About purpleidea

I am James. Just James.

Oh-My-Vagrant “Mainstream” mode and COPR RPM’s

Making Oh-My-Vagrant (OMV) more developer accessible and easy to install (from a distribution package like RPM) has always been a goal, but was previously never a priority. This is all sorted out now. In this article, I’ll explain how “mainstream” mode works, and how the RPM work was done. (I promise this will be somewhat interesting!)

Prerequisites:

If you haven’t read any of the previous articles about Oh-My-Vagrant, I’d recommend you start there. Many of the articles include screencasts, and combined with the examples/ folder, this is probably the best way to learn OMV, because the documentation could use some love.

Installation:

OMV is now easily installable on Fedora 22 via COPR. It probably works on other distros and versions, but I haven’t tested all of those combinations. This is a colossal improvement from when I first posted about this publicly in 2013. There is still one annoying bug that I occasionally hit. Let me know if you can reproduce.

Install from COPR:

james@computer:~$ sudo dnf copr enable purpleidea/oh-my-vagrant

You are about to enable a Copr repository. Please note that this
repository is not part of the main Fedora distribution, and quality
may vary.

The Fedora Project does not exercise any power over the contents of
this repository beyond the rules outlined in the Copr FAQ at
, and
packages are not held to any quality or security level.

Please do not file bug reports about these packages in Fedora
Bugzilla. In case of problems, contact the owner of this repository.

Do you want to continue? [y/N]: y
Repository successfully enabled.
james@computer:~$ sudo dnf install oh-my-vagrant
Last metadata expiration check performed 0:05:08 ago on Tue Jul  7 22:58:45 2015.
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package           Arch     Version            Repository                  Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 oh-my-vagrant     noarch   0.0.7-1            purpleidea-oh-my-vagrant   270 k
 vagrant           noarch   1.7.2-7.fc22       updates                    428 k
 vagrant-libvirt   noarch   0.0.26-2.fc22      fedora                      57 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  3 Packages

Total download size: 755 k
Installed size: 2.5 M
Is this ok [y/N]: n
Operation aborted.
james@computer:~$ sudo dnf install -y oh-my-vagrant
Last metadata expiration check performed 0:05:19 ago on Tue Jul  7 22:58:45 2015.
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package           Arch     Version            Repository                  Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 oh-my-vagrant     noarch   0.0.7-1            purpleidea-oh-my-vagrant   270 k
 vagrant           noarch   1.7.2-7.fc22       updates                    428 k
 vagrant-libvirt   noarch   0.0.26-2.fc22      fedora                      57 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  3 Packages

Total download size: 755 k
Installed size: 2.5 M
Downloading Packages:
(1/3): vagrant-1.7.2-7.fc22.noarch.rpm          626 kB/s | 428 kB     00:00    
(2/3): vagrant-libvirt-0.0.26-2.fc22.noarch.rpm  70 kB/s |  57 kB     00:00    
(3/3): oh-my-vagrant-0.0.7-1.noarch.rpm         243 kB/s | 270 kB     00:01    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                           246 kB/s | 755 kB     00:03     
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Installing  : vagrant-1.7.2-7.fc22.noarch                                 1/3 
  Installing  : vagrant-libvirt-0.0.26-2.fc22.noarch                        2/3 
  Installing  : oh-my-vagrant-0.0.7-1.noarch                                3/3 
  Verifying   : oh-my-vagrant-0.0.7-1.noarch                                1/3 
  Verifying   : vagrant-libvirt-0.0.26-2.fc22.noarch                        2/3 
  Verifying   : vagrant-1.7.2-7.fc22.noarch                                 3/3 

Installed:
  oh-my-vagrant.noarch 0.0.7-1                vagrant.noarch 1.7.2-7.fc22       
  vagrant-libvirt.noarch 0.0.26-2.fc22       

Complete!
james@computer:~$

If you’d like to avoid typing passwords over and over again when using vagrant, you can add yourself into the vagrant group. 99% of people do this. The downside is that it could allow your user account to get root privileges. Since most developers have a single user environment, it’s not a big issue. This is necessary because vagrant uses the qemu:///system connection instead of qemu:///session. If you can help fix this, please hack on it.

james@computer:~$ groups
james wheel docker
james@computer:~$ sudo usermod -aG vagrant james
# you'll need to logout/login for this change to take effect...

Lastly, there is a user session plugin addition that is required. Installation is automatic the first time you create a new OMV project. Let’s do that and see how it works!

james@computer:~$ mkdir /tmp/omvtest
james@computer:~$ cd !$
cd /tmp/omvtest
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest$ which omv
/usr/bin/omv
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest$ omv init
Oh-My-Vagrant needs to install a modified vagrant-hostmanager plugin.
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Cloning into 'vagrant-hostmanager'...
remote: Counting objects: 801, done.
remote: Total 801 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 801
Receiving objects: 100% (801/801), 132.22 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (467/467), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
Branch feat/oh-my-vagrant set up to track remote branch feat/oh-my-vagrant from origin.
Switched to a new branch 'feat/oh-my-vagrant'
sending incremental file list
./
vagrant-hostmanager.rb
vagrant-hostmanager/
vagrant-hostmanager/action.rb
vagrant-hostmanager/command.rb
vagrant-hostmanager/config.rb
vagrant-hostmanager/errors.rb
vagrant-hostmanager/plugin.rb
vagrant-hostmanager/provisioner.rb
vagrant-hostmanager/util.rb
vagrant-hostmanager/version.rb
vagrant-hostmanager/action/
vagrant-hostmanager/action/update_all.rb
vagrant-hostmanager/action/update_guest.rb
vagrant-hostmanager/action/update_host.rb
vagrant-hostmanager/hosts_file/
vagrant-hostmanager/hosts_file/updater.rb

sent 20,560 bytes  received 286 bytes  41,692.00 bytes/sec
total size is 19,533  speedup is 0.94
Patched successfully!
Current machine states:

omv1                      not created (libvirt)

The Libvirt domain is not created. Run `vagrant up` to create it.
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest$ ls
ansible/  docker/  kubernetes/  omv.yaml  puppet/  shell/
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest$

You can see that the plugin installation worked perfectly, and that OMV created a few files and folders.

More usage:

You can hide that generated mess in a subfolder if you prefer:

james@computer:/tmp/omvtest$ mkdir /tmp/omvtest2
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest$ cd !$
cd /tmp/omvtest2
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest2$ omv init mess
Current machine states:

omv1                      not created (libvirt)

The Libvirt domain is not created. Run `vagrant up` to create it.
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest2$ ls
mess/  omv.yaml@
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest2$ ls -lAh
total 0
drwxrwxr-x. 7 james 160 Jul  7 23:26 mess/
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 james  13 Jul  7 23:26 omv.yaml -> mess/omv.yaml
drwxrwxr-x. 3 james  60 Jul  7 23:26 .vagrant/
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest2$ tree
.
├── mess
│   ├── ansible
│   │   └── modules
│   ├── docker
│   ├── kubernetes
│   │   ├── applications
│   │   └── templates
│   ├── omv.yaml
│   ├── puppet
│   │   └── modules
│   └── shell
└── omv.yaml -> mess/omv.yaml

10 directories, 2 files
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest2$

As you can see all the mess is wrapped up in a single folder. This could even be named .omv if you prefer, and should all be committed inside of your project. Now that we’re installed, let’s get hacking!

Mainstream mode:

Mainstream mode further hides the ruby/Vagrantfile aspect of a Vagrant project and extends OMV so that you can define your entire project via the omv.yaml file, without the rest of the OMV project cluttering up your development tree. This makes it possible to have your project use OMV by only committing that one yaml file into the project repo.

The main difference is that you now control everything with the new omv command line tool. It’s essentially a smart wrapper around the vagrant command, so any command you used to use vagrant for, you can now substitute in omv. It also saves typing four extra characters!

