CFEngine configured Raspberry Pi running like a charm!

[Martin Simons]

Dear CFEngineer,

Yesterday I reinstalled my two Raspberries with:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=50310

It creates the almost minimal, but sufficiently minimal, install I need for The CFEngine Roadshow. Using the cfengineers.net package http://www.cfengineers.net/files/packages/cfengine-community/3.6.5/cfengine-community_3.6.5-1.debian_7_armhf.deb it works like a charm.

After the bootstrap to the Roadshow hub I ran
root@webjen1801:/var/cfengine/inputs/roadshow_policies# cf-agent -KI -f ./report_sys_os.cf -b report_sys_os
2015-06-25T11:14:10+0000     info: Using command line specified bundlesequence
R: Hard class os: linux debian_7
R: Hard class os_version: linux_armv6l
R: Hard classos_flavor: debian_7
because I prepared for a bit of work introducing a new platform.

The report startledme, because it returns debian_7 as its sys.flavor. I use sys.flavor to determine policies that are applicable on the platform, both for OS stuff and role stuff. Ubuntu gets in the way, because it litters my apt-cacher-ng cache and I was afraid Raspbian woud do the same.

I decided to give it a go non theless. Much to my surprise I ended up with two webapp (Hudson and Jenkins) running Raspberry machines, without the need to develop any additional policy. It just runs out of the box. This means the policies are sufficiently generic to support both platforms.

There are differences though:
This is the Debian wheezy machine:
root@webjen0086:/var/cache/apt/archives# ls -l openjdk-*
-rw------- 1 root root   238422 Apr 24 12:01 openjdk-6-jre_6b35-1.13.7-1~deb7u1_amd64.deb
-rw------- 1 root root 32836740 Apr 24 12:01 openjdk-6-jre-headless_6b35-1.13.7-1~deb7u1_amd64.deb
-rw------- 1 root root  6252972 Apr 24 12:01 openjdk-6-jre-lib_6b35-1.13.7-1~deb7u1_all.deb

This is the Raspberry:
root@webjen1801:/var/cache/apt/archives# ls -l openjdk-6-jre*                                                                                    
-rw------- 1 root root   258740 Jun 21 03:41 openjdk-6-jre_6b35-1.13.7-1~deb7u1+rpi1_armhf.deb
-rw------- 1 root root 30598814 Jun 21 03:41 openjdk-6-jre-headless_6b35-1.13.7-1~deb7u1+rpi1_armhf.deb
-rw------- 1 root root  6272334 Jun 21 03:41 openjdk-6-jre-lib_6b35-1.13.7-1~deb7u1+rpi1_all.deb

But these package files are common:
root@webjen0086:/var/cache/apt/archives# ls -l tomcat6*
-rw------- 1 root root 41052 Jul 18  2013 tomcat6_6.0.35-6+deb7u1_all.deb
-rw------- 1 root root 48346 Jul 18  2013 tomcat6-admin_6.0.35-6+deb7u1_all.deb
-rw------- 1 root root 52254 Jul 18  2013 tomcat6-common_6.0.35-6+deb7u1_all.deb

root@webjen1801:/var/cache/apt/archives# ls -l tomcat6*     
-rw------- 1 root root 41052 Jul 18  2013 tomcat6_6.0.35-6+deb7u1_all.deb
-rw------- 1 root root 48346 Jul 18  2013 tomcat6-admin_6.0.35-6+deb7u1_all.deb
-rw------- 1 root root 52254 Jul 18  2013 tomcat6-common_6.0.35-6+deb7u1_all.deb

I have to find out if it holds on the long run.

Next: Androids!

Cheers,
Martin.

[Nick Anderson]

On 06/25/2015 06:44 AM, Martin Simons wrote:
> Dear CFEngineer,
>
> Yesterday I reinstalled my two Raspberries with:
> https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=50310
>
> It creates the almost minimal, but sufficiently minimal, install I need
> for The CFEngine Roadshow. Using the cfengineers.net package
> http://www.cfengineers.net/files/packages/cfengine-community/3.6.5/cfengine-community_3.6.5-1.debian_7_armhf.deb
> it works like a charm.

Nice!

[Brian Bennett]

> On Jun 25, 2015, at 4:44 AM, Martin Simons <mjcm....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The report startledme, because it returns debian_7 as its sys.flavor.

This is because Raspbian is just Debian plus a few Pi specific drivers that Debian considers non-dfsg.

--
Brian Bennett
Looking for CFEngine training?
http://www.verticalsysadmin.com/

[Martin Simons]

Dear Brian,

Yeah, right!

Debian supports many platforms too. The native packages are platform specific and ready, very cool.

Androids, and BSD are on my wishlist now.

Op donderdag 25 juni 2015 18:39:44 UTC+2 schreef brian.bennett:

[Brian Bennett]

I've become very interested in BSD as well lately. After finding this systemd bug (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1141137), and all of the other stuff I've seen come from the systemd developers, it's sad to say that I can't consider Linux production worthy any more.

Many of you know that I'm now working for Joyent, and we maintain SmartOS, a fully open source OpenSolaris derivative. I don't want this to sound like a sales pitch (especially since I'm a technologist, not a sales guy), but if anybody shares my systemd concerns, I recommend everyone give SmartOS (from Joyent), OmniOS (from OmniTI) or FreeBSD a try. If you don't share my concerns, have you looked closely enough? ;-) My biggest problem with systemd, beyond all of the things that I consider very poor technical decisions, is that when bugs like this come up the developers blame users for pointing it out.

Joyent has also recently developed LX-brand zones, which allow Linux binaries to execute natively on SmartOS. We've got CentOS 6, Debian 7 and certified Ubuntu 14, plus some amazing Docker support. All 100% open source, free software.

Sorry, I'll get off my soap box now.

-- 
Brian Bennett
Looking for CFEngine training?
http://www.verticalsysadmin.com/

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[Mark at CFEngine]

Sounds like å blog...

[Martin Simons]

Dear Brian,

A while ago I was present at a talk on RHEL 7 ans systemd. My overall impression was: it is immature. The developers attitude you are referring to is another indication.

So why not give it a try to include some of the BSD, SmartOS and OmniOS stuff into the CFEngine Roadshow. Where should I start? Is there any chance of having a minimal SmartOS install to name one?

I would be more than happy to support those platforms.

I hope to draw a crowd in my talk at T-Dose in November. It would be great to show some BSD or SmartOS stuff at the event.

Best regards,

Martin.

[Brian Bennett]

SmartOS is a read-only cloud hypervisor that runs from USB, so it's minimal by default :-)

OmniOS also has a very light, minimal install.

SmartOS cloud images include pkgsrc by default, which has Cfengine 3.6.5 available. Pkgsrc can easily also be added the SmartOS global zone or OmniOS.

I don't want to get too far off-topic here, so I'll just finish with some links where you can learn more.

http://smartos.org/

http://joyent.com/

http://omnios.omniti.org/

IRC: irc.freenode.net in #joyent, #omnios, or #illumos.

And you can always get in touch with me directly if you have questions about certain technical aspects.

-- 
Brian Bennett
Looking for CFEngine training?
http://www.verticalsysadmin.com/