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CompFuzor

CF is a repository of systems configuration scripts for onlining new nodes with a variety of services.

As opposed to normal Ansible where one is writing tasks, Compfuzor tries to codify many practices and tasks such that the author declares what they want (as variables). General routines handle all Compfuzor playbooks, enacting the variables for the playbook that have been defined. Thus most good Compfuzor playbooks have only a single task: include: tasks/compfuzor.includes.

In addition, CF creates conventions for how and where files should go, with playbooks indirectly asking to place things in an extended Unix Filesystem Hierarchy like place with common system locations and common user locations overridable but used by default. These locations are tied to specific instances of a playbook, such that one can maintain multiple separate runs of a playbook on one machine. For instance, I use this for setting up a "3 node" etcd cluster on a laptop with no VM's or containers, but more generally this is also useful for testing things out on an alternate instance before running them on the main instance.

Added latter, there are a host of other conventions: environment variables are a core concept, and will automatically be used by Systemd services, another core of Compfuzor. Checking out sources a core capability. Extra contextual vars like XDG, a random PASSWORD and UUID are injected into runs.

It is written primarily as Ansible scripts, dubbed "playbooks" in their parlance. It provides a rich set of default directives which use a construct of context sensitivie settings to create ea consistend framework for emplacing software and processes.

History- CVE-2016-9587

CompFuzor was built well before https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-9587 , which radically reduced the expressiveness & flexibility of Ansible by making all evaluated expressions "unsafe" & unable to be further evaluated. This broke CompFuzor in a number of ways, since often a task will pull in or combine information, but Ansible now prevents iterative evaluation.

For a long time, Ansible 2.1.4.0 was the most recent version of Ansible that would work. Recently the project is underway again trying to support more recent versions of Ansible. There are certainly many kinks to be worked out, but many playbooks are once again working with a modern Ansible.

Conventions

Base System

  • systemd is the init process.
  • dpkg/apt for package management.

Directories

  • / is the main repository of playbooks.
  • tasks/ are subtasks used by playbooks.
  • tasks/compfuzor is the main-body of compfuzor execution, run by the task include: tasks/compfuzor.includes
  • vars/ hold broad configuration data.
  • files/ holds files which will be sourced when running a playbook.
  • private/ holds sensitive data configs.
  • example-private/ holds dummy data to mock out it's private/ counterpart.

Playbook Types

  • .srv.pb are instances of services, typically deploying into /srv/$TYPE-$INSTANCE. $INSTANCE defaults to main in common.vars.
  • .opt.pb is there to install a software package, usually into /opt. configuration, if possible, ought be split into a .srv.pb playbook.
  • .user.pb are intended to install into a user's own directory.
  • .src.pb are compiled (generally) source packages, often outputing an associated .opt package

Configuration

  • vars/, private/, and example-private/ hold non-installation specific, installation specific, and examples of installation specific configuraiton data.
  • vars/common.vars is a generic set of variables, for example defining paths such as opt, srv.
  • vars/common.user.vars supplements/overrides common.vars with user-targetted script configuration: OPTS_DIR becomes ~/.local/opt, for instance.

Services

  • ought be based around these variables:
    • $TYPE, a name prefix identifying what type of service this is.
    • $SRVS_DIR, where all services are kept, which common.vars will default to /srv
    • $INSTANCE, defaulted to main, but overridable to create a new instance of the service.
    • $NAME, conventionally set to $TYPE-$INSTANCE by tasks/srv.vars.tasks if none is provided (this ought be included early in most all srv scripts).
    • $DIR, conventionally set to {{SRVS_DIR}}/{{NAME}} if none is provided, where the service instance is installed
  • in practices, services need to declare a $TYPE and then run tasks/srv.vars.tasks, leaving most of these var configurations to be done externally.
  • write a systemd.unit(5) file into $SYSTEMD_UNITS.
  • ideally all services can be installed multiple times! make it so!
  • handlers.yml ought provide a restart $TYPE directive that ought expect the above vars be defined.
  • services ought have their own user & group, typically {{NAME}}. A common tasks is in the works.
    • lordy be, here me now: all "services" are to be templates with their sudo_user injected at execution time.
    • i have no idea right now how to pull off this execution framework.
    • similarly, having INSTANCE baked in, not having defaults, these are major ansible warts I don't know how to factor out yet. ideas welcome.

Miscellenary

  • Some vars are listed as $FOO.stdout. This ought go away pending some assistance in ansible#1730.
  • Deal better with permissions- most scripts ought be made to operate without sudo, but do need some initialization routines to be run on their behalf. Device a clean way to separate user from server side.

BEASTIARY

DIR

Your maindir

Lesser Dirs

SRV, OPT, ETC, VAR, LOG, SPOOL, CACHE, PID, RUN, SRC, PKGS

SRV, services dir, /srvs OPT, optional software packages, /opt ETC, configuration settings, /etc (but like the above per instance, not global) VAR, various settings, /var SRC, package for sources, /usr/local/src

VARiants

LOG, log directory, /var/log SPOOL, transient message queue dir, /var/spool CACHE, expiring cache files, /var/cache PID, process ids, /var/pid RUN, process's runtime data, /var/run

Common Mode Bits

var/common.var and var/common.user.var hold the main system configuration data which will guide (provide all base context for) all CompFuzor runs.

APT_INSTALL

install apt packages with this state (latest, installed, &c)