MAAS installation (deb/2.9/UI)

Upgrade MAAS 2.8 to MAAS 2.9

MAAS 2.8 is the last supported version for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Newer versions of MAAS will not be back-portable, and consequently, to upgrade to MAAS 2.9 and all future versions, you will also need to upgrade the base operating system to Ubuntu 20.04. You do these two operations all at once, with the following procedure:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:maas/2.9

You will get a message similar to this:

 For stable releases of 2.9.x
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~maas/+archive/ubuntu/2.9
Press [ENTER] to continue or Ctrl-c to cancel adding it.

Hit:1 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security InRelease
Hit:2 http://ppa.launchpad.net/maas/2.8/ubuntu bionic InRelease          
Hit:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic InRelease                  
Hit:4 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates InRelease                                     
Ign:5 http://ppa.launchpad.net/maas/2.9/ubuntu bionic InRelease          
Hit:6 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-backports InRelease        
Err:7 http://ppa.launchpad.net/maas/2.9/ubuntu bionic Release                 
  404  Not Found [IP: 91.189.95.85 80]
Reading package lists... Done
E: The repository 'http://ppa.launchpad.net/maas/2.9/ubuntu bionic Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

This message seems to indicate that nothing happened, but, in fact, this command still creates the file:

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/maas-ubuntu-2_9-bionic.list

This file identifies the path to the 2.9 PPA, even though it incorrectly implies there’s a Bionic release there:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/maas/2.9/ubuntu bionic main

Still, that’s enough for do-release-upgrade to figure out that there is a 2.9 PPA, and when it checks, it will find a Focal version of MAAS, which it will bring over and install in place of 2.8. It isn’t necessary to stop MAAS or do anything else, except go ahead and run the upgrade:

sudo do-release-upgrade --allow-third-parties

This command will produce a lot of output, ask you a few questions (for which the defaults are usually fine), and eventually ask you to reboot. Once your machine has come back up, you can check whether your upgrade has been successful by entering:

lsb_release -a

If the ugprade was successful, this command should yield output similar to the following:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS
Release:	20.04
Codename:	focal

You have now upgraded to the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS base, and if you check your running MAAS install, you should see that the version has been updated to the latest stable 2.9 release.

Installing MAAS 2.9 fresh

The recommended way to set up an initial MAAS environment is to put everything on one machine:

sudo apt-get -y install maas

Executing this command leads you to a list of dependent packages to be installed, and a summary prompt that lets you choose whether to continue with the install:

Choosing “Y” proceeds with a standard apt package install.

Distributed environment

For a more distributed environment, you can place the region controller on one machine:

sudo apt install maas-region-controller

and the rack controller (see Rack controller for details) on another:

sudo apt install maas-rack-controller
sudo maas-rack register

These two steps will lead you through two similar apt install sequences.

Creating a MAAS user

Finally, you will need to create a MAAS administrator user to access the web UI:

sudo maas createadmin --username=$PROFILE --email=$EMAIL_ADDRESS

For example, the process might go like this:

The username can be anything. You will also be prompted to supply a password for the user. The command option --password=$PASSWORD can be used to specify one but, depending on your environment, this may pose a security risk.

Finally, the createadmin option asks for an SSH key:

If you have an SSH key associated with your launchpad or github accounts, you can enter the username here to include the key. For launchpad, just enter lp:username, and for github, enter gh:username at the prompt. In both cases, the actual username has to be supplied after the lp: or gh: prefix.

If you don't have a key associated with either of these services, you will have an opportunity to paste your public key into the MAAS SSH key list, after you've started MAAS for the first time as part of the welcome screens.

Next steps

Once you have installed your MAAS environment (region + rack controller) and any possible extra rack controllers(s), you are ready to begin your Configuration journey.

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