sidicer / potman

Build pots easily

potman

Build pots easily.

Uses Potluck templates, see also the Potluck Flavour Repository and FreeBSD Virtual DC with Potluck.

Quickstart

To create your own kiln, init the VMs, build and deploy an example image:

git clone https://github.com/grembo/potman
cd potman
export PATH=$(pwd)/bin:$PATH
potman init -d "$(pwd)/flavours" mykiln
cd mykiln
potman packbox
potman startvms
potman build example
potman publish example
potman catalog
potman deploy example
...
potman status
potman nomad status example
potman nomad logs 2fbb4207
potman nomad logs -f -stderr 2fbb4207
...

This might take a while when run for the first time.

Troubleshoot Vagrant

In case your cannot start vagrant/virtualbox VMs due to this error:

Vagrant failed to properly resolve required dependencies. These
errors can commonly be caused by misconfigured plugin installations
or transient network issues. The reported error is:

conflicting dependencies net-ssh (= 6.1.0) and net-ssh (= 7.2.0)
  Activated net-ssh-7.2.0
  which does not match conflicting dependency (= 6.1.0)

  Conflicting dependency chains:
    net-ssh (= 7.2.0), 7.2.0 activated

  versus:
    net-ssh (= 6.1.0)

  Gems matching net-ssh (= 6.1.0):
    net-ssh-6.1.0

You can use the following workaround:

export VAGRANT_DISABLE_STRICT_DEPENDENCY_ENFORCEMENT=1
potman startvms

Building Your Own Flavour

Create your own flavour like described in this howto and place it in the ./flavours directory of your kiln.

potman init mykiln
cd mykiln
potman packbox
potman startvms
ls flavours
...

Stopping

potman stopvms

Destroying

potman destroyvms

Dependencies

potman requires

• ansible
• bash
• git
• packer
• vagrant
• virtualbox

Installing these depends on your OS/distribution, on FreeBSD the procedure is:

pkg install bash git packer py39-ansible py39-packaging \
  vagrant virtualbox-ose
service vboxnet enable
service vboxnet start

Make sure your username is added to the vboxusers group to run VirtualBox, on FreeBSD the procedure is:

(sudo) pw groupmod vboxusers -m <username>

Set the valid ranges for Virtualbox in /usr/local/etc/vbox/networks.conf:

mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/vbox
echo "* 10.100.1.0/24" >>/usr/local/etc/vbox/networks.conf

Note: Prior to virtualbox-ose port version 6.1.32_1, networks.conf is expected to reside in /etc/vbox/networks.conf. The vagrant port on FreeBSD also expects the file to exist there at the time of writing, so it's best to symlink the directory:

cd /etc
ln -s ../usr/local/etc/vbox .

To make the path addition permanent, add the following to .profile (or similar) for your shell:

PATH=/home/<username>/potman/bin:$PATH; export PATH

Usage

Usage: potman command [options]

Commands:
    build       -- Build a flavour
    catalog     -- See catalog contents
    consul      -- Run consul in minipot
    deploy      -- Test deploy image
    destroyvms  -- Destroy VMs
    help        -- Show usage
    init        -- Initialize new kiln
    nomad       -- Run nomad in minipot
    packbox     -- Create vm box image
    prune       -- Reclaim disk space
    publish     -- Publish image to pottery
    startvms    -- Start (and provision) VMs
    status      -- Show status
    stopvms     -- Stop VMs

Howto: Building a Potluck Flavour

In the example below, we're building the git-nomad flavour.

Get potluck:

git clone https://github.com/hny-gd/potluck

Prepare potman:

git clone https://github.com/grembo/potman
cd potman
export PATH=$(pwd)/bin:$PATH

Prepare your kiln:

potman init mykiln
cd mykiln
potman packbox
potman startvms

Build the base image used in the origin and publish it to the pottery:

potman build -v -d ../flavours freebsd
potman publish -v -d ../flavours freebsd
potman catalog

This base image can be used as a shared basis for all potluck images to reduce their size and speed up build/deployment.

Construct a compatible flavour from the potluck flavour:

cp -a ../../potluck/git-nomad flavours/.
touch flavours/git-nomad/git-nomad
mkdir flavours/git-nomad/git-nomad.d
touch flavours/git-nomad/git-nomad.d/distfile.tar
cat>flavours/git-nomad/git-nomad.ini<<EOF
[manifest]
potname="git-nomad"
author="Potluck Contributors"
version="1.0"
origin="freebsd"
runs_in_nomad="true"
EOF

Build and publish the git-nomad pot, then check the pottery catalog:

potman build -v git-nomad
potman publish -v git-nomad
potman catalog

Create a nomad job description (this is hacky, best to check the resulting file):

cat ../flavours/example/example.d/minipot.job |\
  sed "s/example/git-nomad/g" |\
  sed "s/http/ssh/g" |\
  sed "s/\"80\"/\"22\"/" \
  >flavours/git-nomad/git-nomad.d/minipot.job

Deploy the pot:

potman deploy -v git-nomad

And, finally, perceive the job status:

potman status
potman nomad status git-nomad

You can use

potman nomad logs <alloc_id>
potman nomad logs -stderr <alloc_id>

to get log output of the nomad job and

potman nomad alloc status <alloc_id>

to learn about its endpoints.

Note: This doesn't make use of the stripping down step of the potluck flavour (git-nomad.sh+3), instead it uses the intermediate base image, which more potluck images can be based on.