Automation 🤖

All my posts about Automation

Efficient Puppet setup on CentOS with quick deployment scripts for Puppet Master and Agents, including a GitHub repo for easy configuration management.

More Puppet

I have been playing my Digital Ocean↗ server a lot recently. Breaking it, fixing it and then rebuilding it, while I had documented my puppet installation it was getting to be a pain to copy and paste with each rebuild, so I pulled together a few scripts↗ from various sources to make the rebuilds a little less of a chore. To install fresh Puppet Master all I need to do now is run the following command; ...

A deep dive into using Vagrant and Puppet for setting up reproducible development environments, mirroring production with local Virtualbox instances.

Vagrant & Puppet

Vagrant allows developers to bring up local development machines in a controlled method using pre-built configuration files called boxes. Once a box has been installed on the developers local machine it can be powered on with the following command; Vagrant & Puppet 1/2 vagrant up When the box is brought up it automatically provisions itself using a number of provisioners including Puppet, this means that the production deployment scripts can also be run on local development copies of the instances. The instances on the local machines are powered by Virtualbox and there Windows, Linux and Mac versions of Vagrant. ...

A comprehensive guide on setting up Cobbler on CentOS 6.x for mirroring repos and server kickstarts, including EPEL enablement and security setup.

Installing Cobbler on CentOS 6.x

I needed a simple way to mirror some repos, and potentially kickstart some servers at a future date. While something like The Foreman↗ would do the build side of things it doesn’t repo mirrors (yet). So I did an install of Cobbler↗ . This turned out to be more stright forward than I thought, first you need to ensure EPEL↗ is enabled …. Installing Cobbler on CentOS 6.x 1/1 yum install http://ftp.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm yum install cobbler cobbler-web pykickstart chkconfig cobblerd on chkconfig xinetd on service httpd restart service xinetd start service cobblerd start service cobblerd status cobbler get-loaders vim /etc/cobbler/modules.conf # Make the following changes …. [dns] module = manage_dnsmasq [dhcp] module = manage_dnsmasq [authentication] module = authn_configfile [authorization] module = authz_allowall # once done save and run the following …. cobbler check cobbler sync # cobbler sets the username and password for the web interface to cobbler / cobbler, change that by running …. htdigest /etc/cobbler/users.digest “Cobbler” cobbler ….. all done. You should be able to access your installation at ….. ...

A concise tutorial on setting up SaltStack for centralized server management on CentOS, including master-minion setup and basic commands.

SaltStack on CentOS 6.x

Had a play with SaltStack↗ today, it’s a good way to manage multiple machines from a central location. It runs as a Server (master) and client (minion). First we need to install the Salt-Master, this assumes you are installing on CentOS and don’t mind having EPEL installed on both the master and minion …. SaltStack on CentOS 6.x 1/3 # Install EPEL and Update on both the master and minions yum update -y yum install http://ftp.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm # Install the salt-master yum install salt-master chkconfig salt-master on sed -i ‘s/#interface: 0.0.0.0/interface: 0.0.0.0/g’ /etc/salt/master service salt-master start # Install the salt-minion # Replace $salt-master.yourdomain.com with the FQDN of your salt-master yum install salt-minion chkconfig salt-minion on sed -i ‘s/#master: salt/master: manager.yourdomain.com/g’ /etc/salt/minion service salt-minion start Now we have a minion talking to the master we need to accept the certificate; ...

Step-by-step guide to setting up a Puppet Server and agent on CentOS 6.4, including Apache configuration and SSL certificate management.

Puppet Server & Client Installation CentOS 6.x

This post assumes that you are starting with a clean minimal CentOS 6.4 64bit server and you have a full hostname set. Puppet Server Installation …… Puppet Server & Client Installation CentOS 6.x 1/4 # Hostname — Make sure the host name it set to puppet.yourdomain.com and that you replace references in this file # Install puppet & epel repos yum install -y http://yum.puppetlabs.com/el/6/products/i386/puppetlabs-release-6-6.noarch.rpm http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm # Download puppet-server from Puppet Labs, apache and necessary dependencies yum install -y vim-enhanced puppet-server httpd httpd-devel mod_ssl ruby-devel rubygems gcc-c++ curl-devel zlib-devel make automake openssl-devel rubygem-rack rubygem-passenger-native-libs rubygem-passenger-native rubygem-passenger rubygem-fastthread libev mod_passenger git # Start Puppet-Server /etc/init.d/puppetmaster start # Set Puppet Master to run on startup puppet resource service puppetmaster ensure=running enable=true # Create the directory structure for Puppet Master Rack Application mkdir -p /usr/share/puppet/rack/puppetmasterd mkdir /usr/share/puppet/rack/puppetmasterd/public /usr/share/puppet/rack/puppetmasterd/tmp cp /usr/share/puppet/ext/rack/files/config.ru /usr/share/puppet/rack/puppetmasterd/ chown puppet /usr/share/puppet/rack/puppetmasterd/config.ru # Create the VHOST for puppet master cat > /etc/httpd/conf.d/puppetmaster.conf << APACHE_CONFIG PassengerHighPerformance On PassengerMaxPoolSize 6 PassengerMaxRequests 1000 PassengerPoolIdleTime 600 Listen 8140 <VirtualHost *:8140> SSLEngine On # Only allow high security cryptography. Alter if needed for compatibility. SSLProtocol All -SSLv2 SSLCipherSuite HIGH:!ADH:RC4+RSA:-MEDIUM:-LOW:-EXP SSLCertificateFile /var/lib/puppet/ssl/certs/puppet.yourdomain.com.pem SSLCertificateKeyFile /var/lib/puppet/ssl/private_keys/puppet.yourdomain.com.pem SSLCertificateChainFile /var/lib/puppet/ssl/ca/ca_crt.pem SSLCACertificateFile /var/lib/puppet/ssl/ca/ca_crt.pem SSLCARevocationFile /var/lib/puppet/ssl/ca/ca_crl.pem SSLVerifyClient optional SSLVerifyDepth 1 SSLOptions +StdEnvVars +ExportCertData # These request headers are used to pass the client certificate # authentication information on to the puppet master process RequestHeader set X-SSL-Subject %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN}e RequestHeader set X-Client-DN %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN}e RequestHeader set X-Client-Verify %{SSL_CLIENT_VERIFY}e DocumentRoot /usr/share/puppet/rack/puppetmasterd/public/ <Directory /usr/share/puppet/rack/puppetmasterd/> Options None AllowOverride None Order Allow,Deny Allow from All </Directory> </VirtualHost> APACHE_CONFIG # Sort out the services /etc/init.d/puppetmaster stop /etc/init.d/httpd start chkconfig puppetmaster off chkconfig httpd on # check its listening netstat -ln | grep 8140 # bosh Install the agent …… ...