Updated Official Images

We’ve just updated the official images on Brightbox Cloud. The RedHat Enterprise derivatives (Centos, Scientific Linux) are now at version 6.3 and Ubuntu Precise is now at version 12.04.1.

All of the RedHat Enterprise, Fedora and Ubuntu official images have been updated to incorporate the latest security patches and fixes in the base image - saving valuable time at deployment.

The previous images are deprecated, which means they don’t show up in the normal listings (to discourage new use) but if you’ve hardcoded the identifiers in your scripts they’ll still work.

$ brightbox-images list --type=official

 id         owner      type      created_on  status   size   name                                       
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 img-7yc2n  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   5222   CentOS 5.8 server (x86_64)                 
 img-wru6n  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   5120   CentOS 6.3 server (i686)                   
 img-q7m1n  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   5120   CentOS 6.3 server (x86_64)                 
 img-l26yq  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   5125   Fedora 16 server (i686)                    
 img-7z6fv  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   5125   Fedora 16 server (x86_64)                  
 img-52mev  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   5125   Fedora 17 server (i686)                    
 img-lalqt  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   5125   Fedora 17 server (x86_64)                  
 img-1okdf  brightbox  official  2010-11-19  public   20480  FreeBSD 8.1 minimal (i686)                 
 img-aoubd  brightbox  official  2010-11-19  public   20480  FreeBSD 8.1 minimal (x86_64)               
 img-fz931  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   5222   Scientific Linux 5.8 server (x86_64)       
 img-crn1w  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   5120   Scientific Linux 6.3 server (i686)         
 img-j2nfr  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   5120   Scientific Linux 6.3 server (x86_64)       
 img-jgiso  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   769    Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 LTS server (i686)       
 img-uudil  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   769    Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 LTS server (x86_64)     
 img-ygfca  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   769    Ubuntu Natty 11.04 server (i686)           
 img-6sexo  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   1025   Ubuntu Natty 11.04 server (x86_64)         
 img-mpg4v  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   1025   Ubuntu Oneiric 11.10 server (i686)         
 img-5l4e8  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   1025   Ubuntu Oneiric 11.10 server (x86_64)       
 img-2la7q  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   1025   Ubuntu Precise 12.04 LTS server (i686)     
 img-l5pso  brightbox  official  2012-09-07  public   1025   Ubuntu Precise 12.04 LTS server (x86_64)   
 img-hnigl  brightbox  official  2012-03-14  public   20480  Windows 2008 Server R2 (x86_64)            
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Don’t forget that the test account (acc-tqs4c) contains versions of these images that are built regularly every week, as well as the newest Ubuntu ‘Quantal’ development release which is now in its beta testing phase.

$ brightbox-images list --show-all --account=acc-tqs4c | grep Quantal

 id         owner      type    created_on  status  size   name                                    
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 img-ei6r1  acc-tqs4c  upload  2012-09-11  public  1281   Ubuntu Quantal 12.10 server (i686)      
 img-avm79  acc-tqs4c  upload  2012-09-11  public  1537   Ubuntu Quantal 12.10 server (x86_64)    
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember that you’re not limited to the “official” images we provide. You can upload and register an image of your own and run pretty much any operating system you like on Brightbox Cloud.

posted 11 Sep 2012 by John Leach

Puppet Git Receiver

We’re big fans of Puppet here at Brightbox and have been using it for years to manage the configuration of many hundreds of servers.

puppet-git-receiver is a tool we’ve written that handles validating and applying Puppet manifests via git. It makes configuring a server using Puppet as easy as pushing a git repository to it.

It will use modules added to the git repository or you can have it automatically download modules from Puppet Forge before applying the manifest.

You can also classify your nodes using yaml rather than writing a full manifest (or both!).

It’s no replacement for a proper Puppet master, but it makes managing a small number of nodes very easy. And it can be used to develop and test manifests and modules; just branch from your Puppet master’s git repo and push it to a single node (though there may be some security issues to consider here depending on your set up!)

The code is available on the Brightbox Github account right now. We’re also providing Ubuntu packages on our Launchpad ppa to make it dead easy to start using (Ubuntu Precise only at the moment, more to come though).

If you’re using Brightbox Cloud (or Amazon EC2), you can auto-configure puppet-git-receiver on first boot using our user data interface and Ubuntu’s cloud-init:

$ brightbox-servers create --user-data="#include https://raw.github.com/gist/3129203/puppet-git-receiver-install" img-9h5cv
Creating a nano (typ-4nssg) server with image Ubuntu Precise 12.04 LTS server (img-9h5cv) with 0.10k of user data

 id         status    type  zone   created_on  image_id   cloud_ip_ids  name
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 srv-3te8u  creating  nano  gb1-a  2012-08-29  img-9h5cv                    
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

$ git remote add srv-3te8u puppet-git@ipv6.srv-3te8u.gb1.brightbox.com:puppet.git
$ git push srv-3te8u master

remote: *** Validating puppet manifests for refs/heads/master
remote: *** Applying puppet manifests
remote: notice: /Stage[main]//Package[pwgen]/ensure: ensure changed 'purged' to 'present'
remote: notice: /Stage[main]//Package[zip]/ensure: ensure changed 'purged' to 'present'
remote: notice: /Stage[main]//Package[cowsay]/ensure: ensure changed 'purged' to 'present'
remote: notice: Finished catalog run in 6.50 seconds
remote: *** Puppet manifests applied successfully

A more complete walkthough of getting it running on Brightbox Cloud is available here.

And complete documentation of puppet-git-receiver is available in the README

It’s still quite new but we’ve been using it for a few weeks now and it’s proven very useful. If you need any help using it, try our forums or our irc channel and we’ll give you a leg up.

More Puppet goodness coming to Brightbox Cloud soon!

posted 29 Aug 2012 by John Leach