Setting up Bcfg2 From Scratch

Ala Managing /etc/motd with Bcfg2 Starting From an Empty VM, I’ll be setting up a fresh OS X 10.6 machine to be managed by Bcfg2.

Get OS X 10.6 Running

Use your favorite provisioning method to get your operating system running and fully patched.

For this hands on, I’m running OS X 10.6.8 (Build 10K540) with the supplied python 2.6.1. I’ve also turned on Remote Login (i.e. ssh) so I can use my client to write this document going through the steps; having ssh on is not a requirement for this howto.

Get bcfg2-server Working

Get bcfg2 package

You might be able to get a package already built for you, but it is not hard to build it from the source. You’ll need git (via git-osx-installer or homebrew; the former is easier, the later more developer friendly) and Apple’s XCode.

The first step is to clone the bcfg2 repository into a working directory:

At this point you will probably want to checkout a release tag (git tag -l to see a list of them). This test is using v1.2.0pre4. Once you’ve done that you can build the server.

The server package contains both the client and the server. The package is located at ./osx/bcfg2-VERSION.pkg. Copy it to the machine you want to set up from scratch and install it.

THIS NEEDS TO VERIFIED

Some of the differences between bcfg2 on Mac OS X and Debian is that the libraries are stored at /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/share/bcfg2/ /Library/Python/site-packages/Bcfg2/ instead of /usr/lib/pymodules/ and /usr/share/pyshare/Bcfg2. Also, instead of cron and init.d, `/Library/LaunchDaemons/gov.anl.mcs.bcfg2-daily.plist controls peridic runs and starts and stops. The runtime files are stored in /usr/local/bin under Mac OS X instead of /usr/sbin/ for Debian.

VERIFY:

10.6_client :~ user$ sudo /usr/local/bin/bcfg2-admin init
Failed to import lxml dependency. Shutting down server.

Try: sudo easy_install lxml. If you don’t have gcc-4.2 installed, you’ll need to install it on a machine that does. Then move /Library/Python/2.6/sites-packages/lxml-2.3-py2.6-macosx-10.6-universal.egg to the client and add the line “./lxml-2.3-py2.6-macosx-10.6-universal.egg” to /Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/easy-install.pth.

Getting a new error:

$ sudo /usr/local/bin/bcfg2-admin init
Interactively initialize a new repository.

bcfg2-admin init
$

So what is lxml easy_install fully installing? Need to make a package (Lettuce to the rescue!)