glideinWMS Virtual Machine Bootstrap
This repository provides the sources for a service which bootstraps a glideinWMS pilot and the resources to automate the building of a VM configured with the bootstrap service.
Bootstrap Service
The bootstrap service source and rpm specs are located in the pilot services directory. The bootstrap service currently only supports cloud providers that provide an EC2 style meta-data service. Plans are in the works to support hepix/OpenNebula style user data services.
The expected user data is in the form:
[Base64 encoded blob]####[additional arguments]
or just a plain text ini file.
"####" was picked as a separator because it will never appear in the base64 encoded string and we will make it a rule that it won't appear in the any of the userdata, either the base64 encoded blob or the additional arguments.
If a plain text ini file is sent as user data, then it is assumed that the VM is being started up in debug mode. Essentially, the only option that matters in this case is the disable_shutdown option. This prevents the service from shutting down the VM, allowing an admin or dev to ssh into the VM for debugging purposes. An example ini file is listed below:
[glidein_startup]
args = blah
proxy_file_name = pilot_proxy
webbase= na
[vm_properties]
max_lifetime = 43200
contextualization_type = EC2
disable_shutdown = TrueVM Building
I am using BoxGrinder to automate VM builds. It is a tool that really has no comparison IMHO. All related files are in the boxgrinder directory. The current BoxGrinder template (and only one "guaranteed" to work at this time) is hcc-template.appl.
I am also trying to get RedHat's other VM image creation tool, OZ, to work.The template that I am working with can be found in the oz directory.
NOTE: you need to include a line that comments out the "requiretty" line in /etc/sudoers so that the pilot service can execute privileged commands via sudo.