How To Linux

Puppet is an open-source next-generation server automation tool. It is composed of a declarative language for expressing system configuration, a client and server for distributing it, and a library for realizing the configuration.

Setup the EPEL repos for Centos – choose the correct package depending on  your installation.

rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5Server/x86_64/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm

rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm

Install puppet-server

yum install puppet-server

The 1.8.5 branch of Ruby shipped will RHEL5 can exhibit memory leaks. So install ruby 1.8.6++ (I did not on this server as it was  test not a production server).

Install the help docs

yum install ruby-rdoc

Create a manifest file at /etc/puppet/manifests/default.pp

vi /etc/puppet/manifests/default.pp

put this in it

# Create “/tmp/testfile” if it doesn’t exist.

class test_class {

    file { “/tmp/testfile”:

       ensure => present,

       mode   => 644,

       owner  => root,

       group  => root

    }

}

# tell puppet on which client to run the class

node pclient {

    include test_class

}

Start the puppet server

service puppetmaster start

Enable start on boot

chkconfig puppetmaster on

Now to install the Puppet Client on another server

Setup the EPEL repos for Centos – choose the correct package depending on  your installation.

rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5Server/x86_64/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm

rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm

Install puppet

yum install puppet

Setup puppet client to generate its own certificate request to the server

/etc/init.d/puppet once -v

Sign the certificate request on the puppet master server.  Use puppetca –list to see if any are available to sign.

puppetca –sign puppet01

Puppet01 must be the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of you client server.

Run this on the client server again to retrieve the certificate

/etc/init.d/puppet once -v

Make the puppet start with the system

chkconfig puppet on

Make sure it is working on the client server.

puppet –test

You should see a dialog that creates the file /tmp/testfile

Rightscale created a great script to build an AMI from scratch – see http://blog.rightscale.com/2007/09/26/rightimages-changelog/

I got this error when trying to build the image from YUM.

AttributeError: CHECKSUM_VALUE rightscale

This worked for me;

rpm -qa | grep yum-metadata-parser
rpm -ev –nodeps yum-metadata-parser-VERSIONFROMABOVECMD

cd /tmp
wget ftp://ftp.univie.ac.at/systems/linux…8.fc6.i386.rpm
rpm -iv ./yum-metadata-parser-1.0-8.fc6.i386.rpm 
yum check-update

See - http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/redhat-fedora-linux-help/122580-solved-yum-update-fails-attributeerror-checksum_value.html

dd if=/dev/zero of=my-image.fs bs=1M count=1024

mke2fs -F -j my-image.fs

mkdir /mnt/ec2-fs

mount -o loop my-image.fs /mnt/ec2-fs

mkdir /mnt/ec2-fs/dev

/sbin/MAKEDEV -d /mnt/ec2-fs/dev/ -x console

/sbin/MAKEDEV -d /mnt/ec2-fs/dev/ -x null

/sbin/MAKEDEV -d /mnt/ec2-fs/dev/ -x zero

mkdir /mnt/ec2-fs/etc

[main]

cachedir=/var/cache/yum

debuglevel=2

logfile=/var/log/yum.log

exclude=*-debuginfo

gpgcheck=0

obsoletes=1

pkgpolicy=newest

distroverpkg=redhat-release

tolerant=1

exactarch=1

reposdir=/dev/null

metadata_expire=1800

[base]

name=CentOS-5.2 – Base

baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5.2/os/i386/

gpgcheck=1

gpgkey=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-centos5.2

priority=1

protect=1

#released updates

[update]

name=CentOS-5.2 – Updates

baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5.2/updates/i386/

gpgcheck=1

gpgkey=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-centos5.2

priority=1

protect=1

#packages used/produced in the build but not released

[addons]

name=CentOS-5.2 – Addons

baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5.2/addons/i386/

gpgcheck=1

gpgkey=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-centos5.2

priority=1

[extras]

name=CentOS 5.2 Extras $releasever – $basearch

baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5.2/extras/i386/

enabled=1

mkdir /mnt/ec2-fs/proc

mount -t proc none /mnt/ec2-fs/proc

yum -c yum-xen.conf –installroot=/mnt/ec2-fs -y groupinstall Core

vi /mnt/ec2-fs/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE=eth0

BOOTPROTO=dhcp

ONBOOT=yes

TYPE=Ethernet

USERCTL=yes

PEERDNS=yes

IPV6INIT=no

vi /mnt/ec2-fs/etc/sysconfig/network

NETWORKING=yes

vi /mnt/ec2-fs/etc/fstab

/dev/sda2  /mnt      ext3    defaults        1 2

/dev/sda3  swap      swap    defaults        0 0

chroot /mnt/ec2-fs /bin/sh

chkconfig –level 345 sshd on

exit

umount /mnt/ec2-fs/proc

umount -d /mnt/ec2-fs 

yum install ruby

wget http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-ami-tools.noarch.rpm

rpm -Uvh ec2-ami-tools.noarch.rpm

ec2-bundle-image -i my-image.fs -c my-cert.pem -k my-private-key.pem -u 12345678(amazon account id)  

ec2-upload-bundle -b my-bucket -m image.manifest -a my-aws-access-key-id -s my-secret-key-id 

These are great tools to get started on Amazon’s EC2 and S3 products.

