ReleaseEngineering/PuppetAgain/Packages

Principles

PuppetAgain needs to be able to repeatably produce identical machines over long time ranges (years). That means carefully controlling which versions of which packages are available to be installed, both during machine creation and in runs of the puppet agent. However, it's impractical and unnecessary to specify the exact version of *every* package installed on a host.

The system needs to be able to manage periodic updates to packages, both for security fixes and normal software upgrades. This must be done in a controlled fashion, so that any effects on system behavior can be identified and handled appropriately.

We often need updated versions of distro-supplied packages, custom packages for existing applications, or packaged versions of internally-developed tools.

How all of this happens differs widely among supported operating systems!

CentOS

CentOS: Repositories

Every puppetmaster hosts a bunch of yum repositories:

urlrepositoryarchmirror date
repos/yum/mirrors/epel/6/latest/x86_64EPEL 6x86_642012-03-07
repos/yum/mirrors/epel/6/latest/i386EPEL 6i3862012-03-07*
repos/yum/mirrors/centos/6/latest/os/x86_64CentOS 6 Basex86_642012-03-07
repos/yum/mirrors/centos/6/latest/os/i386CentOS 6 Basei3862012-03-07*
repos/yum/mirrors/centos/6/latest/os/SourceCentOS 6 Basesource2012-09-06
repos/yum/mirrors/centos/6/latest/updates/x86_64CentOS 6 Updatesx86_642012-03-07
repos/yum/mirrors/centos/6/latest/updates/i386CentOS 6 Updatesi3862012-03-07*
repos/yum/mirrors/centos/6/latest/updates/SourceCentOS 6 Updatessource2012-09-06
repos/yum/mirrors/fedora/16/latest/releases/Everything/i386/osFedora 16 Basei386
repos/yum/mirrors/fedora/16/latest/releases/Everything/x86_64/osFedora 16 Basex86_64
repos/yum/mirrors/fedora/16/latest/updates/i386Fedora 16 Updatesi3862012-03-07
repos/yum/mirrors/fedora/16/latest/updates/x86_64Fedora 16 Updatesx86_642012-03-07
repos/yum/mirrors/puppetlabs/el/6/products/x86_64Puppetlabsx86_64
repos/yum/mirrors/puppetlabs/el/6/products/i386Puppetlabsi386
repos/yum/mirrors/puppetlabs/el/6/dependencies/x86_64Puppetlabs Depsx86_64
repos/yum/mirrors/puppetlabs/el/6/dependencies/i386Puppetlabs Depsi386
repos/yum/mirrors/passenger/rhel/6/latest/x86_64Passengerx86_642012-07-05
repos/yum/mirrors/hp/proliantsupportpack/CentOS/6/i386/current/HP Proliant Supporti3862012-08-21
repos/yum/mirrors/hp/proliantsupportpack/CentOS/6/x86_64/current/HP Proliant Supportx86_642012-08-21
repos/yum/releng/public/CentOS/6/noarchReleng CentOS 6 Custom RPMsnoarch
repos/yum/releng/public/CentOS/6/x86_64Releng CentOS 6 Custom RPMsx86_64
repos/yum/releng/public/CentOS/6/i386Releng CentOS 6 Custom RPMsi386
repos/yum/releng/public/Fedora/16/noarchReleng Fedora 16 Custom RPMsnoarch
repos/yum/releng/public/Fedora/16/x86_64Releng Fedora 16 Custom RPMsx86_64
repos/yum/releng/public/Fedora/16/i386Releng Fedora 16 Custom RPMsi386

Notes:

