Installation process

Automated installation

The easiest way to install Rally is by executing its installation script

wget -q -O- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openstack/rally/master/install_rally.sh | bash
# or using curl
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openstack/rally/master/install_rally.sh | bash

The installation script will also check if all the software required by Rally is already installed in your system; if run as root user and some dependency is missing it will ask you if you want to install the required packages.

By default it will install Rally in a virtualenv in ~/rally when run as standard user, or install system wide when run as root. You can install Rally in a venv by using the option --target:

./install_rally.sh --target /foo/bar

You can also install Rally system wide by running script as root and without --target option:

sudo ./install_rally.sh

Run ./install_rally.sh with option --help to have a list of all available options:

 $ ./install_rally.sh --help
 Usage: install_rally.sh [options]

 This script will install rally either in the system (as root) or in a virtual environment.

Options:
  -h, --help             Print this help text
  -v, --verbose          Verbose mode
  -s, --system           Install system-wide.
  -d, --target DIRECTORY Install Rally virtual environment into DIRECTORY.
                         (Default: /root/rally if not root).
  --url                  Git repository public URL to download Rally from.
                         This is useful when you have only installation script and want
                         to install Rally from custom repository.
                         (Default: https://git.openstack.org/openstack/rally).
                         (Ignored when you are already in git repository).
  --branch               Git branch name, tag (Rally release), commit hash, ref, or other
                         tree-ish to install. (Default: master)
                         Ignored when you are already in git repository.
  -f, --overwrite        Deprecated. Use -r instead.
  -r, --recreate         Remove target directory if it already exist.
                         If neither '-r' nor '-R' is set default behaviour is to ask.
  -R, --no-recreate      Do not remove target directory if it already exist.
                         If neither '-r' nor '-R' is set default behaviour is to ask.
  -y, --yes              Do not ask for confirmation: assume a 'yes' reply
                         to every question.
  -D, --dbtype TYPE      Select the database type. TYPE can be one of
                         'sqlite', 'mysql', 'postgresql'.
                         Default: sqlite
  --db-user USER         Database user to use. Only used when --dbtype
                         is either 'mysql' or 'postgresql'.
  --db-password PASSWORD Password of the database user. Only used when
                         --dbtype is either 'mysql' or 'postgresql'.
  --db-host HOST         Database host. Only used when --dbtype is
                         either 'mysql' or 'postgresql'
  --db-name NAME         Name of the database. Only used when --dbtype is
                         either 'mysql' or 'postgresql'
  -p, --python EXE       The python interpreter to use. Default: /usr/bin/python.
  --develop              Install Rally with editable source code try. (Default: false)
  --no-color             Disable output coloring.

Notes: the script will check if all the software required by Rally is already installed in your system. If this is not the case, it will exit, suggesting you the command to issue as root in order to install the dependencies.

You also have to set up the Rally database after the installation is complete:

rally db recreate

Rally with DevStack all-in-one installation

It is also possible to install Rally with DevStack. First, clone the corresponding repositories:

git clone https://git.openstack.org/openstack-dev/devstack
git clone https://github.com/openstack/rally

Then, configure DevStack to run Rally. First, create your local.conf file:

cd devstack
cp samples/local.conf local.conf

Next, edit local.conf: add the following line to the [[local|localrc]] section.

enable_plugin rally https://github.com/openstack/rally master

Finally, run DevStack as usually:

./stack.sh

Rally & Docker

First you need to install Docker; Docker supplies installation instructions for various OSes.

You can either use the official Rally Docker image, or build your own from the Rally source. To do that, change directory to the root directory of the Rally git repository and run:

docker build -t myrally .

If you build your own Docker image, substitute myrally for xrally/xrally-openstack in the commands below.

The Rally Docker image is configured to store the database in the user’s home directory - /home/rally/data/rally.sqlite. For persistence of these data, you may want to keep this directory outside of the container. This may be done via 2 ways:

  • use a docker image. In this case you do not need to initialize the database

    docker volume create --name rally_volume
    docker run -v rally_volume:/home/rally/data xrally/xrally-openstack deployment create --name "foo"
    
  • mount the directory to container. In this case, there is ability to transmit task files inside the container, but you will need to initialize the database by yourself

    sudo mkdir /var/lib/rally_container
    sudo chown 65500 /var/lib/rally_container
    docker run -v /var/lib/rally_container:/home/rally/data xrally/xrally-openstack db create
    docker run -v /var/lib/rally_container:/home/rally/data xrally/xrally-openstack deployment create --name "foo"
    

    Note

    In order for the volume to be accessible by the Rally user (uid: 65500) inside the container, it must be accessible by UID 65500 outside the container as well, which is why it is created in /var/lib/rally_container. Creating it in your home directory is only likely to work if your home directory has excessively open permissions (e.g., 0755), which is not recommended.

You can find all task samples, docs and pre created tasks at /home/rally/source In case you have SELinux enabled and Rally fails to create the database, try executing the following commands to put SELinux into Permissive Mode on the host machine

sed -i 's/SELINUX=enforcing/SELINUX=permissive/' /etc/selinux/config
setenforce permissive

Rally currently has no SELinux policy, which is why it must be run in Permissive mode for certain configurations. If you can help create an SELinux policy for Rally, please contribute!

More about docker: https://www.docker.com/