How to install a new bare metal server at Hetzner
=================================================
This is for setting up physical metal at Hetzner.
Order
-----
1. get approval for the server, picking the specs from the [main
website](https://www.hetzner.com/)
2. head to the [order page](https://robot.your-server.de/order) and pick the right server. pay close
attention to the location, you might want to put it alongside
other TPO servers (or not!) depending on redundancy or traffic
requirements. Click `Add to shopping cart`, leaving all other
fields as default.
3. in the `Server login details` page, you should leave `Type` set to
`Public key`. If you do not recognize your public SSH key in
there, head to the [server list](https://robot.your-server.de/server) and click on [key
management](https://robot.your-server.de/key/index) to add your public keys
4. when you're certain of everything, click `Checkout` in the cart,
review the order again and click `Order in obligation`.
A confirmation email will be sent by Hetzner at the TPA alias when the
order is filed. Then you wait for the order to complete before being
able to proceed with the install.
Ordering physical servers from Hetzner can be very fast: we've seen 2
minutes turn around times.
Install
-------
At this point you should have received an email from Hetzner with a
subject like:
Subject: Your ordered SX62 server
It should contain the SSH fingerprint, and IP address of the new host
which we'll use below.
1. login to the server using the IP address and host key hash
provided above:
ssh -o FingerprintHash=md5 -o UserKnownHostsFile=~/.ssh/authorized_keys.hetzner-rescue root@159.69.63.226
Note: the `FingerprintHash` parameter above is to make sure we
match the hashing algorithm used by Hetzner in their email, which
is, at the time of writing, MD5 (!). Newer versions of SSH will
also encode the hash as base64 instead of hexadecimal, so you
might want to decode the base64 into the latter using this: The
`UserKnownHostsFile` is to make sure we don't store the
(temporary) SSH host key.
perl -MMIME::Base64 -e '$h = unpack("H*", decode_base64(<>)); $h =~ s/(..)(?=.)/\1:/g; print $h, "\n"'
2. Set a hostname (short version, not the FQDN):
echo -n 'New hostname: ' && read hn && hostname "$hn" && exec bash
3. Partition disks. This might vary wildly between hosts, but in
general, we want:
* GPT partitionning, with space for a 8MB grub partition and
cleartext `/boot`
* software RAID (RAID-1 for two drives, RAID-5 for 3, RAID-10
for 4)
* crypto (LUKS)
* LVM, with separate volume groups for different medium (SSD vs
HDD)
We are experimenting with FAI's [setup-storage](https://manpages.debian.org/setup-storage) to partition
disks instead of rolling our own scripts. You first need to
checkout the installer's configuration:
apt install git
git clone https://git.torproject.org/admin/tsa-misc
cd tsa-misc/installer
git show-ref master
Check that the above hashes match a trusted copy.
Use the following to setup a Ganeti node, for example:
apt install fai-setup-storage
setup-storage -f "disk-config/gnt-fsn" -X
TODO: convert the other existing `tor-install-format-disks-4HDDs`
script into a `setup-storage` configuration.
And finally mount the filesystems:
. /tmp/fai/disk_var.sh &&
mkdir /target &&
mount "$ROOT_PARTITION" /target &&
mkdir /target/boot &&
mount "$BOOT_DEVICE" /target/boot
4. Install the system. This can be done with `grml-debootstrap` which
will also configure grub, a root password and so on. This should
get you started, assuming the formatted root disk is mounted on
`/target` and that the boot device is defined by `$BOOT_DEVICE`
(populated above by FAI). Note that `BOOT_DISK` is the *disk* as
opposed to the *partition* which is `$BOOT_DEVICE`.
BOOT_DISK=/dev/nvme0n1 &&
mkdir -p /target/run && mount -t tmpfs tgt-run /target/run &&
mkdir /target/run/udev && mount -o bind /run/udev /target/run/udev &&
apt-get install -y grml-debootstrap && \
grml-debootstrap \
--grub "$BOOT_DISK" \
--target /target \
--hostname `hostname` \
--release buster \
--mirror https://mirror.hetzner.de/debian/packages/ \
--packages /root/tsa-misc/installer/packages \
--post-scripts /root/tsa-misc/installer/post-scripts/ \
--nopassword \
--remove-configs \
--defaultinterfaces &&
umount /target/run/udev /target/run
5. setup dropbear-initramfs to unlock the filesystem on boot. this
should already have been done by the `50-tor-install-luks-setup` hook
deployed in the grml-debootstrap stage.
TODO: in an install following the above procedure, a keyfile was
left unprotected in `/etc`. Make sure we have strong mechanisms to
avoid that ever happening again. For example:
chmod 0 /etc/luks/
TODO: the keyfiles deployed there can be used to bootstrap
mandos. Document how to do this better.
8. Review the crypto configuration:
cat /target/etc/crypttab
If the backing device is *NOT* an SSD, remove the `,discard` option.
9. mount the helper filesystems once more
for fs in dev proc run sys ; do
mount -o bind /$fs "/target/$fs";
done
10. Do the same with the RAID configuration, probably with something like:
chroot /target sh -c "/usr/share/mdadm/mkconf > /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf"
TODO: move to a deboostrap post hook.
11. install grub on any secondary disk, for instance
chroot /target grub-install /dev/nvme1n1
12. Review the network configuration, since it will end up in the
installed instance:
cat /target/etc/network/interfaces
An example safe configuration is:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
The latter two lines usually need to be added as they are missing
from Hetzner rescue shells:
cat >> /etc/network/interfaces <<EOF
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
EOF
TODO: fix this in a post-install debootstrap hook, or in
grml-debootstrap already, see also [upstream issue 105](https://github.com/grml/grml-debootstrap/issues/105) and
[issue 136](https://github.com/grml/grml-debootstrap/issues/136).
13. If any of those latter things changed, you need to regenerate the
initramfs:
chroot /target update-initramfs -u
chroot /target update-grub
14. umount things:
umount /target/run/udev || true &&
for fs in dev proc run sys ; do
umount /target/$fs || true
done &&
umount /target/boot &&
cd / && umount /target
15. close things
vgchange -a n
cryptsetup luksClose cpv_nvme
mdadm --stop /dev/md*
16. Document the LUKS passphrase and root password in `tor-passwords`
17. Cross fingers and reboot:
reboot
Configuration
-------------
See [[new-machine]] for post-install configuration steps, then
follow [[new-machine-mandos]] for setting up the mandos client on this host.