  • Paths under yum/releng are custom packages, and are not mirrored from anywhere.
  • We generally try to mirror source RPMs for all repositories; this way, if we need to make a small fix to such an RPM, we can easily find the source for it without resorting to things like rpmfind.
  • The Fedora repos are only used within mock on buildslaves. They are not used to install anything on puppet-managed hosts.
    • The releng Fedora repos are currently empty, in fact
  • Dynamic repositories are snapshots that are made on demand, where latest always points to the latest active snapshot. They are *not* automatically updated. The date on which they were most recently mirrored is given above.
  • The current CentOS version is available at http://repos/repos/yum/mirrors/centos/6/latest/centos-version.txt.
  • The CentOS base repos each have an images/ subdirectory, so they can be used with the 'url' command in a kickstart script

Mirror Synchronization Commands

Note: Each of these includes a 'hardlinks' command which can find duplicate files and hard-link them together, saving a bit of space. See bug 836014. The process takes about 10 minutes.
Note: From inside Mozilla, you'll need to use the Squid proxy: set RSYNC_PROXY to proxy.dmz.scl3.mozilla.com:3128

Remember that once changes land on the puppet master, they can be used for any purpose that needs packages. That includes kickstart, which always takes the most recent version of a package it can find! It also includes installs by puppet that specify version => "latest", and installs to fulfill requirements of packages defined by puppet. Think twice!

EPEL

rsync -n --no-p -rv --delete --size-only rsync://mirror.unl.edu/fedora-epel/6/x86_64/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/epel/6/2012-03-07/x86_64/
rsync -n --no-p -rv --delete --size-only rsync://mirror.unl.edu/fedora-epel/6/i386/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/epel/6/2012-03-07/i386/
time hardlink -v /data/repos/yum/mirrors/epel

Note that, as for CentOS below, the i386 mirrors were done much later than 2012-03-07 (July 2012).

CentOS 6

  • Base and Updates (6.3 and higher)
CENTOS_FULL=6.5
rsync -v -n -aP    --filter='-r centos-version.txt'   --exclude isos --exclude drpms --exclude centosplus --exclude xen4 --exclude fasttrack --exclude contrib --exclude cr \
    --delete --delete-excluded rsync://linux.mirrors.es.net/centos/$CENTOS_FULL/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/centos/$CENTOS_FULL/
time hardlink -v /data/repos/yum/mirrors/centos

Fedora 16

rsync -n --no-p --delete --size-only -rv --exclude=EFI --exclude=drpms --exclude=images --exclude=isolinux --exclude='RPM-GPG-KEY*' rsync://mirrors.usc.edu/fedora/linux/releases/16/Everything/i386/os/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/fedora/16/2012-03-07/releases/Everything/i386/os/
rsync -n --no-p --delete --size-only -rv --exclude=EFI --exclude=drpms --exclude=images --exclude=isolinux --exclude='RPM-GPG-KEY*' rsync://fedora.osuosl.org/fedora/linux/releases/16/Everything/x86_64/os/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/fedora/16/2012-03-07/releases/Everything/x86_64/os/
rsync -n --no-p --delete --size-only -rv --exclude=drpms --exclude=debug rsync://fedora.osuosl.org/fedora/linux/updates/16/i386/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/fedora/16/2012-03-07/updates/i386/
rsync -n --no-p --delete --size-only -rv --exclude=drpms --exclude=debug rsync://fedora.osuosl.org/fedora/linux/updates/16/x86_64/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/fedora/16/2012-03-07/updates/x86_64/
time hardlink -v /data/repos/yum/mirrors/fedora/

PuppetLabs

rsync -n -rLv rsync://yum.puppetlabs.com/packages/yum/el/6/products/x86_64/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/puppetlabs/el/6/products/x86_64/
rsync -n -rLv rsync://yum.puppetlabs.com/packages/yum/el/6/products/i386/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/puppetlabs/el/6/products/i386/
rsync -n -rLv rsync://yum.puppetlabs.com/packages/yum/el/6/dependencies/x86_64/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/puppetlabs/el/6/dependencies/x86_64/
rsync -n -rLv rsync://yum.puppetlabs.com/packages/yum/el/6/dependencies/i386/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/puppetlabs/el/6/dependencies/i386/
time hardlink -v /data/repos/yum/mirrors/puppetlabs/

