Specifying the Admin User

The admin user is authorized to perform actions such as creating buckets or obtaining billing statistics. An admin user account is no different than any other user account.

To create an account for the admin user, use an HTTP POST with the username you want for the admin account. The following is an example:

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -X POST http://localhost:8080/riak-cs/user \
  --data '{"email":"foobar@example.com", "name":"admin user"}'

The JSON response looks something like:

{
"Email": "foobar@example.com",
"DisplayName": "adminuser"
"KeyId": "324ABC0713CD0B420EFC086821BFAE7ED81442C",
"KeySecret": "5BE84D7EEA1AEEAACF070A1982DDA74DA0AA5DA7",
"Name": "admin user",
"Id":"8d6f05190095117120d4449484f5d87691aa03801cc4914411ab432e6ee0fd6b",
"Buckets": []
}

You can optionally send and receive XML, if you set the Content-Type to application/xml.

Once the admin user exists, you must specify the credentials of the admin user on each node in the Riak CS system. The admin user credential settings reside in the Riak CS app.config file, which is located in the etc/riak-cs directory. The settings appear in the Riak CS config section of the file. Paste the key_id string between the quotes for the admin_key. Paste the key_secret string into the admin_secret variable, as shown here:

%% Admin user credentials
 {admin_key, "LXAAII1MVLI93IN2ZMDD"},
 {admin_secret, "5BE84D7EEA1AEEAACF070A1982DDA74DA0AA5DA7"},

Listening on a Public Address

If you have a single node, you don't have to change the settings for the address to listen on, because Riak CS simply listens to the requests from the local host. If your system has multiple nodes, you set the IP address and port that Riak CS listens on for requests from other nodes.

The public address settings reside in the Riak CS app.config file, which is located in the/etc/riak-cs directory. The settings appear in the Riak CS config section of the file.

riak_ip: Replace 127.0.0.1 with the IP address of the Riak node you want Riak CS to connect to.

If you configured Riak to use a different port for protocol buffers, you must change the following port setting:

riak_pb_port: Replace 8087 with the port number set in the variable pb_port in the Riak app.config file.

After modifying the port numbers, restart Riak if is already running.

Specifying the Stanchion Node

If you have a single node, you don't have to change the Stanchion settings, because Stanchion runs on the local host. If your Riak CS system has multiple nodes, you set the IP address and port for the Stanchion node and whether SSL is enabled.

The Stanchion settings reside in the Riak CS app.config file, which is located in the /etc/Riak-CS directory. The settings appear in the Riak CS config section of the file.

stanchion_ip: Replace 127.0.0.1 with the IP address of the Stanchion node.

If you configured Stanchion to use a different port, you must change the following port setting:

stanchion_port: Replace 8085 with the port number set in the variable stanchion_port in the Stanchion app.config file.

The stanchion_ssl variable is set to false by default. If you want to use SSL, change this variable to true.

Specifying the Node IP Address

You can also set the IP address for the Riak CS node, which is helpful if you must debug code or identify the node from which requests originate. The Riak CS IP address setting resides in the Riak CS vm.args configuration file, which is located in the /etc/riak-cs directory.

Initially, the line that specifies the Riak CS node IP address is set to the localhost, as follows:

## Name of the riak node
-name riak_cs@127.0.0.1

Replace 127.0.0.1 with the IP address for the Riak CS node.

Enabling SSL in Riak CS

In the Riak CS app.config file, first uncomment the following lines:

%%{ssl, [
%%    {certfile, "./etc/cert.pem"},
%%    {keyfile, "./etc/key.pem"}
%%   ]},

Replace the text in quotes with the path and filename for your SSL encryption files.

Proxy vs. Direct Configuration

Proxy

The proxy configuration enables an S3 client to communicate with Riak CS as if it were Amazon S3, using the typical Amazon URLs. First, configure your client's proxy settings to point to your Riak CS cluster's address. Then, configure your client with Riak CS credentials.

When Riak CS receives the request to be proxied, it services the request itself and responds back to the client as if it went to S3.

On the server side, the cs_root_host must be set to s3.amazonaws.com because all of the bucket URLs requested by the client will be destined for s3.amazonaws.com

Note: One issue with proxy configurations is that many GUI clients only allow for one proxy to be configured for all connections. For customers trying to connect to S3 and Riak CS, this can prove to be problematic.

Direct

Direct configuration requires a client that can be configured for an “S3-compatible” service. Some clients with this capability are: Transmit, s3cmd, and DragonDisk.

In this configuration, the client connects to Riak CS as the endpoint. There is no masquerading as Amazon S3.

In this case, the cs_root_host must be set to the FQDN of your Riak CS endpoint, as all of the bucket URLs will be destined for FQDN endpoint.

You will also need wildcard DNS entries for any child of the endpoint to resolve to the endpoint itself. For example:

data.riakcs.net
*.data.riakcs.net

Other Riak CS Settings

The app.config file includes other settings, such as whether to create log files and where to store them. These settings have default values that work in most cases.