Beaker Host Generator

beaker-hostgenerator is a command line utility designed to generate beaker host config files using a compact command line SUT specification.

Table of Contents

• Beaker Host Generator
  • Hypervisors
  • Usage
    • Simple two-host layout
    • Single host with Arbitrary Roles
    • Two hosts with multiple hypervisors and arbitrary host settings
    • Two hosts with arbitrary host settings with arbitrary lists
    • Arbitrary nested hashes and arrays
    • Arbitrary global configuration settings
    • Custom hypervisor
    • URL-encoded input
  • Testing
    • Test Fixtures
      • Generated Fixtures
  • Support
  • License

Any hypervisor may be specified and generated, but if it's not a built-in hypervisor you will have to provide the entire hypervisor configuration as input. See the Custom hypervisor example for more information.

It currently provides built-in configuration for Puppets' internal vmpooler hypervisor, always-be-scheduling hypervisor, Vagrant with Virtualbox and Libvirt backend, Hetzner cloud, static (non-provisioned) nodes, and is designed in a way that makes it possible to easily add support for additional hypervisors (any hypervisor type supported by beaker).

To see the list of built-in hypervisors you can run:

$ beaker-hostgenerator --list

Below are some example usages of beaker-hostgenerator.

$ beaker-hostgenerator centos9-64mdca-64a

Will generate

---
HOSTS:
  centos9-64-1:
    pe_dir:
    pe_ver:
    pe_upgrade_dir:
    pe_upgrade_ver:
    hypervisor: vmpooler
    platform: el-9-x86_64
    template: centos-9-x86_64
    roles:
    - agent
    - master
    - database
    - dashboard
  centos9-64-2:
    pe_dir:
    pe_ver:
    pe_upgrade_dir:
    pe_upgrade_ver:
    hypervisor: vmpooler
    platform: el-9-x86_64
    template: centos-9-x86_64
    roles:
    - agent
CONFIG:
  nfs_server: none
  consoleport: 443
  pooling_api: http://vmpooler.delivery.puppetlabs.net/

$ beaker-hostgenerator centos9-64compile_master,another_role.ma

Will generate

---
HOSTS:
  centos9-64-1:
    pe_dir:
    pe_ver:
    pe_upgrade_dir:
    pe_upgrade_ver:
    hypervisor: vmpooler
    platform: el-9-x86_64
    template: centos-9-x86_64
    roles:
    - agent
    - master
    - compile_master
    - another_role
    frictionless_options:
      main:
        dns_alt_names: puppet
        environmentpath: "/etc/puppetlabs/puppet/environments"
CONFIG:
  nfs_server: none
  consoleport: 443
  pooling_api: http://vmpooler.delivery.puppetlabs.net/

$ beaker-hostgenerator centos9-64m{hypervisor=none\,hostname=static-master}-redhat7-64a{somekey=some-value}

Will generate

---
HOSTS:
  static-master:
    pe_dir:
    pe_ver:
    pe_upgrade_dir:
    pe_upgrade_ver:
    platform: el-9-x86_64
    hypervisor: none
    roles:
    - agent
    - master
  redhat7-64-1:
    pe_dir:
    pe_ver:
    pe_upgrade_dir:
    pe_upgrade_ver:
    hypervisor: vmpooler
    platform: el-7-x86_64
    template: redhat-7-x86_64
    somekey: some-value
    roles:
    - agent
CONFIG:
  nfs_server: none
  consoleport: 443
  pooling_api: http://vmpooler.delivery.puppetlabs.net/

$ beaker-hostgenerator centos9-64m{disks=\[16\]}-redhat7-64a{disks=\[8\,16\]}

Will generate

---
HOSTS:
  centos9-64-1:
    pe_dir:
    pe_ver:
    pe_upgrade_dir:
    pe_upgrade_ver:
    platform: el-9-x86_64
    hypervisor: vmpooler
    disks:
    - 16
    roles:
    - agent
    - master
  redhat7-64-1:
    pe_dir:
    pe_ver:
    pe_upgrade_dir:
    pe_upgrade_ver:
    hypervisor: vmpooler
    platform: el-7-x86_64
    template: redhat-7-x86_64
    disks:
    - 8
    - 16
    roles:
    - agent
CONFIG:
  nfs_server: none
  consoleport: 443
  pooling_api: http://vmpooler.delivery.puppetlabs.net/

$ beaker-hostgenerator --global-config {host_tags={lifetime=4h}\,list=[{listkey=listvalue}]\} redhat7-64m{hostlist=\[string\,{key=value}\,1234\]}

Will generate

---
HOSTS:
  redhat7-64-1:
    pe_dir:
    pe_ver:
    pe_upgrade_dir:
    pe_upgrade_ver:
    hypervisor: vmpooler
    platform: el-7-x86_64
    template: redhat-7-x86_64
    hostlist:
    - string
    - key: value
    - 1234
    roles:
    - agent
    - master
CONFIG:
  nfs_server: none
  consoleport: 443
  pooling_api: http://vmpooler.delivery.puppetlabs.net/
  host_tags:
    lifetime: 4h
  list:
  - listkey: listvalue

$ beaker-hostgenerator --global-config {preserve_hosts=onfail\,log_level=debug\,server.ip=12.345.6789} redhat7-64m

Will generate

---
HOSTS:
  redhat7-64-1:
    pe_dir:
    pe_ver:
    pe_upgrade_dir:
    pe_upgrade_ver:
    hypervisor: vmpooler
    platform: el-7-x86_64
    template: redhat-7-x86_64
    roles:
    - agent
    - master
CONFIG:
  nfs_server: none
  consoleport: 443
  preserve_hosts: onfail
  log_level: debug
  server.ip: 12.345.6789
  pooling_api: http://vmpooler.delivery.puppetlabs.net/

The following example shows one way of generating a custom hypervisor that includes both per-host configuration and global configuration.