Passenger

rsync -n -av rsync://passenger.stealthymonkeys.com/rpms/rhel/6/x86_64/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/passenger/rhel/6/2012-07-05/x86_64/
rsync -n -av rsync://passenger.stealthymonkeys.com/rpms/rhel/6/i386/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/passenger/rhel/6/2012-07-05/i386/
time hardlink -v /data/repos/yum/mirrors/passenger/

HP

not everything is mirrored, so this just gets the good stuff

rsync -n -av downloads.linux.hp.com::SDR/psp/CentOS/6/x86_64/current/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/hp/proliantsupportpack/CentOS/6/x86_64/current/
rsync -n -av downloads.linux.hp.com::SDR/psp/CentOS/6/i386/current/ /data/repos/yum/mirrors/hp/proliantsupportpack/CentOS/6/i386/current/
time hardlink -v /data/repos/yum/mirrors/hp/

CentOS: Installing Packages with Puppet

CentOS Packages are simple to install:

       CentOS: {
           package {
               "mypackage":
                   ensure => "1.2.3";
           }
       }

Generally, if it's important enough to install explicitly, it's important enough to pin a particular version. If you also need to pin versions for requirements, be sure you model the requirements with requires in puppet, so that puppet knows to install the requirements first.

CentOS: Custom Packages

See ReleaseEngineering/PuppetAgain/HowTo/Build RPMs for building RPMs.

CentOS: Updated Versions of Upstream Packages

In the event you find a need for an updated package from newer CentOS repositories, first try installing that package manually (yum install http://wherever.it.is/package.rpm) on a target host, to ensure that it doesn't have any requirements that aren't satisfied from the mirrored repositories. If there are any such requirements, consider carefully how many of them to cherry-pick out of the repository, and the effects that will have on other systems. Upgrading librsync may be OK, but upgrading glibc or libopenssl this way will lead to a world of pain and sadness.

Before copying anything onto the puppet masters, "pin" the versions of the package in question and any requirements in puppet to what they are before your change, and deploy that patch. This provides a backout path for you later to install exactly the versions that were installed before your changes. Only when that change is deployed, add the new packages to the repository and run createrepo (below). When *that* is deployed, update the puppet manifests to the new versions, omitting the requirements unless their version numbers are important for production.

CentOS: Landing Custom Repository Changes

Custom-built packages should be placed in the appropriate repos/yum/releng/public/CentOS/6/* repository, depending on architecture. All dependencies should be included in that repository if they are not in the mirrored repositories.

When the patch containing the new or updated package spec is r+'d, commit it as usual, and also add *both* the RPM (or multiple RPMs if multiple architectures are required!) and the SRPM into /data on the designated puppet master, so that it will be distributed to other systems. Debuginfo RPMs are a good idea, too.

Run

 createrepo --update $repo_path

to update the metadata. Don't forget to run puppetmaster-fixperms to make sure permissions are correct.

Once this is done, the package is available and will be used if possible.

Example session:

# at releng-puppet2.srv.releng.scl3.mozilla.com
$ wget http://people.mozilla.org/~jhopkins/bug772446/supervisor-3.0-0.10.a12.el6.noarch.rpm
$ wget http://people.mozilla.org/~jhopkins/bug772446/supervisor-3.0-0.10.a12.el6.src.rpm
$ chmod 644 *.rpm
$ sudo chown puppetsync: *.rpm
$ sudo mv -vi *.rpm /data/repos/yum/releng/public/CentOS/6/noarch/
`supervisor-3.0-0.10.a12.el6.noarch.rpm' -> `/data/repos/yum/releng/public/CentOS/6/noarch/supervisor-3.0-0.10.a12.el6.noarch.rpm'
`supervisor-3.0-0.10.a12.el6.src.rpm' -> `/data/repos/yum/releng/public/CentOS/6/noarch/supervisor-3.0-0.10.a12.el6.src.rpm'
$ sudo createrepo --update /data/repos/yum/releng/public/CentOS/6/noarch
2/2 - supervisor-3.0-0.10.a12.el6.src.rpm                                       
Saving Primary metadata
Saving file lists metadata
Saving other metadata
# set permissions and ownership on repodata and package files
$ sudo puppetmaster-fixperms

