Users¶

Quick Start¶

If you would rather not be bothered with the boring, gritty details, the following quick steps will get you up and going with a Cinch installation, after which you can jump down to the section on how to run Cinch, and skip the installation paragraphs that immediately follow this one.

Fedora 25+¶

Execute the following commands

sudo dnf install -y libvirt-devel python-virtualenv libyaml-devel openssl-devel libffi-devel gcc redhat-rpm-config

virtualenv cinch && source cinch/bin/activate

pip install cinch

RHEL/CentOS¶

See the sample Ansible playbook for steps to install Cinch into a virtualenv in RHEL/CentOS, as there are some additional steps required in these systems. Running that playbook as-is on your local system will result in a virtualenv living at /var/lib/jenkins/opt/cinch that will contain the latest version of Cinch.

Ubuntu¶

apt-get install -y libvirt-dev python-virtualenv libyaml-dev openssl libffi-dev gcc python-dev libssl-dev

virtualenv cinch && source cinch/bin/activate

On older versions of Ubuntu (like 14.04) you should update pip (usually these older systems come with a version of pip such as 1.5.4 instead of version 9+)

pip install -U pip

On all systems, continue on with the installation of Cinch itself

pip install cinch

Note

After Cinch is installed with the above quick start methods, you can jump down to the section about running Cinch to get a look at basic documentation on how the software should be used.

Getting Started¶

At its core, this software is nothing more than a collection of Ansible playbook scripts for configuring a system. Any knowledge that you have that is applicable to the broad spectrum of Ansible usage is applicable here. You can opt to install Ansible from your favorite package manager, or you can use the version that is specified in setup.py

Before concluding there is a bug in these playbooks, make sure that the version of Ansible you are using is the same as the version in the setup.py file and that you have ensured there are no alterations from that version. It is not intended or guaranteed that any changes from the stock version of Ansible that has been tested should work.

Requirements¶

To setup your environment, you need to install Ansible. Since Ansible is primarily distributed as a Python package, it is suggested that you use pip to install Ansible on your system. You are welcome to try and use the version that is installed by your favorite package manager, but be sure that you are using a version at least as new as the version pinned in setup.py.

It is recommended that you install Ansible from pip using a virtualenv, as is the best practices recommendations for most Python packages that are available from PyPI. In order to build and install Ansible, you will need to install the following system packages:

Note

If you install cinch via pip, a supported version of Ansible will be brought in as a dependency.

gcc or appropriate system compiler
OpenSSL development package
libyaml development package
virtualenv package
libffi development package
libvirt development package

Use your system package manager to install these packages, if they are not already present.

Note

You will need to install the development version of the libraries, as pip will attempt to build wrappers around some of those libraries during its install of Ansible and dependencies.

Here is an example of installing required system level packages for Fedora 25:

Installation¶

Once the system level packages are installed, you can install cinch using pip (virtualenv strongly recommended):

Fedora¶

virtualenv cinch && source cinch/bin/activate

pip install cinch

RHEL7 and CentOS7¶

RHEL7 and derivatives offer older versions of Python packaging tools that are incompatible with some cinch dependencies. To work-around this issue, we have provided an Ansible playbook that will install a newer version of the necessary Python packaging tools to allow for installation on RHEL7. This playbook is intended for use on Jenkins masters and will install cinch into a virtualenv at /var/lib/jenkins/opt/cinch. For convenience, an optional Jenkins Job Builder template is provided and will create a Jenkins job that will run the aforementioned playbook on your Jenkins master.

Execution¶

With linch-pin¶

The cinchpin command can be used to call linch-pin automatically to provision instances and then configure the instances. cinchpin supports a subset of linch-pin commands, such as rise, drop, and init.

In the following example we will provision a RHEL7 instance in OpenStack as a Jenkins slave.

First, create necessary credentials for linch-pin provisioning for your target infrastructure in <venv-path> /lib/python2.7/site-packages/provision/roles/openstack/vars/os_creds.yml:

---
# openstack API endpoint
endpoint: http://openstack-api-endpoint.example.com:5000/v2.0

# project/tenant name
project: myproject

# project/tenant username and password
username: myuser
password: mypass

Note

The upcoming auth driver feature for linch-pin will make this step easier in the future.

