oci-instance-creator

A small Dockerized wrapper around Terraform that continuously retries provisioning an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) free‑tier instance when the target region reports "out of capacity", and stops once the instance is created successfully.

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🔁 Features

• Continuously attempts terraform init and terraform apply until a run succeeds
• Handles init retries with -reconfigure and -upgrade fallbacks
• Designed to work with OCI free‑tier capacity errors (e.g., temporary "out of capacity")

🔧 Requirements

• Docker (or Podman)
• Docker Compose (optional, for provided docker-compose.yaml)
• An OCI tenancy with API key (see .env.example)
• Terraform configuration files in ./terraform that provision the desired instance

🔥 Quick start

1. Copy the example env file and fill in your OCI details:

   cp .env.example .env
   # Edit .env to set your OCIDs, region, and the private key path

2. Store your OCI private key in the keys/ directory (file name and path must match PRIVATE_KEY_PATH inside .env). For example:

   • Place private-key.pem at ./keys/private-key.pem
   • Set PRIVATE_KEY_PATH=/root/.ssh/private-key.pem in .env

   The compose file mounts ./keys to /root/.ssh (read-only) inside the container.

3. Run with Docker Compose:

   docker compose up -d
   docker compose logs -f oci-instance-creator

   Or run the image directly:

   docker run --rm -it \
     -v "$(pwd)/terraform:/app/terraform" \
     -v "$(pwd)/keys:/root/.ssh:ro" \
     --env-file .env \
     ghcr.io/pschmucker/oci-instance-creator:latest

🔍 How it works

• The container runs loop-apply.sh, which:
  • Changes into /app/terraform
  • Runs terraform init with fallbacks (-reconfigure, -upgrade) when necessary
  • Runs terraform apply -auto-approve in a loop until it succeeds
• On success the container exits (so it won't keep running unnecessarily)

🛠️ Logs & troubleshooting

• View runtime logs:
  • docker logs -f oci-instance-creator (compose)
• Common problems:
  • Incorrect OCIDs or fingerprint → Terraform/Oci provider errors
  • Wrong PRIVATE_KEY_PATH or missing key → auth failures
  • Provider reports "out of capacity" → this tool will retry until capacity appears

⚠️ Security & notes

• Ensure private keys are readable only by you (chmod 600 keys/private-key.pem).

🤝 Contributing

Patches and improvements are welcome via pull requests. Please follow standard GitHub workflows.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.