22.2.1.1 NDB Cluster Auto-Installer Requirements

Python 2.6 or higher.  The Auto-Installer requires the Python interpreter and standard libraries. If these are not already installed on the system, you may be able to add them using the system's package manager. Otherwise, you can download them from http://python.org/download/.

Paramiko 2 or higher.  This is required to communicate with remote hosts using SSH. You can download it from http://www.lag.net/paramiko/. Paramiko may also be available from your system's package manager.

Pycrypto version 1.9 or higher.  This cryptography module is required by Paramiko, and can be iunstalled using pip install cryptography. If pip is not installed, and the module is not available using your system's package manage, you can download it from https://www.dlitz.net/software/pycrypto/.

SSH.  A secure shell connection is used to enable the back end to perform actions on remote hosts. For this reason, an SSH server must be running on the remote host. In addition, the operating system user running the installer must have access to the remote server, either with a user name and password, or by using public and private keys.

HTTPS.  Remote communication between the Web browser front end and the back end is not encrypted by default, which means that information such as the user's SSH password is transmitted as cleartext that is readable to anyone. For communication from a remote client to be encrypted, the back end must have a certificate, and the front end must communicate with the back end using HTTPS rather than HTTP. Enabling HTTPS is accomplished most easily through issuing a self-signed certificate. Once the certificate is issued, you must make sure that it is used. You can do this by starting ndb_setup.py from the command line with the --use-https (-S) and --cert-file (-c) options.

A sample certificate file cfg.pem is included and is used by default. This file is located in the mcc directory under the installation share directory; on Linux, the full path to the file is normally /usr/share/mysql/mcc/cfg.pem. On Windows systems, this is usually C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 8.0\share\mcc\cfg.pem. Letting the default be used means that, for testing purposes, you can simply start the installer with the -S option to use an HTTPS connection between the browser and the back end.

The Auto-Installer saves the configuration file for a given cluster mycluster01 as mycluster01.mcc in the home directory of the user invoking the ndb_setup.py executable. This file is encrypted with a passphrase supplied by the user (using Fernet); because HTTP transmits the passphrase in the clear, it is strongly recommended that you always use an HTTPS connection to access the Auto-Installer on a remote host.

Certificate-based authentication.  The back end ndb_setup.py process can execute commands on the local host as well as remote hosts. This means that anyone connecting to the back end can take charge of how commands are executed. To reject unwanted connections to the back end, a certificate may be required for authentication of the client. In this case, a certificate must be issued by the user, installed in the browser, and made available to the back end for authentication purposes. You can enact this requirement (together with or in place of password or key authentication) by starting ndb_setup.py with the --ca-certs-file (-a) option.