Ubuntu

Reference Links

Ubuntu: Repositories

urlrepositoryarchsectiondistmirror date
repos/apt/ubuntuUbuntu 12.04 LTSi386,amd64main,restricted,universeprecise,precise-security
(note: no precise-updates)
2013-02-21
repos/apt/xorg-edgersxorg-edgers fresh X Cracki386,amd64main,restricted,universeprecise2013-02-21
repos/apt/relengcustom-built packagesi386,amd64main,restricted,universeprecise
repos/apt/releng-updatespartial mirror of precise-updatesi386,amd64main,restricted,universeprecise
repos/apt/puppetlabsmirror of apt.puppetlabs.comi386,amd64main,restricted,universeprecise

Notes:

  • Dynamic repositories are snapshots that are made on demand, where latest always points to the latest active snapshot. They are *not* automatically updated. The date on which they were most recently mirrored is given above.
  • This arrangement can't be updated (see the warning below), so we will likely need to change to something more like the CentOS repositories.

Mirror Synchronization Commands

 Warning: The debmirror command includes the equivalent of rsync's --delete. If you try to mirror only one section, dist, arch, etc., debmirror will delete the section/dist/arch you omit. Don't do that. See bug 844172.

Setup

GNUPGHOME has the Ubuntu arch key in it:

GNUPGHOME=/etc/debmirror-gpg gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring /etc/debmirror-gpg/trustedkeys.gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 437D05B5 4BD6EC30
Note: this doesn't work anymore - those keys have been removed..

Add `--keyserver-options http-proxy=proxy.dmz.scl3.mozilla.com:3128` at Mozilla.

with `/etc/debmirror.conf` containing only the Perl no-op "1;".

Note that `hardlink` isn't used here - debmirror's name-based deduplication squeezes out just about all the space possible.

Ubuntu

Precise

This version was mirrored to /data/repos/apt/ubuntu, not the 'precise' subdirectory as it probably should have been. It also included "universe" which is, predictably, ginormous.

SECTION=main,main/debian-installer,restricted,restricted/debian-installer,universe,universe/debian-installer
DIST=precise,precise-security
ARCH=i386,amd64
GNUPGHOME=/etc/debmirror-gpg/ debmirror --config-file=/etc/debmirror.conf --source \
   -a $ARCH -s $SECTION -d $DIST \
   -h us.archive.ubuntu.com -r /ubuntu -e rsync --progress \
   --dry-run \
   /data/repos/apt/ubuntu/

There are symlinks from /data/repos/apt/ubuntu/precise/{pool,dist,projects} to the appropriate locations in 'ubuntu' dir.

Trusty
SECTION=main,main/debian-installer,restricted,restricted/debian-installer
DIST=trusty,trusty-security
ARCH=i386,amd64
GNUPGHOME=/etc/debmirror-gpg/ debmirror --config-file=/etc/debmirror.conf --source \
   -a $ARCH -s $SECTION -d $DIST \
   -h us.archive.ubuntu.com -r /ubuntu -e rsync --progress \
   --dry-run \
   /data/repos/apt/ubuntu/trusty/

xorg-edgers

SECTION=main,main/debian-installer,restricted,restricted/debian-installer,universe,universe/debian-installer
DIST=precise
ARCH=i386,amd64
GNUPGHOME=/etc/debmirror-gpg/ debmirror --config-file=/etc/debmirror.conf --source \
   -a $ARCH -s $SECTION -d $DIST \
   -h ppa.launchpad.net -r /xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu --rsync-extra=none -e http --progress \
   --dry-run \
   /data/repos/apt/xorg-edgers/

