Installing Howler on a New Ubuntu VM

This setup document allows you to setup Howler and its dependencies on a new, standalone ubuntu distribution. While a dedicated kubernetes cluster is likely a better way to handle deployments, this approach is useful if you have only a single machine available.

Install Minikube and Dependencies

In order to configure and run the minikube cluster, we need to install docker, minikube, kubectl, helm and k9s.

# Install Docker
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y docker.io
sudo systemctl enable docker
sudo systemctl start docker
sudo docker run hello-world
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER && newgrp docker

# Install minikube
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64
sudo install minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/minikube
minikube addons enable ingress

# Install kubectl
# https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl-linux/
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl.sha256"
echo "$(cat kubectl.sha256)  kubectl" | sha256sum --check
sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl
kubectl version --client

# Install helm
curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3
chmod 700 get_helm.sh
./get_helm.sh

# Install k9s
curl -sS https://webinstall.dev/k9s | bash
source ~/.config/envman/PATH.env

Install Python 3.12 (Optional)

If you need to work with the Howler source code or run custom scripts:

# Install Python 3.12
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3.12 python3.12-distutils python3.12-venv
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python3.12 1
python -m ensurepip
python -m pip install wheel

Configure and Deploy Minikube

Howler uses published Docker images, so you don't need to build them locally.

# Start minikube
minikube start

# Create the interpod secret
kubectl create secret generic howler-interpod-comms-secret \
  --from-literal=secret="<INTERPOD_COMMS_SECRET>"

# Clone the howler monorepo to get the helm chart
mkdir -p ~/repos && cd ~/repos
git clone git@github.com:CybercentreCanada/howler.git
cd howler/howler-helm

# Update values.yaml to use published images
# Change pullPolicy from "Never" to "IfNotPresent" or "Always"
sed -i 's/pullPolicy: "Never"/pullPolicy: "IfNotPresent"/' values.yaml

# Install the howler helm chart
helm install howler .

# Check that everything loads correctly
k9s

# After everything loads, can we access the ingress?
curl $(minikube ip)

# Install and configure nginx
sudo apt install nginx
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

# Input the conf file below
sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/howler

sudo service nginx restart

# Is nginx working?
curl localhost

At this point, you should have an open port 80 on your machine serving a functional howler instance.

Required Files

nginx configuration:

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    sendfile on;
    server_name howler;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://<MINIKUBE_IP>;
        proxy_set_header Host $host:$server_port;
    }
}