Inspired by: https://salsa.debian.org/vexch/plinth/snippets/391
This script creates a simple container using systemd-nspawn for developing
FreedomBox. It has many advantages over running a VM using Vagrant. RAM is
allocated to processes in the container as needed without any fixed limit. Also
RAM does not have to be statically allocated so it is typically much lighter
than running an VM. There is no hardware emulation when running a container with
same architecture, so processes run as fast as they would on the host machine.
Environment: The script will run only run on hosts having systemd-nspawn and
network-manager installed, typical GNU/Linux distributions. It has been
primarily developed and tested on Debian Buster but should work on most modern
GNU/Linux distributions.
Disk image: systemd-nspawn accepts not only a directory for starting a container
but also a disk image. This disk image is loop-back mounted and container is
started from that mounted directory. The partition to use is determined by
looking at the boot flag in the partition table. This happens to work well with
all existing FreedomBox images. In future, we may be able to run different
architectures in this manner.
After downloading, the disk image is expanded along with the partition and file
system inside so that development can be done without running into disk space
issues. Expanding the disk does not immediately consume disk space because it
will be a sparse file. As data is written to the disk, it will occupy more and
more space but the upper limit is the size to which disk has been expanded.
Downloading images: Images are downloaded from FreedomBox download server using
fixed URLs for each distribution. Signature is verified for the download images.
The fingerprint of the allowed signing key is hard-coded in this script.
Downloaded images are kept even after destroying the extracted raw image along
with container. This allows for quickly resetting the container without
downloading again.
Booting: systemd-nspawn is run in 'boot' mode. This means that init process
(happens to be systemd) is started inside the container. It then spawns all the
other necessary daemons including openssh-server, firewalld and network-manager.
A login terminal can be opened using 'machinectl login' because container is
running systemd. SSH into the container is possible because network is up,
configured by network-manager, and openssh server is running.
Shared folder: Using systemd-nspawn, the project directory is mounted as
/freedombox inside the container. The project directory is determined as
directory in which this script resides. The project folder from the container
point of view will be read-only. Container should be able to write various files
such as build files, FreedomBox sqlite3 database and session files into the
/freedombox folder. To enable writing, an additional read-write folder is
overlayed onto /freedombox folder in the container. This directory can't be
created under the project folder and is created instead in
$XDG_DATA_HOME/freedombox-container/overlay/$DISTRIBUTION. If XDG_DATA_HOME is
not set, it is assumed to be $HOME/.local/shared/. Whenever data is written into
/freedombox directory inside the container, this directory on the host receives
the changes. See documentation for Overlay filesystem for further details. When
container is destroyed, this overlay folder is destroyed to ensure clean state
after bringing up the container again.
Users: PrivateUsers configuration flag for systemd-nspawn is currently off. This
means that each user's UID on the host is also the same UID in the container as
along as there is an entry in the container's password database. In future, we
may explore using private users inside the container.
'fbx' is the development user and its UID is changed during setup phase to 10000
hoping it would not match anything on the host system. 'fbx' user has full sudo
access inside the container without needing a password. Password for this user
is not set by default, but can be set if needed. If there is no access to the
container in any way, one can run 'sudo machinectl shell' and then run 'passwd
fbx' to set the password for the 'fbx' user.
'plinth' user's UID in the container is also changed and set to the UID of
whichever user owns the project directory. This allows the files to written by
'plinth' container user in the project directory because UID of the owner of the
directory is same as the 'plinth' user's UID in container.
Network: A private network is created inside the container using systemd-nspawn
feature. Network interfaces from the host are not available inside the
container. A new network interface called 'host0' is configured inside the
container which is automatically configured by network-manager. On the host a
new network interface is created. This script creates configuration for a
'shared' network using network-manager. When bringing up the container, this
network connection is also brought up. A DHCP server and a DNS server are
started network-manager on the host side so that DHCP and DNS client functions
work inside the container. Traffic from the container is also masqueraded so
that Internet connectivity inside the container works if the host has one.
If necessary, the network interface on host side can be differently configured.
For example, it can be bridged with another interface to expose the container on
a network that the host machine participates in.
The network IP address inside the container can be queried using machinectl.
This script queries that IP address and presents the address in its console
messages. All ports in the container can be reached from the host using this IP
address as long as the firewall inside the container allows it. There is no need
to perform port forwarding or mapping.
SSH: It is assumed that openssh-server is installed inside the container. SSH
server keys in the container are created if missing. Client side keys are
created in .container/ssh directory and the public key is installed in the
authorized keys file of the 'fbx' user. The 'ssh' sub-command to this script is
simply a convenience mechanism for quick launch of ssh with the right IP
address, user name and identity file.
Role of machinectl: Most of the work is done by systemd-nspawn. machinectl is
useful for running systemd-nspawn in the background and querying its current
state. It also helps with providing the IP address of the container. machinectl
is made to recognize the container by creating a link in /var/lib/machines/ to
the image file. systemd-nspawn options are added by creating a temporary file in
/run/systemd/nspawn. All machinectl commands should work.
Signed-off-by: Sunil Mohan Adapa <sunil@medhas.org>
Reviewed-by: Veiko Aasa <veiko17@disroot.org>
Homebrew is the correct name of the package manager, not Brew.
Signed-off-by: Joseph Nuthalapati <njoseph@riseup.net>
Reviewed-by: Sunil Mohan Adapa <sunil@medhas.org>
Add more detailed instructions for installing VirtualBox manually on
Debian and its derivatives.
