:

curl -o .nojava-ipmi-kvm-completion.bash -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sciapp/nojava-ipmi-kvm/master/completion/bash/nojava-ipmi-kvm-completion.bash
echo '[ -r "${HOME}/.nojava-ipmi-kvm-completion.bash" ] && source "${HOME}/.nojava-ipmi-kvm-completion.bash"' >> ~/.bashrc

Zsh

You can install the completion script with zplug or manually.

Using zplug

Add zplug "sciapp/nojava-ipmi-kvm" to your .zshrc, open a new shell and run

zplug install

Manual

Clone this repository and source nojava_ipmi_kvm_completion.plugin.zsh in your .zshrc.

Acknowledgement

• Special thanks to @mheuwes for adding the new YAML config file format and adding HTML5 support!