ares / kvizer

Katello development virtualization tools

Kvizer

Current status

See wiki page

About

This little tool should help you with katello development. It makes virtual machines configuration easy. It's basically a wrapper around virtual box with some useful tools.

Kvizer is a garble of "Katello virtualizer"

Bugs, planed enhancements, questions can be found on github issues.

Features

• virtual machines management, commands: run, stop, power-off, delete, clone
• automated creation of remote-enabled development machine from clean Fedora kvizer build-base --vm clean-fedora --name katello-base
• connecting to machines kvizer ssh -m <part of a VM name>
• runs complete test cycle with one command kvizer ci --git <git repo url/local> --branch <a branch> which does:
  • build katello rpms from given git and branch locally or in Koji
  • install these rpms
  • runs katello-configure
  • run system-tests
• machine hostnames are same as VM names
• auto-mounting of shared directories
  • kvizer/remote_bin for shared command line tools (commands are accessible on guest, the directory is added to path on guest)
  • kvizer/support for builds and other shared files
• platform independent-ish (*nix systems only)
  • based on VirtualBox
• its Ruby :)

Run kvizer --help to see all the available commands.

Architecture

All machines have access to outside world via NAT network. They are also placed on a private network created by Kvizer which is used to ssh connections.

Kvizer uses as basic building blocks jobs which are defined in jobs.rb (other paths can be added in configuration). Jobs are organized into sequential collections which are used to build a development machine and to run a ci command.

Typical VM workflow is:

• clean-fedora
  • snapshots: "clean-installation"
• katello-base
  • cloned from clean-fedora at "clean-installation" snapshot
  • used as a base for cloning other machines
  • snapshots: clean-installation, base, update, add-user, install-guest-additions, setup-shared-folders, install-htop, install-packaging, install-katello-nightly, configure-katello, turnoff-services, relax-security, setup-development"
• katello-dev[\d]
  • cloned from katello-base at "setup-development" snapshot
• ci-[a-branch-name]
  • cloned from katello-base at "install-packaging" snapshot
  • used for running complete test cycles

Shared folders

There are three shared folders: redhat, remote_bin and support.

• redhat for git repositories with projects you would like to share with a virtual machine.
• remote_bin is added to PATH on every machine so needed commands can be easily added to all kvizer virtual machines.
• support is used for support files. E.g. there is .bash_profile used by all kvizer virtual machines.

Installation

Dependencies

• latest VirtualBox > 4.2.4
• arp-scan
• Ruby 1.9
• bundler

Create katello base image

First you must create a base Fedora virtual server. This will serve as origin image for other clones which you'll use for development.

• download one of images:
  • Fedora 18 http://archive.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/18/Fedora/x86_64/iso/Fedora-18-x86_64-netinst.iso
• create virtual machine named 'clean-fedora' in virtual box
• note that for katello virtual machine you should allocate ~40GB of diskspace, 1.5GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores is also a good option
• fill in these during installation
  • root password: katello
    • minimal installation
    • On Fedora 18 just minimal installation should work for you
• create a snapshot of you virtual machine named "clean-installation"
• install arp-scan on host (Kvizer actually uses this for detecting virtual machine ip address)

RHEL based image

RHEL support is experimental.

• download RHEL 6.3 Server
• create virtual machine named clean-rhel63 in virtual box
• note that for katello virtual machine you should allocate ~40GB of diskspace, 1.5GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores is also a good option
• fill in these during installation
  • root password: katello
    • minimal installation
    • Use Customize now and add packages:
      • BaseSystem/Base
      • Servers/SystemAdministrationTools
• post install
  • run dhclient eth0 to connecto to the network
  • add a RHEL repositories (ping me if you need more information)
  • run yum install NetworkManager to get network working
• power down and create snapshot "clean-installation"

Prepare Kvizer

• copy bin/kvizer.template to bin/kvizer and set your paths there, follow comments inside
• run bundle install --path gems
• configure Kvizer with config.yml by copying a template config.template.yml, follow comments inside
• add kvizer/bin to your PATH
• run kvizer info to test it, you should see list of your machines

Setting up koji

• copy support/koji/katello-config.template to support/koji/katello-config
• copy your certificate for koji to support/koji/, e.g. support/koji/pchalupa.pem
• update path to this certificate in support/koji/katello-config
• now you can build in koji with kvizer with virtual machines

Creating base image

Run kvizer build-base --vm clean-fedora --name katello-base to create base development image from cleanly installed machine.

Cloning a machine for development

• Run kvizer clone --vm a_base --name katello-dev --snapshot setup-development to clone a machine for development.
• Run the machine kvizer run --vm katello-dev.
• Setup Katello on a host machine to connect to the development machine (kvizer info will help you to find correct ip).
• Now you can run Katello process locally against services on a development machine.

Run CI

• run kvizer ci -b your_branch to test if it builds, configures and runs system-tests successfully
• to use Koji for RPM build add --use-koji option
• run kvizer ci --help for more information