Next, generate a linch-pin working directory for use with cinch by running the following commands:

mkdir /path/to/workdir

cinchpin init -w /path/to/workdir

Create a layout file by saving the following example template as /path/to/workdir/layouts/cinch.yml and edit to taste. For the jenkins_user_password variable, please use the Ansible documentation to generate a suitable password hash. For security in production environments, DO NOT copy the existing hash from this example.

---
inventory_layout:
  hosts:
    cinch:
      count: 1
      # List all necessary 'cinch' roles here
      host_groups:
        - rhel7 # specify the appropriate Ansible role for your distribution
        - certificate_authority # optional role to install CA certificates
        - repositories # the 'repositories' role is required for a Jenkins master or slave
        - jenkins_slave
  host_groups:
    all:
      vars:
        # required variables for all hosts
        ansible_user: root
        ansible_private_key_file: /path/to/ssh/private_key
        ansible_connection: ssh
    certificate_authority:
      vars:
        # Add URLs from which to download CA certificates for installation
        certificate_authority_urls:
          - https://example.com/ca1.crt
          - https://example.com/ca2.crt
    repositories:
      vars:
        # Base URL for repository mirror
        rhel_base: http://example.com/content/dist/rhel/server/7/7Server
    jenkins_slave:
      vars:
        # Required variables for a Jenkins slave

        # The password for the Jenkins user account that will be created on the slave.
        # For security in production environments, DO NOT copy the
        # existing hash from this example.
        # https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/faq.html#how-do-i-generate-crypted-passwords-for-the-user-module
        jenkins_user_password: '$6$rounds=656000$YQKMBktZ/Gaggxf0$KC7xhatWzdDJyvCDo7htomtiSsvd2MWN87RB3TsAbq1Nmwddy/z2Et8kQi1/tZkHjfD2vG1r7W2R9rjpaA1C5/'
        jenkins_master_url: 'http://jenkins.example.com' # URL to Jenkins master for the slave to connect to

Create a topology file by saving the following example template as /path/to/workdir/topologies/cinch.yml and edit to taste:

---
topology_name: "cinch_topology"

# OpenStack project/tenant name
site: "my-openstack-project-name"

resource_groups:
  -
    resource_group_name: "cinch"
    res_group_type: "openstack"
    res_defs:
      - res_name: "resource"
        flavor: "m1.large"
        res_type: "os_server"
        image: "rhel-7.2-server-x86_64-released"
        count: 1 # Number of instances to create
        keypair: "openstack-keypair-name" # Name of SSH keypair configured for OpenStack account
        networks:
          - "openstack-network-name" # OpenStack network name

    # Name of credentials file to use for the OpenStack API
    assoc_creds: "os_creds"

Note

For more topology examples, including various host environments, see the linch-pin documentation.

Provision and configure your Jenkins slave automatically with the following command:

cinchpin rise -w /path/to/workdir

To terminate the OpenStack instance and remove the Jenkins slave from the Jenkins master, run the following command:

cinchpin drop -w /path/to/workdir

Note

Once the working directory is configured successfully, a common next step would be to check this directory into source control where it can be consumed by CI automation tools such as Jenkins Job Builder or Jenkins Pipeline.

Manual¶

Execution of this software requires configuring an Ansible inventory that points at the jenkins_master and jenkins_slave hosts that you want configured. Use normal methods for setting group_vars and host_vars within the inventory or its associated folders that suits your own needs and preferences.

While most default settings should be functional, there are lots of options configured in the various default/main.yml files within the various roles folders. Check in those files for more details on specific options that can be set and a description of what they each mean.

See a few examples of such in either the inventory/ folder or inside of the various vagrant/ subfolders where known good working environments are configured for development use.

The path inventory/local is excluded from use by the project and can be leveraged for executing and storing your own local inventories, if the desire arises. There is even a shell script in bin/run_jenkins_local.sh that will execute ansible-playbook from the .venv/ virtualenv and point it to the inventory/local/hosts file to make executing against your own environment as easy as a single command.

Support¶

The playbooks should support, minimally, CentOS and RHEL versions 7+. If you encounter difficulties in those environments, please file bugs. There should be no configuration necessary for a CentOS host, and a RHEL host requires only that you configure the base URL for your local RHEL repository collection. See documentation in the appropriate roles for details on that configuration.