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Enabling BlueChi components

Setting use_qm: to true builds the mixed-criticality architecture and enables BlueChi components. If you have not configured the use_qm variable, do so now.

Prerequisites

Procedure

  • To enable BlueChi components, set use_qm to true in the mpp-vars section of your manifest file:

    version: '2'
mpp-vars:
  name: <my-manifest>
  use_qm: true

Next steps

After enabling BlueChi components, you can configure communication between the controller and agents.

Configuring communication between BlueChi controller and agent

Configuration files for the bluechi-controller and bluechi-agent enable these components to communicate with each other. These files define information such as the host, port, and allowed node names for these components.

Prerequisites

Procedure

  1. Create a configuration file for the BlueChi controller on the primary node:

    echo -e "[bluechi-controller]\nControllerPort=842\nAllowedNodeNames=_<root_node>_,_<QM_node>_\n" > /etc/bluechi/controller.conf

  2. Create a configuration file for the BlueChi agent on the primary node:

    echo -e "[bluechi-agent]\nControllerHost=127.0.0.1\nControllerPort=842\nNodeName=_<root_node>_\n" > /etc/bluechi/agent.conf

  3. Copy the .conf files for the root partition into the image by adding a new org.osbuild.copy stage to the rootfs pipeline of your manifest file:

    - type: org.osbuild.copy
    inputs:
      inlinefile6:
        type: org.osbuild.files
        origin: org.osbuild.source
        mpp-embed:
          id: controller
          path: ../etc/bluechi/controller.conf
      inlinefile7:
        type: org.osbuild.files
        origin: org.osbuild.source
        mpp-embed:
          id: agent
          path: ../etc/bluechi/agent.conf

    options:
      paths:
     - from:
          mpp-format-string: input://inlinefile6/{embedded['controller']}
        to: tree:///etc/bluechi/controller.conf

      - from:
          mpp-format-string: input://inlinefile7/{embedded['agent']}
        to: tree:///etc/bluechi/agent.conf

  4. Create a configuration file for the managed QM partition:

    echo -e "[bluechi-agent]\nControllerHost=127.0.0.1\nControllerPort=842\nNodeName=_<QM_node>_\n" > /etc/bluechi/agent.conf.d/agent.conf

  5. Copy the agent.conf file for the QM partition into the image by adding a new org.osbuild.copy stage to the qm_rootfs pipeline of your manifest file:

    - type: org.osbuild.copy
   inputs:
     qm_extra_content_3:
       type: org.osbuild.files
       origin: org.osbuild.source
       mpp-embed:
         id: agent
         path: ../agent.conf

   options:
     paths:
     - from:
         mpp-format-string: input://qm_extra_content_3/{embedded['agent']}
       to: tree:///etc/bluechi/agent.conf.d/agent.conf

Using bluechictl

The bluechi-ctl RPM package contains a command line tool that you can use to manually monitor and manage nodes and units and to test and debug BlueChi functionality. No remote connection exists between bluechictl and the bluechi-controller. Instead, the bluechictl tool interacts with bluechi-controller through sd-bus. Therefore, install bluechictl on the same node as the bluechi-controller and run the commands from that host.

Monitoring nodes

You can check the state of nodes in your system. The bluechictl status command indicates whether nodes are online and when they were last seen. You can monitor single nodes or all the nodes in your system.

Commands to monitor nodes

Command Purpose
bluechictl status Verify the status of all nodes.
bluechictl status -w Continuously watch the status of all nodes.
bluechictl status _<NodeName>_ Verify the status of a specific node.
bluechictl status _<NodeName>_ -w Continuously watch the status of a specific node.

Monitoring units

Services, such as bluechi-controller.service and bluechi-agent.service are examples of units. Use these commands to list units and monitor changes to the services.

Commands to monitor units

Command Purpose
bluechictl list-units List all units on all nodes.
bluechictl list-units --filter=demo-\*.service Use a glob pattern to filter services; this example lists services that start with demo.
bluechictl list-units _<NodeName>_ List all units on a specific node.
bluechictl monitor _<NodeName>_ _<UnitName>_ View changes on a specific node and unit.
bluechictl monitor \* \* Use the wildcard character * to view changes on all units on all node.

Managing units

Additional bluechictl commands exist to start and stop services and manage them in other ways during the testing process.

Commands to manage units

Command Purpose
bluechictl start Starts systemd units on managed nodes.
bluechictl stop Stops systemd units on managed nodes.
bluechictl enable Enables services on managed nodes.
bluechictl disable Disables services on managed nodes.
bluechictl freeze Temporarily prevents identified services from receiving CPU time.
bluechictl thaw Restores CPU time to identified services.

For more information about how to use bluechictl commands, see Examples on how to use BlueChi on the BlueChi Documentation site.

Additional resources

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