MicroStack installation fails on Ubuntu 20.04

I needed an instance of Openstack in my home lab for some tests and the first attempt was to deploy it with DevStack all-in-one. Is one of the most common methods out there. However it kept on failing (still need to find out why), so I turned to MicroStack.

MicroStack describe itself as the most straightforward way to install Openstack. I don’t say this is the way to go for Enterprise grade installation, but would do if you want something simple like one or two nodes for testing, learning purposes.

MicroStack uses two commands to have an Openstack instance up and running:

sudo snap install microstack --beta
$
sudo microstack init --auto --control

You can read a more detailed “how-to” on the Ubuntu or MicroStack page. One note, the entire topic is in Beta stage.

I’ve tried deploying multiple time on fresh Ubuntu 20.04 installation and everytime I’ve ended up with the error below. I’m adding the entire text, just in case you encounter an error at certain installation stage and want to check if is the same like mine:

sudo microstack init --auto --control
2022-11-02 20:21:19,950 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring clustering ...
2022-11-02 20:21:20,454 - microstack_init - INFO - Setting up as a control node.
2022-11-02 20:21:24,066 - microstack_init - INFO - Generating TLS Certificate and Key
2022-11-02 20:21:26,187 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring networking ...
2022-11-02 20:21:42,675 - microstack_init - INFO - Opening horizon dashboard up to *
2022-11-02 20:21:43,807 - microstack_init - INFO - Waiting for RabbitMQ to start ...
Waiting for 172.31.82.163:5672
2022-11-02 20:21:56,629 - microstack_init - INFO - RabbitMQ started!
2022-11-02 20:21:56,629 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring RabbitMQ ...
2022-11-02 20:21:58,753 - microstack_init - INFO - RabbitMQ Configured!
2022-11-02 20:21:58,953 - microstack_init - INFO - Waiting for MySQL server to start ...
Waiting for 172.31.82.163:3306
2022-11-02 20:23:08,775 - microstack_init - INFO - Mysql server started! Creating databases ...
2022-11-02 20:23:14,509 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring Keystone Fernet Keys ...
2022-11-02 20:26:07,658 - microstack_init - INFO - Bootstrapping Keystone ...
2022-11-02 20:26:21,999 - microstack_init - INFO - Creating service project ...
2022-11-02 20:26:27,938 - microstack_init - INFO - Keystone configured!
2022-11-02 20:26:28,257 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring the Placement service...
2022-11-02 20:26:49,572 - microstack_init - INFO - Running Placement DB migrations...
2022-11-02 20:27:09,282 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring nova control plane services ...
2022-11-02 20:27:22,369 - microstack_init - INFO - Running Nova API DB migrations (this may take a lot of time)...
2022-11-02 20:29:02,089 - microstack_init - INFO - Running Nova DB migrations (this may take a lot of time)...
Waiting for 172.31.82.163:8774
2022-11-02 20:39:31,994 - microstack_init - INFO - Creating default flavors...
2022-11-02 20:39:59,738 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring nova compute hypervisor ...
2022-11-02 20:39:59,738 - microstack_init - INFO - Checking virtualization extensions presence on the host
2022-11-02 20:39:59,756 - microstack_init - WARNING - Unable to determine hardware virtualization support by CPU vendor id "GenuineIntel": assuming it is not supported.
2022-11-02 20:39:59,756 - microstack_init - WARNING - Hardware virtualization is not supported - software emulation will be used for Nova instances
2022-11-02 20:40:06,690 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring the Spice HTML5 console service...
2022-11-02 20:40:08,564 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring Neutron
Waiting for 172.31.82.163:9696
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/snap/microstack/245/bin/microstack", line 11, in <module>
    load_entry_point('microstack==0.0.1', 'console_scripts', 'microstack')()
  File "/snap/microstack/245/lib/python3.8/site-packages/microstack/main.py", line 44, in main
    cmd()
  File "/snap/microstack/245/lib/python3.8/site-packages/init/main.py", line 60, in wrapper
    return func(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/snap/microstack/245/lib/python3.8/site-packages/init/main.py", line 228, in init
    question.ask()
  File "/snap/microstack/245/lib/python3.8/site-packages/init/questions/question.py", line 210, in ask
    self.yes(awr)
  File "/snap/microstack/245/lib/python3.8/site-packages/init/questions/__init__.py", line 887, in yes
    check('openstack', 'network', 'create', 'test')
  File "/snap/microstack/245/lib/python3.8/site-packages/init/shell.py", line 69, in check
    raise subprocess.CalledProcessError(proc.returncode, " ".join(args))
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command 'openstack network create test' returned non-zero exit status 1.

I’ve did some research and I found some hints about the need to manually install Python on a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 instance:

sudo apt install python python-dev

After installing Python all worked like a charm:

sudo microstack init --auto --control
# Skipped text #
2022-11-02 21:18:18,159 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring the Spice HTML5 console service...
2022-11-02 21:18:19,503 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring Neutron
Waiting for 172.31.82.163:9696
2022-11-02 21:19:21,615 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring Glance ...
Waiting for 172.31.82.163:9292
2022-11-02 21:20:53,119 - microstack_init - INFO - Adding cirros image ...
2022-11-02 21:20:57,002 - microstack_init - INFO - Creating security group rules ...
2022-11-02 21:21:09,046 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring the Cinder services...
2022-11-02 21:22:10,868 - microstack_init - INFO - Running Cinder DB migrations...
2022-11-02 21:23:31,155 - microstack_init - INFO - restarting libvirt and virtlogd ...
2022-11-02 21:23:42,260 - microstack_init - INFO - Complete. Marked microstack as initialized!

For some reason the MicroStack initialization process doesn’t detect Python installation or more like it the lack of.

If you have this error during installation, let me know if manual Python installation does the job.

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