Elasticfox - http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=609

S3fox - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/policy/0/3247/41288

Anyone know of any better/alternative tools, let me know.

Scalr is a fully redundant, self-curing and self-scaling hosting environment utilizing Amazon’s EC2.

It allows you to create server farms through a web-based interface using prebuilt AMI’s for load balancers (pound or nginx), app servers (apache, others), databases (mysql master-slave, others), and a generic AMI to build on top of. (see http://code.google.com/p/scalr/)

Install the necessary packages

You will need utterramblings repo’s to install PHP 5.2.6, see - http://www.how-to-linux.com/2008/12/how-to-upgrade-to-php-526-on-centos-52/

yum install httpd mysql-server gcc mysql-server php-devel php-cli php-mysql php-mcrypt php-mhash php-snmp php-pear php-soap php-xml

You will need to install ssh2 php support, currently it is still in beta use;

libssh2 from yum does not work so build the one scalr needs from source

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/libssh2/libssh2-1.0.tar.gz?modtime=1230332100&big_mirror=0

./configure

make

make install

Then

pecl install ssh2-beta

Now you need to update your php.ini file by adding

extension=ssh2.so

Restart your webserver

service httpd restart

See install instructions – http://th.php.net/manual/en/ssh2.installation.php

Use the scalr’s checkenvironment.php script to check everything is ok.

wget http://scalr.googlecode.com/files/checkenvironment.php

chmod 777 checkenvironment.php

Run it on the command line

php checkenvironment.php

Download the scalr tar package 

wget http://scalr.googlecode.com/files/scalr-1.0RC3.tar.gz

untar

tar xvfz scalr-1.0RC3.tar.gz

mv the contents of the app folder to /var/www/html/

mv scalr/app/* /var/www/html/

Set permissions on the following folders (and subfolders) and files to 777 (world-writable):

cache

cron/cron.pid

etc/.passwd

Create a mysql database and import data

mysql -u root

create database scalr;

quit

mysql -u root -h localhost scalr < sql/database.sql

Edit the database config settings in etc/config.ini file.

Set Cron jobs

For system to work properly, it needs to run a few tasks periodicaly. Scalr has a single cron/cron.php file that must be executed with various command-line switches. The following tasks must be sheduled:

* * * * * /path/to/php -q /scalr_home_dir/cron/cron.php –Poller

1 1 * * * /path/to/php -q /scalr_home_dir/cron/cron.php –RotateLogs

*/15 * * * * /path/to/php -q /scalr_home_dir/cron/cron.php –MySQLMaintenance

*/6 * * * * /path/to/php -q /scalr_home_dir/cron/cron.php –DNSMaintenance

*/3 * * * * /path/to/php -q /scalr_home_dir/cron/cron.php –DNSZoneListUpdate

*/2 * * * * /path/to/php -q /scalr_home_dir/cron/cron.php –DBQueueEvent

*/11 * * * * /path/to/php -q /scalr_home_dir/cron/cron.php –Cleaner

*/2 * * * * /path/to/php -q /scalr_home_dir/cron/cron.php –EBSQueue

Scalr needs your keys..

Sclar needs to have AWS access.

Now goto http://localhost/

username and password is admin/admin

I had a 403 error when trying to access scalr, this was because I had SElinux enabled, disable this if its a test machine.

After the install I found this, anothe useful resource if you have problems - http://groups.google.com/group/scalr-discuss/web/scalr-on-centos-5-install-notes

Download the zip package – http://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads/ec2-ami-tools.zip

Unzip it and put it in C:\ec2

Set your environment variables, there are 2 ways to do this. 

1. Control Panel – System – Advanced System Settings – Environment Variables – User Variables

2. In the cmd application

This are the cmd.exe commands to set variables.

Set Java and EC2 Home variables.

set EC2_HOME=C:\ec2

set JAVA_HOME=<PATH> (find it in program files)

Set Identity variables

C:\> set EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=c:\ec2\pk-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBZQ55CLO.pem 

C:\> set EC2_CERT=c:\ec2\cert-HKZYKTAIG2ECMXYIBH3HXV4ZBZQ55CLO.pem