The term "custom" in this case signifies that it's not a built-in hypervisor (like vmpooler), which means we'll have to provide all the configuration ourselves as there isn't any built-in configuration for our hypervisor.

$ beaker-hostgenerator --hypervisor=custom --global={custom_api=http://api.custom.net} centos9-64

Will generate

---
HOSTS:
  centos9-64-1:
    pe_dir:
    pe_ver:
    pe_upgrade_dir:
    pe_upgrade_ver:
    platform: el-9-x86_64
    hypervisor: custom
    roles:
    - agent
CONFIG:
  nfs_server: none
  consoleport: 443
  custom_api: http://api.custom.net

It may be necessary to URL-encode the input in order for it to properly be used in certain contexts, such as Jenkins.

In most cases it will only be necessary to escape the characters that support arbitrary settings, which means the following characters:

• { is %7B
• , is %2C
• } is %7D
• is %20
• [ is %5B
• ] is %5D

For a full URL encoding reference see: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp

$ beaker-hostgenerator centos9-64mcd-aix53-POWERfa%7Bhypervisor=aix%2Cvmhostname=pe-aix-53-acceptance.delivery.puppetlabs.net%7D

Is equivalent to

$ beaker-hostgenerator centos9-64mcd-aix53-POWERfa{hypervisor=aix,vmhostname=pe-aix-53-acceptance.delivery.puppetlabs.net}

And will generate

---
HOSTS:
  centos9-64-1:
    pe_dir:
    pe_ver:
    pe_upgrade_dir:
    pe_upgrade_ver:
    hypervisor: vmpooler
    platform: el-9-x86_64
    template: centos-9-x86_64
    roles:
    - agent
    - master
    - dashboard
    - database
  aix53-POWER-1:
    pe_dir:
    pe_ver:
    pe_upgrade_dir:
    pe_upgrade_ver:
    platform: aix-5.3-power
    hypervisor: aix
    vmhostname: pe-aix-53-acceptance.delivery.puppetlabs.net
    roles:
    - agent
    - frictionless
CONFIG:
  nfs_server: none
  consoleport: 443
  pooling_api: http://vmpooler.delivery.puppetlabs.net/

Beaker Host Generator currently uses both rspec and minitest tests. To run both at the same time, run:

bundle exec rake test

Beaker Host Generator makes extensive use of test fixtures to validate its behavior under specific conditions. An example of such a test fixture is as follows:

---
arguments_string: "--pe_dir /opt/hello centos9-64mdc"
environment_variables: {}
expected_hash:
  HOSTS:
    centos9-64-1:
      pe_dir: "/opt/hello"
      pe_ver:
      pe_upgrade_dir:
      pe_upgrade_ver:
      hypervisor: vmpooler
      platform: el-9-x86_64
      template: centos-9-x86_64
      roles:
      - agent
      - master
      - database
      - dashboard
  CONFIG:
    nfs_server: none
    consoleport: 443
    pooling_api: http://vmpooler.delivery.puppetlabs.net/
expected_exception:

These test fixtures are yaml files searched for in the directory test/fixtures. The data structure expected in these files is a hash with four keys:

• arguments_string: The command line arguments that should be passed to beaker-hostgenerator
• environment_variables: The environment variables that should be set during the beaker-hostgenerator call.
• expected_hash: A hash that should match the output of beaker-hostgenerator when it is run with arguments_string
• expected_exception: If the arguments_string passed to beaker-hostgenerator is expected to lead to an exceptional state, this is the name of the exception that the fixture test will attempt to match.

It is possible to generate test fixtures using the current state of the beaker-hostgenerator library. To do this, call the generate:fixtures Rake task.

However, this is not something that should need to be done very often. If you are running tests and find that some fixtures no longer work, you have most likely made a change that incompatibly changes the behavior of beaker-hostgenerator for other users. Use the test fixtures as a guide to figure out what you did wrong and figure out how to achieve your goal without potentially breaking beaker-hostgenerator for other users.

There are a few circumstances when you should expect to run the generate:fixtures task:

• When you modify the FixtureGenerator to generate new fixtures.
• When you need to fix a bug (generated hosts are not usable without your change, for example).
• When preparing for a major version bump of Beaker Host Generator.

Support offered by Puppet may not always be timely since it is maintained by a tooling support team that is primarily focused on improving tools, infrastructure, and automation for our Enterprise products.

That being said, we will happily accept and review PRs from community members interested in extending and using beaker-hostgenerator for their own purposes. See the contributing doc for more information about how to contribute.

If you have questions or comments, please contact the Beaker team at the #puppet-dev IRC channel on chat.freenode.org

This plugin was originally authored by Puppet Inc. The maintainer preferred that Vox Pupuli take ownership of the module for future improvement and maintenance. Existing pull requests and issues were transferred over, please fork and continue to contribute at https://github.com/voxpupuli/beaker-hostgenerator

Previously: https://github.com/puppetlabs/beaker-hostgenerator

To make a new release:

• Switch to a new git branch
• Update lib/beaker-hostgenerator/version.rb to the new version
• export CHANGELOG_GITHUB_TOKEN with a GitHub access token
• run bundle exec rake changelog
• Review the CHANGELOG.md
• Create a PR
• Get it reviewed and merged
• Create a signed git tag with the same version number and push it
• GitHub actions will do the release

beaker-hostgenerator is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See the LICENSE file for more details.