Local development workflow for Deis

This document suggests some ways that might make developing Deis easier and cheaper. You don't have to follow them all.

1. You'll need VirtualBox >= 4.2.18. We recommend installing Vagrant with their binary installer from http://downloads.vagrantup.com Vagrant 1.3.5 has support for VirtualBox 4.3

2. Firstly you need to decide whether to use your own Chef Server or the free tier of the hosted enterprise service from Opscode. The free tier has a limit of 5 nodes which is more then enough for development. Also bear in mind that a local Chef Server VM will take up at least 1GB of RAM.

   Local Chef Server

   • cd [DEIS_DIR] && ln -s contrib/vagrant/knife-config .chef
   • vagrant up the chef server Vagrantfile.
   • copy the admin.pem and validation.pem files for your own knife client scp -r root@chefserver.local:/etc/chef-server/admin.pem [DEIS_DIR]/contrib/vagrant/knife-config/ scp -r root@chefserver.local:/etc/chef-server/chef-validator.pem [DEIS_DIR]/contrib/vagrant/knife-config/

   Hosted Chef Server

   • Goto https://getchef.opscode.com/signup and fill in your details.
   • Goto https://preview.opscode.com/login and sign in to your Chef Server.
   • Click on the 'Administration' tab and choose your organisation. There should be a tab in the sidebar that says 'Starter Kit'. Click it and it will start a small download.
   • Inside the Starter Kit there is a '.chef' folder. Copy it to the root of your Deis codebase.
   • NB: You can also manage your Chef Server through https://manage.opscode.com This is the old interface and has more features, like being able to add clients to permission groups.

3. Now you can follow the standard deis setup:

bundle install # Installs gem files like the knife tool
berks install # Downloads the relevant cookbooks
# '--ssl-verify' is only needed when using a local Chef Server
berks upload [--ssl-verify=false] # Upload the cookbooks to the Chef Server

4. The Controller needs to be able to run Vagrant commands on your host machine. It does this via SSH. Therefore you will need a running SSH server open on port 22 and a means to broadcast your hostname to local DNS.

   • On Debian-flavoured Linux you just need to; sudo apt-get install openssh-server
   • On Mac OSX you just need to go to System Preferences -> Sharing and enable 'Remote Login'.
   • Mac OSX user's should already be broadcasting their hostname.
   • Linux user's will need to install avahi-daemon, so that their machine is accessible via [hostname].local. Eg; sudo apt-get install avahi-daemon.

5. Use the provision script to boot the Deis Controller.

   • If you don't already have the deis-node Vagrant box installed (~1GB). This step might take a long time! If for some reason you want to manually add it, use: vagrant box add deis-node https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/opdemand/deis-node.box
   • cd contrib/vagrant && ./provision-controller.sh
   • You will be asked to add the Controller's SSH key to your local SSH server. This will allow the Controller to run vagrant commands on your machine to bootstrap new nodes.
   • You need to tell the Chef Server that your new Controller has permission to create and delete nodes. Use:
     • For a local Chef Server just type knife client edit deis-controller and your default text editor will launch, you need to set 'admin' to 'true'.
     • For Hosted Chef you need to log into https://manage.opscode.com/ Then goto the Groups tab, click the 'edit' link on the 'admins' row and then under the 'clients' heading toggle the 'deis-controller' radio button to be enabled. Then confirm the change by saving the group.

6. If you want to hack on the actual codebase, you can mount your local codebase onto the VM by using the custom Vagrantfile.local.

   • cp Vagrantfile.local.example Vagrantfile.local (don't worry it's in .gitignore)
   • Update the VM with vagrant reload --provision
   • When mounted you can use your favourite editor to change the code on your local machine's path and then run service deis-server restart and/or service deis-worker restart on the VM for your changes to instantly take effect.
   • It's worth having a read of Vagrantfile.local.example

7. If you want to hack on the command line client (client/deis.py), install your local dev version rather than the one from Pip.

   • cd deis && make install This installs the client into your executables path.
   • sudo rm /usr/local/bin/deis && sudo ln ./deis.py /usr/local/bin/deis This will symlink the dev version to your executables path.
   • Your deis controller is available at http://deis-controller.local so you can register with; deis register http://deis-controller.local

8. Right, time to boot up some nodes!

• Create a foramtion with a vagrant flavour, 512MB, 1024MB and 2048MB are available. deis formations:create dev --flavor=vagrant-512 --domain=deisapp.local
• Scale a node with deis nodes:scale dev runtime=1 Be patient, this is the command that runs vagrant commands. Scaling a single node can take about 5 mins.
• Then create and push your app as per the usual documentation.

Useful development commands

• To use Django's manage.py:

  • SSH in to the VM with vagrant ssh
  • Switch user to deis with sudo su deis
  • cd /opt/deis/controller and activate Venv with . venv/bin/activate
  • Get a list of commands with; ./manage.py help.

• To reset the DB:

  • On the VM run sudo su postgres -c 'dropdb deis && createdb --encoding=utf8 --template=template0 deis'
  • When you restart the server with sudo service deis-server restart Django will reinstall the DB.
  • You'll need to reupdate the Django's Site Object sudo su deis -c "psql deis -c \"UPDATE django_site SET domain = 'deis-controller.local', name = 'deis-controller.local' WHERE id = 1 \""

• This is useful for uploading your own local version of the cookbooks, rather than the Github versions:

  • knife cookbook upload deis --cookbook-path [deis-cookbook path] --force
  • You need to change directory structure though as knife gets the cookbook name from the folder name. So, for example I use;

  deis
    |__ code
      |__ api
      |__ bin
      |__ client
      |__ cm
      |__ ... and so on
    |__ cookbooks
      |__ deis
        |__ attributes
        |__ definitions
        |__ recipes
        |__ ... and so on

Notes

Mac OS X: if you see an error such as 'failed to open /dev/vboxnetctl', try restarting VirtualBox: sudo /Library/StartupItems/VirtualBox/VirtualBox restart