puppetlabs

 wget https://apt.puppetlabs.com/pubkey.gpg
 GNUPGHOME=/etc/debmirror-gpg  gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring /etc/debmirror-gpg/trustedkeys.gpg --import pubkey.gpg
 SECTION=main,dependencies
 DIST=precise,trusty
 ARCH=i386,amd64
 GNUPGHOME=/etc/debmirror-gpg/ debmirror --config-file=/etc/debmirror.conf --source \
    -a $ARCH -s $SECTION -d $DIST \
    -h apt.puppetlabs.com -r / -e http --progress \
    --dry-run \
    /data/repos/apt/puppetlabs/

Ubuntu: Installing Packages with Puppet

Simple:

       Ubuntu: {
           package {
               "mypackage":
                   ensure => "1.2.3";
           }
       }

As with CentOS packages, it's generally a good idea to pin the version of things that are important enough to be named in puppet. If requirements need to be pinned too, then model the requirements relationship properly with requires.

Ubuntu: Custom Packages

See ReleaseEngineering/PuppetAgain/HowTo/Build DEBs for details on building DEBs.

Ubuntu: Updated Versions of Upstream Packages

 Warning: This procedure can cause package version conflicts between packages installed during kickstart (which does not reference the releng-updates repository) and packages installed by puppet (which does).

Sometimes you may need to update only one package from upstream without syncing the whole repo (what may cause unpredictable results). The releng-updates repo is set up for these cases.

Adding a Single Package

To do this, you'll need apt-ftparchive from the apt-utils package. It only runs on Ubuntu, so rsync the releng-updates repo to an Ubuntu host and rsync the results back when you're done.

Put the new packages in the appropriate place under releng-updates/pool. This might be easiest by rsyncing from archive.ubuntu.org, e.g.,

  rsync -r rsync://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openssl/ releng-updates/pool/main/o/openssl/

(after which I deleted the files I didn't need).

Once the pool is set up, regenerate the packages with the following:

rm -rf releng-updates/dists
cd releng-updates
for arch in i386 amd64; do
  mkdir -p dists/precise-updates/all/binary-$arch
  apt-ftparchive --arch $arch packages . > dists/precise-updates/all/binary-$arch/Packages
  bzip2 < dists/precise-updates/all/binary-$arch/Packages > dists/precise-updates/all/binary-$arch/Packages.bz2
done

Automatically Pulling Dependencies

This needs to be done on an Ubuntu machine. You need to use debpartial-mirror, apt-ftparchive (from apt-utils) and simple wrapper to generate repo indexes:

# http://puppetagain.pub.build.mozilla.org/data/repos/apt/releng-updates.sh
debpartial-mirror -c ./releng-updates.conf all
rm -rf releng-updates/dists
cd releng-updates
for arch in i386 amd64; do
  mkdir -p dists/precise-updates/all/binary-$arch
  apt-ftparchive --arch $arch packages . > dists/precise-updates/all/binary-$arch/Packages
  bzip2 < dists/precise-updates/all/binary-$arch/Packages > dists/precise-updates/all/binary-$arch/Packages.bz2
done

releng-updates.conf

[GLOBAL]
;debug = DEBUG
mirror_dir = ./
architectures = i386 amd64
components = main
distributions = precise

get_suggests = true
get_recommends = true
get_provides = true
get_sources = true
get_packages = true

[releng-updates]
server = http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
distributions = precise-updates
components = main restricted universe
# specify needed packages here
filter = name:gnome-settings-daemon

Ubuntu: Landing Custom Repository Changes

Note: This is currently Mozilla-only, since Mozilla is the upstream for all packages. Be careful, as this can easily wipe out the existing releng repository!
 Warning: Debian repositories can only contain one version of a package. When you land an upgrade into a repo, land the corresponding puppet change that will upgrade the package as soon as possible. Remember to bump the repo version (below).