As it turns out (and by no accident) the omv tool works exactly like the vagrant tool. For example:

james@computer:/tmp/omvtest2$ omv status
Current machine states:

omv1                      not created (libvirt)

The Libvirt domain is not created. Run `vagrant up` to create it.
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest2$ omv up
Bringing machine 'omv1' up with 'libvirt' provider...
==> omv1: Box 'centos-7.1' could not be found. Attempting to find and install...
    omv1: Box Provider: libvirt
    omv1: Box Version: >= 0
==> omv1: Adding box 'centos-7.1' (v0) for provider: libvirt
    omv1: Downloading: https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/purpleidea/vagrant/centos-7.1/centos-7.1.box
[snip]
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest2$ omv destroy
Unlocking shell provisioning for: omv1...
==> omv1: Domain is not created. Please run `vagrant up` first.
james@computer:/tmp/omvtest2$

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL…

The existing tools you know and love, like vlog, vsftp, vscreen, vcssh, vfwd, vansible, have all been modified to work with OMV mainstream mode as well. The same goes for common aliases such as vs, vp, vup, vdestroy, vrsync, and the useful (but occasionally dangerous) vrm-rf. Have a look at the above links on my blog and the source to see what these do. If it’s not clear enough, let me know!

All of these are now packaged up in the oh-my-vagrant COPR and are installed automatically into /etc/profile.d/oh-my-vagrant.sh for your convenience. Since they’re part of the OMV project, you’ll get updates when new functions or bug fixes are made.

The plumbing:

Mainstream mode is possible because of an idea rbarlow had. He gets full credit for the idea, in particular for teaching me about VAGRANT_CWD which is what makes it all work. I rejected his 6 line prototype, but loved the idea, and since he was busy making juice, I got bored one day and hacked on a full implementation.

james@computer:~/code/oh-my-vagrant$ git diff --stat 853073431d227cbb0ba56aaf4fedd721904de9a8 aa764ae79d69475b87f293c43af4f20fd7d1d000
 DOCUMENTATION.md    | 18 +++++++++++++++
 bin/omv.sh          | 50 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 vagrant/Vagrantfile | 65 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------------------
 3 files changed, 110 insertions(+), 23 deletions(-)
james@computer:~/code/oh-my-vagrant$

It turned out it was a little longer, but I artificially inflated this by including some quick doc patches. What does it actually do differently? It sets VAGRANT_CWD and VAGRANT_DOTFILE_PATH so that the vagrant command looks in a different directory for the Vagrantfile and .vagrant/ directories. That way, all the plumbing is hidden and part of the RPM.

Making the RPM:

The RPM’s happened because stefw made me feel bad about not having them. He was right to do so. In an case, RPM packaging still scares me. I think repetitive work scares me even more. That’s why I automate as much as I can. So after a lot of brain loss, I finally made you an RPM so that you could easily install it. Here’s how it went:

I started by adding the magic so that my Makefile could build an RPM.

This made it so I can easily run make srpm to get a new RPM or SRPM.

Then I added COPR integration, so a make copr automatically kicks off a new COPR build. This was the interesting part. You’ll need a Fedora account for this to work. Once you’re logged in, if you go to https://copr.fedoraproject.org/api you’ll be able to download a snippet to put in your ~/.config/copr file. Lastly, the work happens in copr-build.py where the python copr library does the heavy lifting.

#!/usr/bin/python

# README:
# for initial setup, browse to: https://copr.fedoraproject.org/api/
# and it will have a ~/.config/copr config that you can download.
# happy hacking!

import os
import sys
import copr

COPR = 'oh-my-vagrant'
if len(sys.argv) != 2:
    print("Usage: %s <srpm url>" % sys.argv[0])
    sys.exit(1)

url = sys.argv[1]

client = copr.CoprClient.create_from_file_config(os.path.expanduser("~/.config/copr"))

result = client.create_new_build(COPR, [url])
if result.output != "ok":
    print(result.error)
    sys.exit(1)
print(result.message)

A build looks like this:

james@computer:~/code/oh-my-vagrant$ git tag 0.0.8 # set a new tag
james@computer:~/code/oh-my-vagrant$ make copr 
Running templater...
Running git archive...
Running git archive submodules...
Running rpmbuild -bs...
Wrote: /home/james/code/oh-my-vagrant/rpmbuild/SRPMS/oh-my-vagrant-0.0.8-1.src.rpm
Running SRPMS sha256sum...
/home/james/code/oh-my-vagrant
Running SRPMS gpg...

You need a passphrase to unlock the secret key for
user: "James Shubin (Third PGP key.) <james@shubin.ca>"
4096-bit RSA key, ID 24090D66, created 2012-05-09

gpg: WARNING: The GNOME keyring manager hijacked the GnuPG agent.
gpg: WARNING: GnuPG will not work properly - please configure that tool to not interfere with the GnuPG system!
Running SRPMS upload...
sending incremental file list
SHA256SUMS
SHA256SUMS.asc
oh-my-vagrant-0.0.8-1.src.rpm

sent 8,583 bytes  received 2,184 bytes  4,306.80 bytes/sec
total size is 1,456,741  speedup is 135.30
Build was added to oh-my-vagrant.
james@computer:~/code/oh-my-vagrant$

A few minutes later, the COPR build page should look like this:

a screenshot of the Oh-My-Vagrant COPR build page for people who like to look at pretty pictures instead of just terminal output

A screenshot of the Oh-My-Vagrant COPR build page for people who like to look at pretty pictures instead of just terminal output.

There was a bunch of additional fixing and polishing required to get this as seamless as possible for you. Have a look at the git commits and you’ll get an idea of all the work that was done, and you’ll probably even learn about some new, features I haven’t blogged about yet. It was exhausting!

omv-exhaustedAs a result of all this, you can download fresh builds easily. Visit the COPR page to see how things are cooking:

https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/purpleidea/oh-my-vagrant/

I’ll try to keep this pumping out releases regularly. If I lag behind, please holler at me. In any case, please let me know if you appreciate this work. Comment, tweeter, or contact me!

Happy Hacking,

James

A super privileged Puppet container

In this new crazy world of containers and immutable hosts, one might still want to run previous generation software such as Puppet on a current generation Atomic host. This article will explain how you can do that, and offer some proof of concept code.

The atomic host doesn’t provide a yum or dnf command, because the software is pre-baked into a read-only /usr/ partition. To “install” (to use) additional software, it usually needs to be distributed and run as a container.

The Dockerfile which describes the docker container that we will build, has two important sections:

ENV FACTER_fqdn=localhost
ENTRYPOINT ["puppet", "apply"]

The ENTRYPOINT verb causes docker to run the puppet command that we built into the container, when the container is run with externally provided arguments. The ENV verb causes some facter errors to be suppressed, since facter isn’t running on the host. The rest of the file contains boilerplate and other build/run dependencies.

