ezjailremote 0.2.2

Usage

ezjail-remote uses the fabric library to remotely run its tasks. Basically it provides a so-called fabfile that contains all of the commands of ezjail-admin.

This means that its usage differs slightly from that of ezjail-admin. In particular, you provide the hostname of the jail server via the -H switch and the parameters for the command (such as the name of the jail etc) separated with a colon, like so:

ezjail-remote -H host(s) <COMMAND>:param1,param2,param3

or:

ezjail-remote -H host(s) <COMMAND>:param1=foo,param3=bar

See the full documentation of what fabric has to offer here.

In particualar, you can…

• run ezjail-remote --help to see a list of the available options

• run ezjail-remote -l to see a list of the available commands

• run ezjail-remote -d COMMAND to see a detailed description of a command

As a side effect of using fabric, you can run ezjail-admin commands against multiple jailhosts at the same time.

Bootstrapping

ezjail-remote doesn’t only make it easy to create and manage jails, it also helps you set up a jailhost environment from scratch. This is done with the bootstrap and install commands.

To successfully run the bootstrap command the following requirements need to be met on the host:

• sshd is up and running

• ssh login for root is (temporarily) enabled

• currently we also require an internet connection (to install ezjail) but this will eventually be replaced with uploading a copy of ezjail.

For example (logged in as root on the console):

echo 'PermitRootLogin yes' >> /etc/ssh/sshd_config
echo 'ifconfig_em0=DHCP' >> /etc/rc.conf
passwd # give yourself a TEMP_PASSWORD
dhclient em0 # note the IP_ADDR you get
/etc/rc.d/sshd onestart

Now you can run the bootstrap command using the temporary password you gave yourself:

ezjail-remote -H IP_ADDR bootstrap

This

• disables root login

• permanently enables SSH for the jail host (and limits it to the primary IP address)

• creates an admin user with your username and public SSH key

..note: Before installing ezjail with the install command you may want to set up additional things, such as ZFS pools, network interface aliases, etc.

To install ezjail you can use the install command, which either installs it from the ports or from CVS (for the brave):

ezjail-remote -H IP_ADDR install

If you want to use a CVS snapshot:

ezjail-remote -H IP_ADDR install:source=cvs

If you want to use ZFS (and you should!) supply the pool it should use via the jailzfs parameter:

ezjail-remote -H IP_ADDR install:jailzfs='jails/ezjail'

Commands

In its simplest form, ezjail remote offers the exact same commands as ezjail-admin, namely [archive|config|console|create|delete|install|list|restore|start|stop|update]. In addition to that it provides enhanced versions of create and destroy (the latter a more thorough variant of the delete command.)

Installation

Simply use easy_install:

easy_install ezjail-remote

Development

To develop ezjail-remote itself, check out a copy of this repository and then:

virtualenv . --no-site-package
./bin/python setup.py develop

TODO

• document flavour development

• use a base class for flavours

• list them (with their docstr) with ezjail-remote list-flavours

• allow chaining/nesting/stacking of flavours (i.e. always include basic)

Change history