VMs are available in DUST again!

published 09/11-26 by freddo

Finally VMs are (experimentally) available through DUST again!

DUST has undergone a series of upgrades, adding support for VMs, RBD block devices and filesystems, floating IP management, themes, and migrated to primarily using HTMX for handling the frontend. All in all, it has added up to ~6500 lines of code added or changed, not counting pull requests to external projects such as nomad-driver-virt and nomad-client-rs. Thanks to SQ8 for also getting it up and running on NixOS!

As mentioned, the VMs have not yet undergone significant testing, especially under load, and as such should be considered experimental. Do not store data on them that is irreplacable, and ensure to have external backups if you decide to anyways.

Setting up VMs

  1. Navigate to DUST and sign in.
  2. Navigate to user settings and set your public SSH key.
  3. Navigate to one of your projects and go to the storage tab. a. Press Create Storage Volume and select the RBD (block device) storage type. b. Select the ubuntu Backing Snapshot. c. Assign at least 4GiB storage.
  4. Navigate to the VM tab. a. Press Create VM Job b. Assign the newly created VM disk. c. Assign at least 4GiB RAM. d. Press create. e. Once navigated to the VM detail view, press apply.
  5. The VM should now be starting. Give it some time to run upgrades, and it should soon become available.

If you're connected to LUDD WIFI or able to proxy through ssh.ludd.ltu.se, you should be able to connect to the VM directly using the assigned IP address. Your username is the same as your username on DUST, typically your LUDD username or LTU ideal.

If you're not able to do the above, you'll need to connect to our SSH bastion.

  1. Run eval "$(ssh-agent)" in terminal, followed by ssh-add to add the ssh key you've previously generated.
  2. Run ssh <uid>@ssh.dust.ludd.ltu.se. The expected fingerprint is SHA256:MbXlslptzJsGZ6ckwFHzBMv84p8vHOp39VcsoylvOZo. If you've uploaded your public key and added it correctly, you should now see a list of DUST VMs.
  3. Select your VM from the list, and with that, you should be connected!

Alternatively, you can add the -t <sever>.<project> option to ssh to connect directly, skipping the menu.

If you encounter any issues or bugs, feel free to contact LUDD ROOT or file an issue on new-dust.