You can build this container yourself manually, or if you are an Oh-My-Vagrant user, then you can use the supplied omv.yaml file to build the container automatically. A build with Oh-My-Vagrant looks like this:

$ time vup omv1
Bringing machine 'omv1' up with 'libvirt' provider...
==> omv1: Creating image (snapshot of base box volume).
==> omv1: Creating domain with the following settings...
==> omv1:  -- Name:              omv_omv1
==> omv1:  -- Domain type:       kvm
==> omv1:  -- Cpus:              1
==> omv1:  -- Memory:            512M
==> omv1:  -- Base box:          centos-7.1-docker
==> omv1:  -- Storage pool:      default
==> omv1:  -- Image:             /var/lib/libvirt/images/omv_omv1.img
==> omv1:  -- Volume Cache:      default
==> omv1:  -- Kernel:            
==> omv1:  -- Initrd:            
==> omv1:  -- Graphics Type:     vnc
==> omv1:  -- Graphics Port:     5900
==> omv1:  -- Graphics IP:       127.0.0.1
==> omv1:  -- Graphics Password: Not defined
==> omv1:  -- Video Type:        cirrus
==> omv1:  -- Video VRAM:        9216
==> omv1:  -- Keymap:            en-us
==> omv1:  -- Command line : 
==> omv1: Starting domain.
==> omv1: Waiting for domain to get an IP address...
==> omv1: Waiting for SSH to become available...
==> omv1: Starting domain.
==> omv1: Waiting for domain to get an IP address...
==> omv1: Waiting for SSH to become available...
==> omv1: Creating shared folders metadata...
==> omv1: Setting hostname...
==> omv1: Rsyncing folder: /home/james/code/oh-my-vagrant/vagrant/ => /vagrant
==> omv1: Configuring and enabling network interfaces...
==> omv1: Updating /etc/hosts file on active guest machines...
==> omv1: Running provisioner: shell...
    omv1: Running: inline script
==> omv1: Running provisioner: shell...
    omv1: Running: inline script
==> omv1: Running provisioner: docker...
    omv1: Configuring Docker to autostart containers...
==> omv1: Running provisioner: docker...
    omv1: Configuring Docker to autostart containers...
==> omv1: Building Docker images...
==> omv1: -- Path: /vagrant/docker/spc-puppet-apply
==> omv1: Sending build context to Docker daemon 122.9 kB
==> omv1: Sending build context to Docker daemon 
==> omv1: Step 0 : FROM centos:7
==> omv1:  ---> 0114405f9ff1
==> omv1: Step 1 : MAINTAINER James Shubin <james@shubin.ca>
==> omv1:  ---> Running in 2dbdc37494e9
==> omv1:  ---> e154b3cfed7f
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container 2dbdc37494e9
==> omv1: Step 2 : RUN echo Hello from purpleidea and aweiteka > README
==> omv1:  ---> Running in 97475154152f
==> omv1:  ---> e4728d71caac
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container 97475154152f
==> omv1: Step 3 : ADD el7-puppet.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/
==> omv1:  ---> c591e0a9a54d
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container 24e55893313c
==> omv1: Step 4 : ADD RPM-GPG-KEY-puppetlabs /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/
==> omv1:  ---> 223549fbf661
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container 2bceb998f1c3
==> omv1: Step 5 : RUN yum install -y puppet
==> omv1:  ---> Running in e44c9cf55dc5
==> omv1: Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
==> omv1: Determining fastest mirrors
==> omv1:  * base: centos.mirror.vexxhost.com
==> omv1:  * extras: mirror.gpmidi.net
==> omv1:  * updates: centos.mirror.vexxhost.com
==> omv1: Resolving Dependencies
==> omv1: --> Running transaction check
==> omv1: ---> Package puppet.noarch 0:3.7.5-1.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: ruby >= 1.8 for package: puppet-3.7.5-1.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: facter >= 1:1.7.0 for package: puppet-3.7.5-1.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: ruby >= 1.8.7 for package: puppet-3.7.5-1.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: hiera >= 1.0.0 for package: puppet-3.7.5-1.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: rubygem-json for package: puppet-3.7.5-1.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libselinux-utils for package: puppet-3.7.5-1.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: ruby-augeas for package: puppet-3.7.5-1.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: ruby(selinux) for package: puppet-3.7.5-1.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: /usr/bin/ruby for package: puppet-3.7.5-1.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: ruby-shadow for package: puppet-3.7.5-1.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Running transaction check
==> omv1: ---> Package facter.x86_64 1:2.4.3-1.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: net-tools for package: 1:facter-2.4.3-1.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: virt-what for package: 1:facter-2.4.3-1.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: pciutils for package: 1:facter-2.4.3-1.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: dmidecode for package: 1:facter-2.4.3-1.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: ---> Package hiera.noarch 0:1.3.4-1.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package libselinux-ruby.x86_64 0:2.2.2-6.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package libselinux-utils.x86_64 0:2.2.2-6.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package ruby.x86_64 0:2.0.0.598-24.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: ruby-libs(x86-64) = 2.0.0.598-24.el7 for package: ruby-2.0.0.598-24.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: rubygem(bigdecimal) >= 1.2.0 for package: ruby-2.0.0.598-24.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: ruby(rubygems) >= 2.0.14 for package: ruby-2.0.0.598-24.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libruby.so.2.0()(64bit) for package: ruby-2.0.0.598-24.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: ---> Package ruby-augeas.x86_64 0:0.4.1-3.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: augeas-libs >= 0.8.0 for package: ruby-augeas-0.4.1-3.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libaugeas.so.0(AUGEAS_0.8.0)(64bit) for package: ruby-augeas-0.4.1-3.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libaugeas.so.0(AUGEAS_0.1.0)(64bit) for package: ruby-augeas-0.4.1-3.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libaugeas.so.0(AUGEAS_0.12.0)(64bit) for package: ruby-augeas-0.4.1-3.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libaugeas.so.0(AUGEAS_0.10.0)(64bit) for package: ruby-augeas-0.4.1-3.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libaugeas.so.0(AUGEAS_0.11.0)(64bit) for package: ruby-augeas-0.4.1-3.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libaugeas.so.0()(64bit) for package: ruby-augeas-0.4.1-3.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: ---> Package ruby-shadow.x86_64 1:2.2.0-2.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package rubygem-json.x86_64 0:1.7.7-24.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: --> Running transaction check
==> omv1: ---> Package augeas-libs.x86_64 0:1.1.0-17.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package dmidecode.x86_64 1:2.12-5.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package net-tools.x86_64 0:2.0-0.17.20131004git.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package pciutils.x86_64 0:3.2.1-4.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: pciutils-libs = 3.2.1-4.el7 for package: pciutils-3.2.1-4.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libpci.so.3(LIBPCI_3.2)(64bit) for package: pciutils-3.2.1-4.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libpci.so.3(LIBPCI_3.1)(64bit) for package: pciutils-3.2.1-4.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libpci.so.3(LIBPCI_3.0)(64bit) for package: pciutils-3.2.1-4.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: hwdata for package: pciutils-3.2.1-4.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libpci.so.3()(64bit) for package: pciutils-3.2.1-4.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: ---> Package ruby-libs.x86_64 0:2.0.0.598-24.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package rubygem-bigdecimal.x86_64 0:1.2.0-24.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package rubygems.noarch 0:2.0.14-24.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: rubygem(rdoc) >= 4.0.0 for package: rubygems-2.0.14-24.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: rubygem(psych) >= 2.0.0 for package: rubygems-2.0.14-24.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: rubygem(io-console) >= 0.4.2 for package: rubygems-2.0.14-24.el7.noarch
==> omv1: ---> Package virt-what.x86_64 0:1.13-5.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: --> Running transaction check
==> omv1: ---> Package hwdata.noarch 0:0.252-7.5.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package pciutils-libs.x86_64 0:3.2.1-4.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package rubygem-io-console.x86_64 0:0.4.2-24.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package rubygem-psych.x86_64 0:2.0.0-24.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: libyaml-0.so.2()(64bit) for package: rubygem-psych-2.0.0-24.el7.x86_64
==> omv1: ---> Package rubygem-rdoc.noarch 0:4.0.0-24.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: --> Processing Dependency: ruby(irb) = 2.0.0.598 for package: rubygem-rdoc-4.0.0-24.el7.noarch
==> omv1: --> Running transaction check
==> omv1: ---> Package libyaml.x86_64 0:0.1.4-11.el7_0 will be installed
==> omv1: ---> Package ruby-irb.noarch 0:2.0.0.598-24.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: --> Finished Dependency Resolution
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Dependencies Resolved
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: ================================================================================
==> omv1:  Package            Arch   Version                    Repository           Size
==> omv1: ================================================================================
==> omv1: Installing:
==> omv1:  puppet             noarch 3.7.5-1.el7                puppetlabs-products 1.5 M
==> omv1: Installing for dependencies:
==> omv1:  augeas-libs        x86_64 1.1.0-17.el7               base                332 k
==> omv1:  dmidecode          x86_64 1:2.12-5.el7               base                 78 k
==> omv1:  facter             x86_64 1:2.4.3-1.el7              puppetlabs-products  98 k
==> omv1:  hiera              noarch 1.3.4-1.el7                puppetlabs-products  23 k
==> omv1:  hwdata             noarch 0.252-7.5.el7              base                2.0 M
==> omv1:  libselinux-ruby    x86_64 2.2.2-6.el7                base                127 k
==> omv1:  libselinux-utils   x86_64 2.2.2-6.el7                base                135 k
==> omv1:  libyaml            x86_64 0.1.4-11.el7_0             base                 55 k
==> omv1:  net-tools          x86_64 2.0-0.17.20131004git.el7   base                304 k
==> omv1:  pciutils           x86_64 3.2.1-4.el7                base                 90 k
==> omv1:  pciutils-libs      x86_64 3.2.1-4.el7                base                 45 k
==> omv1:  ruby               x86_64 2.0.0.598-24.el7           base                 67 k
==> omv1:  ruby-augeas        x86_64 0.4.1-3.el7                puppetlabs-deps      22 k
==> omv1:  ruby-irb           noarch 2.0.0.598-24.el7           base                 88 k
==> omv1:  ruby-libs          x86_64 2.0.0.598-24.el7           base                2.8 M
==> omv1:  ruby-shadow        x86_64 1:2.2.0-2.el7              puppetlabs-deps      14 k
==> omv1:  rubygem-bigdecimal x86_64 1.2.0-24.el7               base                 79 k
==> omv1:  rubygem-io-console x86_64 0.4.2-24.el7               base                 50 k
==> omv1:  rubygem-json       x86_64 1.7.7-24.el7               base                 75 k
==> omv1:  rubygem-psych      x86_64 2.0.0-24.el7               base                 77 k
==> omv1:  rubygem-rdoc       noarch 4.0.0-24.el7               base                318 k
==> omv1:  rubygems           noarch 2.0.14-24.el7              base                212 k
==> omv1:  virt-what          x86_64 1.13-5.el7                 base                 26 k
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Transaction Summary
==> omv1: ================================================================================
==> omv1: Install  1 Package (+23 Dependent packages)
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Total download size: 8.6 M
==> omv1: Installed size: 27 M
==> omv1: Downloading packages:
==> omv1: warning: /var/cache/yum/x86_64/7/puppetlabs-products/packages/hiera-1.3.4-1.el7.noarch.rpm: Header V4 RSA/SHA512 Signature, key ID 4bd6ec30: NOKEY
