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Installing/Upgrading InsightIQ and the "administrator" account - why did i create it?
I'm new to managing InsightIQ and I've got a question, but I can't find the answer in the provided Guides.
I read the Install Guide earlier today and performed an update of InsightIQ to 4.1.2.7. In the process I read the Install portion of the guide before reading the Upgrade portion. Now that the app has been upgraded I've been watching it off and on all day now, and I'm wondering:
The Install process has you create an "administrator" account, then log into it, then immediately use "sudo" to install the package as "root". After watching the app for a few hours now, I have to wonder - what was the point of creating the "administrator" account? It never seems to be used, no processes run as "administrator", and you can't log into InsightIQ using the account. Just what is the point of creating it? It seems like nothing uses it, not even the install process since the first thing you do is use "sudo" to perform the install/upgrade as "root". Can somebody explain to me what it's for, what it does, what the whole point of creating it was? I'm totally mystified.
Thank you for your attention to this matter,
Scott Lindley
Phil.Lam
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December 16th, 2018 21:00
scott.lindley
Have you logged into the WebUI? Only administrator can login thru WebUI, The process of upgrading is via sudo on CLI. You can't log in as root via WebUI.
Phil
Scott Lindley
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December 17th, 2018 08:00
I see. I hadn’t made it that far.
I guess what I found confusing was the extra steps in the process. It has you log into the Linux host “through a user account with sudo access or the root user account”, then create the “administrator” account and set a password. Fine, makes some sense so far. They – after already being logged in “through a user account with sudo access or the root user account”, you are instructed to log out, log in as “administrator” (which is ASSUMED to have “sudo” access, but does not by default), then run the install. What was the point of logging out, then back in as “administrator”, then running the install via “sudo”, when you were already capable of performing these steps before you logged out of the account that you were already logged in as that had “sudo access or the root account”? It makes it sound like it’s somehow mandatory to use the “administrator” account to perform the install, when in fact there’s no such requirement or need. In fact, the entire process is prefaced with this false statement:
Note
You cannot install the InsightIQ web application as the root user. To install InsightIQ, you must use a separate user named administrator with sudo privileges.
It would have also been good to know that you were creating the “administrator” account for the purposes of later logging into the WebUI. Otherwise some of us are left scratching our heads as to the purpose of the account in the first place.
Also, IMHO, the Install guide should at least include a reference to the “Administration” guide to let you know that the “Configuration” section of the “Installation” guide is incomplete in that it has no mention of configuring the WebUI for critical aspects such as the port number,IPv4/6, SSL Certificates, email support, authentication sources, etc. All part of installation, all tasks that should be completed before considering adding clusters to monitor.
Scott
Phil.Lam
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December 18th, 2018 15:00
scott.lindley
For security and auditing reasons, you don't want to log in as root to do everything.lt's not mandatory to use administrator to run the .sh upgrade/install script.
Check out this InsightIQ info hub.
InsightIQ - Isilon Info Hub
There are separate Installation, User & Administration Guides.