Signed-off-by: Joseph Nuthalapati <njoseph@riseup.net>
Reviewed-by: Sunil Mohan Adapa <sunil@medhas.org>
- The repository has been renamed from 'plinth' to 'freedombox'.
Signed-off-by: Sunil Mohan Adapa <sunil@medhas.org>
Reviewed-by: Joseph Nuthalapati <njoseph@riseup.net>
- Add functional tests
- Add unit tests for samba views
- New dependency for running functional tests: smbclient
- Make port configurable for the smbclient
Signed-off-by: Veiko Aasa <veiko17@disroot.org>
Reviewed-by: Joseph Nuthalapati <njoseph@riseup.net>
Signed-off-by: Joseph Nuthalapati <njoseph@riseup.net>
- Add instructions on how to install Git, Vagrant and VirtualBox for other OSes.
Instructions for other OSes are untested by me.
- Add instruction to checkout the source code.
- Remove instructions for installing on the host machine, these have not been
tested for a while and could lead to confusion. 'setup.py develop' option is
not being used anymore.
- Installing firefox using apt provides a sufficient version of functional
tests. Simplify the instructions.
- Update functional tests instructions to use the '-m' mark option instead of of
'-k' keyword.
Signed-off-by: Sunil Mohan Adapa <sunil@medhas.org>
Reviewed-by: James Valleroy <jvalleroy@mailbox.org>
It's now possible to run the tests in the VM more easily
without copy-pasting too much from HACKING.md.
`vagrant provision --provisiion-with tests` will take care of the dependencies.
freedombox/plinth#1521 - Provision VM to run function functional tests
Reviewed-by: James Valleroy <jvalleroy@mailbox.org>
Running plinth as root is causing preventable permission errors in production.
This commit makes the necessary changes to run plinth as the user plinth so that
permission errors can be caught early and prevented.
- Give ownership of all files in the mounted directory to plinth
- Add permissions in sudoers file so that plinth can run scripts in
/vagrant/actions as superuser
- Move scripts that run on vagrant triggers to a separate directory
Signed-off-by: Joseph Nuthalapati <njoseph@thoughtworks.com>
Reviewed-by: James Valleroy <jvalleroy@mailbox.org>
- Create option --include-functional to run functional tests. Otherwise, they
are disabled by default. If pytest-bdd is not installed, functional tests are
not discovered at all.
- Make pytest-django discover the setting files by creating dummy manage.py in
top level directory.
- Make pytest run as './setup.py pytest'. Add alias from './setup.py test'. This
requires pytest-runner package.
- Merge .gitignore files from functional_tests/
- Update gitlab-ci.yml to run tests with coverage using pytest.
- Update HACKING.md to suggest using py.test-3 instead of old way of running.
Merge functional tests README.md into HACKING.md.
- Remove execution wrapper runtests.py as pytest-django is able to configure
Django settings before execution of tests. Update tests to explicitly ask for
Django database as database access is denied by default.
- Replace usage of python3-coverage with python3-pytest-coverage. Execution
wrappers are not required.
- Add build dependencies on pytest modules.
- Let all warnings be shown after running tests.
Signed-off-by: Sunil Mohan Adapa <sunil@medhas.org>
Reviewed-by: James Valleroy <jvalleroy@mailbox.org>
Moved some frequently required operations to the Vagrantfile.
Newcomers to the project almost always face the issue of port 8000 not being
available. Disabling system Plinth and running only the development version
solves this issue.
Automatic upgrades are a frequent blocker for development and an unnecessary
annoyance on a development setup.
- Update documentation about vagrant file changes
- Remove plinth restart step
Signed-off-by: Joseph Nuthalapati <njoseph@thoughtworks.com>
Reviewed-by: James Valleroy <jvalleroy@mailbox.org>
For longer lists with various paragraphs per item, (gitlab?) markdown
needs four spaces of indentation to work correctly:
https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/markdown.html#lists
Signed-off-by: Michael Pimmer <info@fonfon.at>
Reviewed-by: James Valleroy <jvalleroy@mailbox.org>
- use markdown more explicitly
- update information on i18n and translation
- move or delete redundant info from HACKING into CONTRIBUTING
Signed-off-by: Johannes Keyser <johanneskeyser@posteo.de>
Reviewed-by: Sunil Mohan Adapa <sunil@medhas.org>
In commit d4b4791, four files were renamed by adding a file extension .md
The files are CONTRIBUTING, COPYING, HACKING and INSTALL
This commit fixes the pending tasks and especially the bug where HACKING.md is
wrongly listed as HACKING in debian/plinth.docs and cause build failure for the
Debian package of Plinth
Signed-off-by: Joseph Nuthalapati <njoseph@thoughtworks.com>
Signed-off-by: Sunil Mohan Adapa <sunil@medhas.org>
Reviewed-by: Sunil Mohan Adapa <sunil@medhas.org>
This will not install all the dependencies of Plinth but will install the
dependencies required for essential modules to setup properly.
Signed-off-by: Sunil Mohan Adapa <sunil@medhas.org>
Reviewed-by: Joseph Nuthalapati <njoseph@thoughtworks.com>
The docs named HACKING, COPYING,
CONTRIBUTING and INSTALL were
converted to markdown format
Closes: #1106
Signed-off-by: Palash Nigam <npalash25@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Joseph Nuthalapati <njoseph@thoughtworks.com>