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Public key for hiera-1.3.4-1.el7.noarch.rpm is not installed
==> omv1: warning: /var/cache/yum/x86_64/7/base/packages/dmidecode-2.12-5.el7.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID f4a80eb5: NOKEY
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Public key for dmidecode-2.12-5.el7.x86_64.rpm is not installed
==> omv1: Public key for ruby-augeas-0.4.1-3.el7.x86_64.rpm is not installed
==> omv1: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
==> omv1: Total                                              811 kB/s | 8.6 MB  00:10     
==> omv1: Retrieving key from file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7
==> omv1: Importing GPG key 0xF4A80EB5:
==> omv1:  Userid     : "CentOS-7 Key (CentOS 7 Official Signing Key) <security@centos.org>"
==> omv1:  Fingerprint: 6341 ab27 53d7 8a78 a7c2 7bb1 24c6 a8a7 f4a8 0eb5
==> omv1:  Package    : centos-release-7-1.1503.el7.centos.2.8.x86_64 (@CentOS/$releasever)
==> omv1:  From       : /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Retrieving key from file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-puppetlabs
==> omv1: Importing GPG key 0x4BD6EC30:
==> omv1:  Userid     : "Puppet Labs Release Key (Puppet Labs Release Key) <info@puppetlabs.com>"
==> omv1:  Fingerprint: 47b3 20eb 4c7c 375a a9da e1a0 1054 b7a2 4bd6 ec30
==> omv1:  From       : /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-puppetlabs
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Running transaction check
==> omv1: Running transaction test
==> omv1: Transaction test succeeded
==> omv1: Running transaction
==> omv1:   Installing : ruby-libs-2.0.0.598-24.el7.x86_64                           1/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : 1:dmidecode-2.12-5.el7.x86_64                               2/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : virt-what-1.13-5.el7.x86_64                                 3/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : libyaml-0.1.4-11.el7_0.x86_64                               4/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : rubygem-psych-2.0.0-24.el7.x86_64                           5/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : rubygem-bigdecimal-1.2.0-24.el7.x86_64                      6/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : rubygem-io-console-0.4.2-24.el7.x86_64                      7/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : ruby-irb-2.0.0.598-24.el7.noarch                            8/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : ruby-2.0.0.598-24.el7.x86_64                                9/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : rubygems-2.0.14-24.el7.noarch                              10/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : rubygem-json-1.7.7-24.el7.x86_64                           11/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : rubygem-rdoc-4.0.0-24.el7.noarch                           12/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : hiera-1.3.4-1.el7.noarch                                   13/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : 1:ruby-shadow-2.2.0-2.el7.x86_64                           14/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : hwdata-0.252-7.5.el7.noarch                                15/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : libselinux-utils-2.2.2-6.el7.x86_64                        16/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : pciutils-libs-3.2.1-4.el7.x86_64                           17/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : pciutils-3.2.1-4.el7.x86_64                                18/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : augeas-libs-1.1.0-17.el7.x86_64                            19/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : ruby-augeas-0.4.1-3.el7.x86_64                             20/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : net-tools-2.0-0.17.20131004git.el7.x86_64                  21/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : 1:facter-2.4.3-1.el7.x86_64                                22/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : libselinux-ruby-2.2.2-6.el7.x86_64                         23/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Installing : puppet-3.7.5-1.el7.noarch                                  24/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : libselinux-ruby-2.2.2-6.el7.x86_64                          1/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : rubygem-json-1.7.7-24.el7.x86_64                            2/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : ruby-irb-2.0.0.598-24.el7.noarch                            3/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : ruby-libs-2.0.0.598-24.el7.x86_64                           4/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : net-tools-2.0-0.17.20131004git.el7.x86_64                   5/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : augeas-libs-1.1.0-17.el7.x86_64                             6/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : pciutils-libs-3.2.1-4.el7.x86_64                            7/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : rubygem-psych-2.0.0-24.el7.x86_64                           8/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : 1:facter-2.4.3-1.el7.x86_64                                 9/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : pciutils-3.2.1-4.el7.x86_64                                10/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : puppet-3.7.5-1.el7.noarch                                  11/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : hiera-1.3.4-1.el7.noarch                                   12/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : rubygem-rdoc-4.0.0-24.el7.noarch                           13/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : virt-what-1.13-5.el7.x86_64                                14/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : rubygems-2.0.14-24.el7.noarch                              15/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : libselinux-utils-2.2.2-6.el7.x86_64                        16/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : 1:ruby-shadow-2.2.0-2.el7.x86_64                           17/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : rubygem-bigdecimal-1.2.0-24.el7.x86_64                     18/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : 1:dmidecode-2.12-5.el7.x86_64                              19/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : hwdata-0.252-7.5.el7.noarch                                20/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : libyaml-0.1.4-11.el7_0.x86_64                              21/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : rubygem-io-console-0.4.2-24.el7.x86_64                     22/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : ruby-augeas-0.4.1-3.el7.x86_64                             23/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : ruby-2.0.0.598-24.el7.x86_64                               24/24
==> omv1:  
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Installed:
==> omv1:   puppet.noarch 0:3.7.5-1.el7                                                   
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Dependency Installed:
==> omv1:   augeas-libs.x86_64 0:1.1.0-17.el7                                             
==> omv1:   dmidecode.x86_64 1:2.12-5.el7                                                 
==> omv1:   facter.x86_64 1:2.4.3-1.el7                                                   
==> omv1:   hiera.noarch 0:1.3.4-1.el7                                                    
==> omv1:   hwdata.noarch 0:0.252-7.5.el7                                                 
==> omv1:   libselinux-ruby.x86_64 0:2.2.2-6.el7                                          
==> omv1:   libselinux-utils.x86_64 0:2.2.2-6.el7                                         
==> omv1:   libyaml.x86_64 0:0.1.4-11.el7_0                                               
==> omv1:   net-tools.x86_64 0:2.0-0.17.20131004git.el7                                   
==> omv1:   pciutils.x86_64 0:3.2.1-4.el7                                                 
==> omv1:   pciutils-libs.x86_64 0:3.2.1-4.el7                                            
==> omv1:   ruby.x86_64 0:2.0.0.598-24.el7                                                
==> omv1:   ruby-augeas.x86_64 0:0.4.1-3.el7                                              
==> omv1:   ruby-irb.noarch 0:2.0.0.598-24.el7                                            
==> omv1:   ruby-libs.x86_64 0:2.0.0.598-24.el7                                           
==> omv1:   ruby-shadow.x86_64 1:2.2.0-2.el7                                              
==> omv1:   rubygem-bigdecimal.x86_64 0:1.2.0-24.el7                                      
==> omv1:   rubygem-io-console.x86_64 0:0.4.2-24.el7                                      
==> omv1:   rubygem-json.x86_64 0:1.7.7-24.el7                                            
==> omv1:   rubygem-psych.x86_64 0:2.0.0-24.el7                                           
==> omv1:   rubygem-rdoc.noarch 0:4.0.0-24.el7                                            
==> omv1:   rubygems.noarch 0:2.0.14-24.el7                                               
==> omv1:   virt-what.x86_64 0:1.13-5.el7                                                 
==> omv1: Complete!
==> omv1:  ---> bf169104271a
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container e44c9cf55dc5
==> omv1: Step 6 : RUN yum install -y hostname
==> omv1:  ---> Running in 6e5bd5a59223
==> omv1: Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
==> omv1: Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
==> omv1:  * base: centos.mirror.vexxhost.com
==> omv1:  * extras: mirror.gpmidi.net
==> omv1:  * updates: centos.mirror.vexxhost.com
==> omv1: Resolving Dependencies
==> omv1: --> Running transaction check
==> omv1: ---> Package hostname.x86_64 0:3.13-3.el7 will be installed
==> omv1: --> Finished Dependency Resolution
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Dependencies Resolved
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: ================================================================================
==> omv1:  Package            Arch             Version               Repository      Size
==> omv1: ================================================================================
==> omv1: Installing:
==> omv1:  hostname           x86_64           3.13-3.el7            base            17 k
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Transaction Summary
==> omv1: ================================================================================
==> omv1: Install  1 Package
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Total download size: 17 k
==> omv1: Installed size: 19 k
==> omv1: Downloading packages:
==> omv1: Running transaction check
==> omv1: Running transaction test
==> omv1: Transaction test succeeded
==> omv1: Running transaction
==> omv1:   Installing : hostname-3.13-3.el7.x86_64                                   1/1
==> omv1:  
==> omv1:   Verifying  : hostname-3.13-3.el7.x86_64                                   1/1
==> omv1:  
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Installed:
==> omv1:   hostname.x86_64 0:3.13-3.el7                                                  
==> omv1: 
==> omv1: Complete!
==> omv1:  ---> 2a20361f2d9d
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container 6e5bd5a59223
==> omv1: Step 7 : ADD run.sh /
==> omv1:  ---> 5493e62ac377
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container 84c8b7677f72
==> omv1: Step 8 : ADD test.pp /
==> omv1:  ---> 4f4d0023e612
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container 84cb691304a3
==> omv1: Step 9 : ENV FACTER_fqdn localhost
==> omv1:  ---> Running in 104fe3925dd6
==> omv1:  ---> 864c113d54b5
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container 104fe3925dd6
==> omv1: Step 10 : ENTRYPOINT puppet apply
==> omv1:  ---> Running in f6fe26141b19
==> omv1:  ---> cd19e4344bf1
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container f6fe26141b19
==> omv1: Step 11 : USER root
==> omv1:  ---> Running in 435752b9fb17
==> omv1:  ---> 86193e9815a8
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container 435752b9fb17
==> omv1: Step 12 : LABEL INSTALL docker run --rm -it --privileged -v /etc:/etc -v /var:/var -v /run:/run --net=host IMAGE
==> omv1:  ---> Running in d24f98a56936
==> omv1:  ---> 72f2dfbc4e07
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container d24f98a56936
==> omv1: Successfully built 72f2dfbc4e07