Note: these steps were used for libxcb1 and Mesa.

We use reprepro to manage packages. Nobody's quite sure how to pronounce it.

The repo lives in /data/repos/apt on releng-puppet2.srv.releng.scl3, so you'll need to begin by rsync'ing it to ubuntu64packager1:

 rsync -av releng-puppet2.srv.releng.scl3.mozilla.com:/data/repos/apt/releng/ /data/repos/apt/releng/
 rsync -av releng-puppet2.srv.releng.scl3.mozilla.com:/data/repos/apt/conf/ /data/repos/apt/conf/
 rsync -av releng-puppet2.srv.releng.scl3.mozilla.com:/data/repos/apt/db/ /data/repos/apt/db/

The conf/ directory contains config files pointing to the releng/ repository only -- this won't (shouldn't!) mess with the Ubuntu mirrors.

Next, import your files into the repo

cd /data/repos/apt
reprepro -V --basedir . include precise /tmp/somepackage-precise-amd64/*.changes

NOTE: You will have to place a copy of the orig.tar.gz in the repo.

If you're installing two architectures, then the second one will complain that the debian tarball's signature doesn't match. That's OK. Just import the debs from that architecture:

reprepro -V --basedir . includedeb precise /tmp/somepackage-precise-i386/*.deb

This will copy packages to releng/, generate indices and update the database. Make sure to not get into a race condition with other people on the same host.

When you are done with the repo, first check that any previous versions of the packages you're updating are pinned in puppet. Then rsync the repo and db back to the distinguished master:

 rsync -av /data/repos/apt/releng/ releng-puppet2.srv.releng.scl3.mozilla.com:/data/repos/apt/releng/
 rsync -av /data/repos/apt/db/ releng-puppet2.srv.releng.scl3.mozilla.com:/data/repos/apt/db/

and run this on the master:

 puppetmaster-fixperms

You need to bump the counter in modules/packages/manifests/setup.pp:

  # to flush the package index, increase this value by one (or
  # anything, really, just change it). 
- $repoflag = 5
+ $repoflag = 6

This will cause all Ubuntu machines to run apt-get update.

Darwin

Darwin: Repositories

There's no such thing as a repository for OS X packages, sadly. DMGs are stored in repos/DMGs. DMGs are generally built for a specific OS version and put in per-os-version subdirectories, although DMGs that are compatible across versions are in the root. Each DMG is named $packagename-$version.dmg.

Darwin: Installing Packages with Puppet

Use the packages::pkgdmg defined type to install DMGs, giving the package name as the resource name and the package version in the version parameter. The type will construct the correct filename from this information. For example:

       Darwin: {
           Anchor['packages::wget::begin'] ->
           packages::pkgdmg {
               wget:
                   version => "1.12-1";
           } -> Anchor['packages::wget::end']
       } 

DMGs that are downloaded as-is should be documented briefly (at least with the source) in the manifest files that install them. For example (from modules/packages/manifests/puppet.pp):

       Darwin: {
           # These DMGs come directly from http://downloads.puppetlabs.com/mac/
           Anchor['packages::puppet::begin'] ->
           packages::pkgdmg {
               puppet:
                   version => $puppet_version;
               facter:
                   version => $facter_version;
           } -> Anchor['packages::puppet::end']
       }

For DMGs that are *not* os-version-specific, pass os_version_specific => false.

Darwin: Custom Packages

DMGs that are custom built should have a shell script in modules/packages/manifests named $package-dmg.sh which builds the DMG. If there is a corresponding RPM (custom or stock) for the package, then the shell script can require that the source RPM be unpacked first. See ReleaseEngineering/PuppetAgain/HowTo/Build_DMGs for more details.