FAQ

Q: I have many questions and can’t find any answers here, what should I do?

If you are looking to get started using your node or have questions that are not answered within these docs be sure to checkout the user support docs.

Q: How can I use this to upgrade my legacy install?

Answer: Make sure you stop all services on your older node using the legacy tools for doing so. Also, ensure services are not configured to start at boot as this may lead to unexpected behavior. chkconfig --list may help provide this info. If there are valid certificates and keys in place on the machine that you would like to continue to use, put those in a place on your managed machine and specify that path in your host variable file. Once you have filled your variable file(s) and your inventory file, the same example commands from the Usage section for doing clean installs can be used to perform the upgrade. While many considerations have been made for upgrades and the preservation of customizations, it is still recommended that users create backups of site-specific changes to their node.

Q: Ansible is stuck on a task for a long period of time and doesn’t seem to be doing anything.

Answer: Ansible will not report the result of a task until the task is completed. Some tasks can take several minutes to complete. Make sure the verbose flag is specified, -v, to get more information upon the completion of tasks.

Q: My deployment failed, what should I do?

Answer: Try to determine if the failure was related to a bug in the steps taken by the installer or if it was some intermittent, or site-specific, issue. This second case could be things such as bad SSH authentication, a temporary network issue, an issue with the machine being deployed to, or a variable improperly specified in the host variables file. In this second case, attempt to determine and resolve the error, then start the deployment again.

If it is confidently determined be the first case, please submit an issue to this repository.

**Q: I’m familiar with funcitonality in ESGF v2 using the bash script esg-node, eg. starting, stopping the node, requesting certificates. How can I do that now with ESGF Ansible?

Answer: Please consult the following table that outlines the equivalent functions from ESGF v2 and v4: Comparison of ESGF Versions