real    2m46.515s
user    0m10.036s
sys    0m1.678s

Once you’ve built the container, you should confirm its existence:

$ vscreen root@omv1
# docker images | grep spc
spc-puppet-apply    latest              72f2dfbc4e07        7 minutes ago       314.5 MB

The project repository tries to make your life easier, so it comes with a test.pp file that you can run to confirm puppet is working correctly. If you are using a regular host (not Atomic) you can run:

# mkdir /var/tmp/spc-puppet-apply/
# cp -a /vagrant/docker/spc-puppet-apply/test.pp /var/tmp/spc-puppet-apply/

or if you’re using an Atomic host, you can run:

# mkdir /var/tmp/spc-puppet-apply/
# cp -a /home/vagrant/sync/docker/spc-puppet-apply/test.pp /var/tmp/spc-puppet-apply/

since Oh-My-Vagrant can’t put files in /vagrant on an immutable Atomic host.

Finally, run the application with this monster docker command:

# docker run --rm -it --privileged -v /etc:/etc -v /var:/var -v /run:/run --net=host spc-puppet-apply /var/tmp/spc-puppet-apply/test.pp
Notice: Compiled catalog for omv1.example.com in environment production in 0.02 seconds
Notice: This is a puppet test!

Notice: /Stage[main]/Main/Notify[hello]/message: defined 'message' as 'This is a puppet test!'
Notice: Finished catalog run in 0.06 seconds

Since remembering that monster each time you want to do a simple puppet run is a bit of a monster, the Atomic project provides labels which make it so you can use the atomic run command instead.

Future work:

Interested parties are encouraged to test this, find any issues, and become comfortable with the idea of applications running from within containers. If running puppet with a puppet master is desirable, an spc-puppet-agent would be needed.

Happy Hacking,

James

Kubernetes clusters with Oh-My-Vagrant

I’ve added the ability to deploy a Kubernetes cluster with Oh-My-Vagrant (omv). I’ve also built an automated developer experience so that you can test your Kubernetes powered app in minutes. If you want to redeploy a new version, or see how your app behaves during a rolling update, you can use omv to test this out in minutes! I’ve recorded a screencast (~15 min), if you’d like to see some of this in action.

Background:

Kubernetes is a container cluster manager. It groups containers into pods, and those pods get scheduled to run on a certain machine in the cluster. We’ll be talking about Docker containers in this article, although there are lots of great new technologies such as nspawn.

An advantage of using Kubernetes is that it was created by a team at Google, who has a lot of experience running containers. A lot of smart folks (including many from Red Hat) are working on this project too! It is becoming the foundation for other software such as OpenShift v3. Google has released a paper on their earlier work (Borg), which is interesting, but lacks many details, and (unsurprisingly) no source code is present.

Some big disadvantages include the requirement of a CLA to contribute to the project, and the lack of good documentation and articles about it. Kubernetes itself, can’t yet be decentralized, but this might change in the future. It’s (currently) very difficult to construct the foo.json files required to build an application.

While the project is open source (ALv2) I’ve gotten the feeling that Google has a pretty strong hold on the project and has some changes to make before the community really trusts them. This can be a learning experience for any company where proprietary software is the culture. I wish them well on their journey!

Oh-My-Vagrant integration:

To deploy a Kubernetes cluster with omv, the kubernetes variable needs to be set to something meaningful. It’s also recommended that you boot up a minimum of three machines. Here is an except from an example omv.yaml config:

---
:domain: example.com
:network: 192.168.123.0/24
:image: centos-7.1-docker
:sync: rsync
:extern:
- type: git
  system: docker
  repository: https://github.com/purpleidea/docker-simple1
  directory: docker-simple1
- type: git
  system: kubernetes
  repository: https://github.com/purpleidea/kube-simple1
  directory: kube-simple1
:puppet: false
:docker: []
:kubernetes:
  applications:
  - kube-simple1/simple1.json
:vms: []
:namespace: omv
:count: 3

In the above example, you can see that we’ve only listed one Kubernetes application, but an arbitrary number can be included. The kubernetes variable can also accept a key named master if you’d like to choose which of your vm’s should be the primary. If you don’t specify this, the first vagrant machine will be chosen.

In the list of applications, instead of only specifying the .json file, you can instead specify a dictionary of key/value pairs. The .json key (file) is required, but you can also specify additional keys, such as the boolean key roll. When true, it will cause a rolling update to occur instead of a normal” update.

If you’re interested to see what needs to be done to set up Kubernetes, the bulk of the work was done by me in 1f26, but figuring out manual steps was only possible thanks to the work of my hacker friends: scollier and eparis.

Due to the power of the omv project, when you vagrant up, the necessary docker and Kubernetes projects listed in the extern variable will be automatically cloned and pulled into your omv environment.

Screencast:

You’re probably due for a screencast (~15 min). Have a watch, and then if you need review, go back and read what I’ve written above.

https://download.gluster.org/pub/gluster/purpleidea/screencasts/oh-my-vagrant-kubernetes-screencast.ogv

(Thanks to the Gluster community for generously hosting this video!)

Final thoughts:

I haven’t talked about networking, or actually building applications.

Container network might be a lot easier if you use an overlay network like flannel. Unfortunately, this isn’t yet built into Oh-My-Vagrant, but is in the list of feature requests if someone shows some interest.

Building useful applications is harder. In my screencast, you’ll see where to put the code, and how to iterate on it, but not what kind of code to write, or architecturally how your multi-container applications should work. Unfortunately this is out of scope for today’s article! My goal was to make it easy for you to focus on that topic, instead of having to figure out how to build the infrastructure. Hopefully Oh-My-Vagrant helps you accomplish that!

Happy hacking,

James

 

Docker containers in Oh-My-Vagrant

The Oh-My-Vagrant (omv) project is an easy way to bootstrap a development environment. It is particularly useful for spinning up an arbitrary number of virtual machines in Vagrant without writing ruby code. For multi-machine container development, omv can be used to help this happen more naturally.

Oh-My-Vagrant can be very useful as a docker application development environment. I’ve made a quick (<9min) screencast demoing this topic. Please have a look:

https://download.gluster.org/pub/gluster/purpleidea/screencasts/oh-my-vagrant-docker-screencast.ogv

If you watched the screencast, you should have a good overview of what’s possible. Let’s discuss some of these features in more detail.

Pull an arbitrary list of docker images:

If you use an image that was baked with vagrant-builder, you can make sure that an arbitrary list of docker images will be pre-cached into the base image so that you don’t have to wait for the slow docker registry every time you boot up a development vm.

This is easily seen in the CentOS-7.1 image definition file seen here. Here’s an excerpt:

VERSION='centos-7.1'
POSTFIX='docker'
SIZE='40'
DOCKER='centos fedora'		# list of docker images to include

The GlusterFS community gracefully hosts a copy of this image here.

If you’d like to add images to a vm you can add a list of things to pull in the docker omv.yaml variable:

---
:domain: example.com
:network: 192.168.123.0/24
:image: centos-7.1-docker
:docker:
- ubuntu
- busybox
:count: 1
: vms: []

This key is also available in the vms array.

Automatic docker builds:

If you have a Dockerfile in a vagrant/docker/*/ folder, then it will get automatically added to the running vagrant vm, and built every time you run a vagrant up. If the machine is already running, and you’d like to rebuild it from your local working directory, you can run: vagrant rsync && vagrant provision.

Automatic docker environments:

Building and defining docker applications can be a tricky process, particularly because the techniques are still quite new to developers. With Oh-My-Vagrant, this process is simplified for container developers because you can build an enhanced omv.yaml file which defines your app for you:

---
:domain: example.com
:network: 192.168.123.0/24
:image: centos-7.0-docker
:extern:
- type: git
  system: docker
  repository: https://github.com/purpleidea/docker-simple1
  directory: simple-app1
:docker: []
:vms: []
:count: 3

By listing multiple git repos in your omv.yaml file, they will be automatically pulled down and built for you. An example of the above running would look similar to this:

$ time vup omv1
Cloning into 'simple-app1'...
remote: Counting objects: 6, done.
remote: Total 6 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 6
Unpacking objects: 100% (6/6), done.
Checking connectivity... done.

Bringing machine 'omv1' up with 'libvirt' provider...
==> omv1: Creating image (snapshot of base box volume).
==> omv1: Creating domain with the following settings...
==> omv1:  -- Name:              omv_omv1
==> omv1:  -- Domain type:       kvm
==> omv1:  -- Cpus:              1
==> omv1:  -- Memory:            512M
==> omv1:  -- Base box:          centos-7.0-docker
==> omv1:  -- Storage pool:      default
==> omv1:  -- Image:             /var/lib/libvirt/images/omv_omv1.img
==> omv1:  -- Volume Cache:      default
==> omv1:  -- Kernel:            
==> omv1:  -- Initrd:            
==> omv1:  -- Graphics Type:     vnc
==> omv1:  -- Graphics Port:     5900
==> omv1:  -- Graphics IP:       127.0.0.1
==> omv1:  -- Graphics Password: Not defined
==> omv1:  -- Video Type:        cirrus
==> omv1:  -- Video VRAM:        9216
==> omv1:  -- Command line : 
==> omv1: Starting domain.
==> omv1: Waiting for domain to get an IP address...
==> omv1: Waiting for SSH to become available...
==> omv1: Starting domain.
==> omv1: Waiting for domain to get an IP address...
==> omv1: Waiting for SSH to become available...
==> omv1: Creating shared folders metadata...
==> omv1: Setting hostname...
==> omv1: Rsyncing folder: /home/james/code/oh-my-vagrant/vagrant/ => /vagrant
==> omv1: Configuring and enabling network interfaces...
==> omv1: Running provisioner: shell...
    omv1: Running: inline script
==> omv1: Running provisioner: docker...
    omv1: Configuring Docker to autostart containers...
==> omv1: Running provisioner: docker...
    omv1: Configuring Docker to autostart containers...
==> omv1: Building Docker images...
==> omv1: -- Path: /vagrant/docker/simple-app1
==> omv1: Sending build context to Docker daemon 54.27 kB
==> omv1: Sending build context to Docker daemon 
==> omv1: Step 0 : FROM fedora
==> omv1:  ---> 834629358fe2
==> omv1: Step 1 : MAINTAINER James Shubin <james@shubin.ca>
==> omv1:  ---> Running in 2afded16eec7
==> omv1:  ---> a7baf4784f57
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container 2afded16eec7
==> omv1: Step 2 : RUN echo Hello and welcome to the Technical Blog of James > README
==> omv1:  ---> Running in 709b9dc66e9b
==> omv1:  ---> b955154474f4
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container 709b9dc66e9b
==> omv1: Step 3 : ENTRYPOINT python -m SimpleHTTPServer
==> omv1:  ---> Running in 76840da9e963
==> omv1:  ---> b333c179dd56
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container 76840da9e963
==> omv1: Step 4 : EXPOSE 8000
==> omv1:  ---> Running in ebf83f08328e
==> omv1:  ---> f13049706668
==> omv1: Removing intermediate container ebf83f08328e
==> omv1: Successfully built f13049706668

real	1m12.221s
user	0m5.923s
sys	0m0.932s

All that happened in about a minute!

Conclusion:

I hope these tools help, if you’re following my git commits, you’ll notice that there are some new features I haven’t blogged about yet. Kubernetes integration exists, so please have a look, and hopefully I’ll have some screencasts and blog posts about this shortly.

Happy hacking,

James

Sharing dev environments with Oh-My-Vagrant

With Oh-My-Vagrant (omv) you can set up a dev environment in seconds. (Read the omv introduction if you’ve never used it before!) Since everything is defined in a single omv.yaml file, it is easy to share your cluster prototype with a friend! The one missing feature was associating code with this config file. This is now possible! Let me show you how it works…

In the omv.yaml file there is an extern variable. It is a list of each external repository which you’d like to include. Each element in this list is a hash of key value pairs. Currently four are supported: type, system, repository, directory.

An example will help you visualize this:

---
:domain: example.com
:network: 192.168.123.0/24
:image: fedora-21
:extern:
- type: git
  system: ansible
  repository: https://github.com/eparis/kubernetes-ansible
  directory: kubernetes
:reallyrm: true

In this example, we list one external repository. It is of type git, it is intended for use with the ansible integration provided by omv, the repository is hosted by eparis, and we’ll store this in a local directory called kubernetes.

We currently only support git repositories, but patches for other systems are welcome. A few different “systems” are supported, including puppet, docker and kubernetes. They each integrate with omv, and, as a result can pull code and modules into the appropriate places. Any repository path that is valid is acceptable (including local file paths) and lastly, the directory you choose is entirely up to you!

The most important part that I need to mention is the reallyrm variable. If this is set to true, and you remove a git repository from the list, omv will make sure that it removes it! Since some users might not expect this behaviour, it defaults to false, and shouldn’t bite you! If you’re not comfortable with it, don’t use it! I find it incredibly helpful.

Here’s a small screencast to show you some examples of this in action:

oh-my-vagrant-extern-screencast.ogv

I hope you enjoyed this. Please share and enjoy, and I’ll be back soon to explain some more of the features! Documentation patches are appreciated!

Happy hacking,

James

Fancy git aliases and git cherryfetch

Here are two quick git tricks that I’ve added to my toolbox lately…

I wanted to create a git alias that takes in argv from the command, but in the middle of the command. Here’s the hack that I came up with for the [alias] section of my ~/.gitconfig:

[alias]

    # cherryfetch fetches a repo ($1) / branch ($2) and applies it rebased!
    # the && true at the end eats up the appended args
    cherryfetch = !git fetch "$1" "$2" && git cherry-pick HEAD..FETCH_HEAD && true

Explanation:

The git alias is called “cherryfetch“. It starts with an exclamation point (!) which means it’s a command to execute. It uses $1 and $2 as arguments, which thankfully exist in this environment! Because running a git alias causes the arguments to get appended to the command, the && true part exists at the end to receive those commands so that they are silently ignored! This works because the command:

$ true ignored command line arguments

Does absolutely nothing but return success. Better naming suggestions for my alias are welcome!

What does this particular alias do?

Too often I receive a patch which has not been rebased against *my* current git master. This happens because the patch author started hacking on the feature against current git master, but git master grew new commits before the patch was done. The best solution is to ask the author to rebase against git master and resubmit, but when I’m feeling helpful, I can now use git cherryfetch to do the same thing! When their patch is unrelated to my changes, this works perfectly.

Example:

$ git cherryfetch https://github.com/example_user/puppet-gluster.git feat/branch_name
From https://github.com/example_user/puppet-gluster
* branch            feat/branch_name -> FETCH_HEAD
[master abcdef01] Pi day is awesome, but Tau day is better! purpleidea/puppet-gluster#feat/branch_name
Author: Example User <user@example.com>
Date: Tue Mar 14 09:26:53 2015 -0400
4 file changed, 42 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)

Manual learning:

If you were to do the same thing manually, this operation is the equivalent of checking out a branch at the same commit this patch applies to, pulling the patch down (causing a fast-forward) running a git rebase master, switching to master and merging your newly rebased branch in.

My version is faster, isn’t it?

Happy hacking!

James

Update: I’ve updated the alias so that it works with N commits. Thanks to David Schmitt for pointing it out, and Felix Frank for finding a nicer solution!

Building RHEL Vagrant Boxes with Vagrant-Builder

Vagrant is a great tool for development, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) customers have typically been left out, because it has been impossible to get RHEL boxes! It would be extremely elegant if hackers could quickly test and prototype their code on the same OS as they’re running in production.

Secondly, when hacking on projects that have a long initial setup phase (eg: a long rpm install) it would be excellent if hackers could roll their own modified base boxes, so that certain common operations could be re-factored out into the base image.

This all changes today.

Please continue reading if you’d like to know how :)

Subscriptions:

In order to use RHEL, you first need a subscription. If you don’t already have one, go sign up… I’ll wait. You do have to pay money, but in return, you’re funding my salary (and many others) so that we can build you lots of great hacks.

Prerequisites:

I’ll be working through this whole process on a Fedora 21 laptop. It should probably work on different OS versions and flavours, but I haven’t tested it. Please test, and let me know your results! You’ll also need virt-install and virt-builder installed:

$ sudo yum install -y /usr/bin/virt-{install,builder}

Step one:

Login to https://access.redhat.com/ and check that you have a valid subscription available. This should look like this:

A view of my available subscriptions.

A view of my available subscriptions.

If everything looks good, you’ll need to download an ISO image of RHEL. First head to the downloads section and find the RHEL product:

A view of my available product downloads.

A view of my available product downloads.

In the RHEL download section, you’ll find a number of variants. You want the RHEL 7.0 Binary DVD:

A view of the available RHEL downloads.

A view of the available RHEL downloads.

After it has finished downloading, verify the SHA-256 hash is correct, and continue to step two!

$ sha256sum rhel-server-7.0-x86_64-dvd.iso
85a9fedc2bf0fc825cc7817056aa00b3ea87d7e111e0cf8de77d3ba643f8646c  rhel-server-7.0-x86_64-dvd.iso

Step two:

Grab a copy of vagrant-builder:

$ git clone https://github.com/purpleidea/vagrant-builder
Cloning into 'vagrant-builder'...
[...]
Checking connectivity... done.

I’m pleased to announce that it now has some documentation! (Patches are welcome to improve it!)

Since we’re going to use it to build RHEL images, you’ll need to put your subscription manager credentials in ~/.vagrant-builder/auth.sh:

$ cat ~/.vagrant-builder/auth.sh
# these values are used by vagrant-builder
USERNAME='purpleidea@redhat.com' # replace with your access.redhat.com username
PASSWORD='hunter2'               # replace with your access.redhat.com password

This is a simple shell script that gets sourced, so you could instead replace the static values with a script that calls out to the GNOME Keyring. This is left as an exercise to the reader.

To build the image, we’ll be working in the v7/ directory. This directory supports common OS families and versions that have high commonality, and this includes Fedora 20, Fedora 21, CentOS 7.0, and RHEL 7.0.

Put the downloaded RHEL ISO in the iso/ directory. To allow qemu to see this file, you’ll need to add some acl’s:

$ sudo -s # do this as root
$ cd /home/
$ getfacl james # james is my home directory
# file: james
# owner: james
# group: james
user::rwx
group::---
other::---
$ setfacl -m u:qemu:r-x james # this is the important line
$ getfacl james
# file: james
# owner: james
# group: james
user::rwx
user:qemu:r-x
group::---
mask::r-x
other::---

If you have an unusually small /tmp directory, it might also be an issue. You’ll need at least 6GiB free, but a bit extra is a good idea. Check your free space first:

$ df -h /tmp
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 1.9G 1.3M 1.9G 1% /tmp

Let’s increase this a bit:

$ sudo mount -o remount,size=8G /tmp
$ df -h /tmp
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 8.0G 1.3M 8.0G 1% /tmp

You’re now ready to build an image…

Step three:

In the versions/ directory, you’ll see that I have provided a rhel-7.0-iso.sh script. You’ll need to run it from its parent directory. This will take a while, and will cause two sudo prompts, which are required for virt-install. One downside to this process is that your https://access.redhat.com/ password will be briefly shown in the virt-builder output. Patches to fix this are welcome!

$ pwd
/home/james/code/vagrant-builder/v7
$ time ./versions/rhel-7.0-iso.sh
[...]
real    38m49.777s
user    13m20.910s
sys     1m13.832s
$ echo $?
0

With any luck, this should eventually complete successfully. This uses your cpu’s virtualization instructions, so if they’re not enabled, this will be a lot slower. It also uses the network, which in North America, means you’re in for a wait. Lastly, the xz compression utility will use a bunch of cpu building the virt-builder base image. On my laptop, this whole process took about 30 minutes. The above run was done without an SSD and took a bit longer.

The good news is that most of hard work is now done and won’t need to be repeated! If you want to see the fruits of your CPU labour, have a look in: ~/tmp/builder/rhel-7.0-iso/.

$ ls -lAhGs
total 4.1G
1.7G -rw-r--r--. 1 james 1.7G Feb 23 18:48 box.img
1.7G -rw-r--r--. 1 james  41G Feb 23 18:48 builder.img
 12K -rw-rw-r--. 1 james  10K Feb 23 18:11 docker.tar
4.0K -rw-rw-r--. 1 james  388 Feb 23 18:39 index
4.0K -rw-rw-r--. 1 james   64 Feb 23 18:11 metadata.json
652M -rw-rw-r--. 1 james 652M Feb 23 18:50 rhel-7.0-iso.box
200M -rw-r--r--. 1 james 200M Feb 23 18:28 rhel-7.0.xz

As you can see, we’ve produced a bunch of files. The rhel-7.0-iso.box is your RHEL 7.0 vagrant base box! Congratulations!

Step four:

If you haven’t ever installed vagrant, you’ll pleased to know that as of last week, vagrant and vagrant-libvirt RPM’s have hit Fedora 21! I started trying to convince the RPM wizards about a year ago, and we finally have something that is quite usable! Hopefully we’ll iterate on any packaging bugs, and keep this great work going! There are now only three things you need to do to get a working vagrant-libvirt setup on Fedora 21:

  1. $ yum install -y vagrant-libvirt
  2. Source this .bashrc add-on from: https://gist.github.com/purpleidea/8071962
  3. Add a vagrant.pkla file as mentioned here

Now that we’re now in well-known vagrant territory. Adding the box into vagrant is a simple:

$ vagrant box add rhel-7.0-iso.box --name rhel-7.0

Using the box effectively:

Having a base box is great, but having to manage subscription-manager manually isn’t fun in a DevOps environment. Enter Oh-My-Vagrant (omv). You can use omv to automatically register and unregister boxes! Edit the omv.yaml file so that the image variable refers to the base box you just built, enter your https://access.redhat.com/ username and password, and vagrant up away!

$ cat omv.yaml 
---
:domain: example.com
:network: 192.168.123.0/24
:image: rhel-7.0
:boxurlprefix: ''
:sync: rsync
:folder: ''
:extern: []
:puppet: false
:classes: []
:docker: false
:cachier: false
:vms: []
:namespace: omv
:count: 2
:username: 'purpleidea@redhat.com'
:password: 'hunter2'
:poolid: true
:repos: []
$ vs
Current machine states:

omv1                      not created (libvirt)
omv2                      not created (libvirt)

This environment represents multiple VMs. The VMs are all listed
above with their current state. For more information about a specific
VM, run `vagrant status NAME`.

You might want to set repos to be:

['rhel-7-server-rpms', 'rhel-7-server-extras-rpms']

but it depends on what subscriptions you want or have available. If you’d like to store your credentials in an external file, you can do so like this:

$ cat ~/.config/oh-my-vagrant/auth.yaml
---
:username: purpleidea@redhat.com
:password: hunter2

Here’s an actual run to see the subscription-manager action:

$ vup omv1
[...]
==> omv1: The system has been registered with ID: 00112233-4455-6677-8899-aabbccddeeff
==> omv1: Installed Product Current Status:
==> omv1: Product Name: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
==> omv1: Status:       Subscribed
$ # the above lines shows that your machine has been registered
$ vscreen root@omv1
[root@omv1 ~]# echo thanks purpleidea!
thanks purpleidea!
[root@omv1 ~]# exit

Make sure to unregister when you are permanently done with a machine, otherwise your subscriptions will be left idle. This happens automatically on vagrant destroy when using Oh-My-Vagrant:

$ vdestroy omv1 # make sure to unregister when you are done
Unlocking shell provisioning for: omv1...
Running 'subscription-manager unregister' on: omv1...
Connection to 192.168.121.26 closed.
System has been unregistered.
==> omv1: Removing domain...

Idempotence:

One interesting aspect of this build process, is that it’s mostly idempotent. It’s able to do this, because it uses GNU Make to ensure that only out of date steps or missing targets are run. As a result, if the build process fails part way through, you’ll only have to repeat the failed steps! This speeds up debugging and iterative development enormously!

To prove this to you, here is what a second run looks like (after the first successful run):

$ time ./versions/rhel-7.0-iso.sh 

real    0m0.029s
user    0m0.013s
sys    0m0.017s

As you can see it completes almost instantly.

Variants:

To build a variant of the base image that we just built, create a versions/*.sh file, and modify the variables to add your changes in. If you start with a copy of the ~/tmp/builder/${VERSION}-${POSTFIX} folder, then you shouldn’t need to repeat the initial steps. Hint: btrfs is excellent at reflinking data, so you don’t unnecessarily store multiple copies!

Plumbing Pipeline:

What actually happens behind the scenes? Most of the magic happens in the Makefile. The relevant series of transforms is as follows:

  1. virt-install: install from iso
  2. virt-sysprep: remove unneeded junk
  3. virt-sparsify: make sparse
  4. xz –best: compress into builder format
  5. virt-builder: use builder to bake vagrant box
  6. qemu-img convert: convert to correct format
  7. tar -cvz: tar up into vagrant box format

There are some intermediate dependency steps that I didn’t mention, so feel free to explore the source.

Future work:

  • Some of the above steps in the pipeline are actually bundled under the same target. It’s not a huge issue, but it could be changed if someone feels strongly about it.
  • Virt-builder can’t run docker commands during build. This would be very useful for pre-populating images with docker containers.
  • Oh-My-Vagrant, needs to have its DNS management switched to use vagrant-hostmanager instead of puppet resource commands.

Disclaimers:

While I expect you’ll love using these RHEL base boxes with Vagrant, the above builder methodology is currently not officially supported, and I can’t guarantee that the RHEL vagrant dev environments will be either. I’m putting this out there for the early (DevOps) adopters who want to hack on this and who didn’t want to invent their own build tool chain. If you do have issues, please leave a comment here, or submit a vagrant-builder issue.

Thanks:

Special thanks to Richard WM Jones and Pino Toscano for their great work on virt-builder that this is based on. Additional thanks to Randy Barlow for encouraging me to work on this. Thanks to Red Hat for continuing to pay my salary :)

Subscriptions?

If I’ve convinced you that you want some RHEL subscriptions, please go have a look, and please let Red Hat know that you appreciated this post and my work.

Happy Hacking!

James

UPDATE: I’ve tested that this process also works with the new RHEL 7.1 release!
UPDATE: I’ve tested that this process also works with the new RHEL 7.2 release!