Dotfiles Boshrelease

For higher productivity with bosh ssh.

What is Dotfiles-boshrelease

The dotfiles-boshrelease lets you set up a cozy terminal environment within BOSH VMs. It sets up not only root user, but also vcap user, temporary bosh_<random> users, and you own users (shrc.extra_users).

With dotfiles, life is much easier when doing dev & ops on BOSH based infrastructures.

This boshrelease is inspired by root-env. However, unlike root-env which downloads a tarball daily to the /root dir, dotfiles-boshrelease uses only local files.

It's more secure (no root executable script from internet); All changes to VMs are visible in properties; Changes take place explicitly (only when you do the bosh deploy); And it's easy to uninstall - simply remove shrc job from manifest, and your admin environment is (almost) clean again.

How to use

In manifest file, add dotfiles to releases. In template, add shrc job.

Deploy the shrc job in a template, then find the amazing changes with bosh ssh.

You can also check jobs/shrc/spec to tune properties as you like.

What if I want to add some more bash sugar?

You can inject your own startup commands using shrc.extra_commands (all VMs) and shrc.extra_role_commands (role based commands). The executing order is dotfiles/shrc -> extra_commands -> extra_role_commands.

On the other hand, you can just fork and modify this project, then use bosh to create, upload and deploy your own release.

BIG NOTES

1. Bosh will re-dploy a VM if any of the templated files is changed. Since dotfiles are installed on every VMs usually, changing shrc properties (should happen very rarely though) or updating release version triggers FULL re-deployment.
2. shrc.extra_role_commands should be set as job properties, rather than globally, to avoid FULL re-deployment on changing.
3. shrc is bound to root, vcap and bosh_$TEMP account. Means that when you su to root, extra_commands will be executed automatically with root priviledge. The extra commands are executed with set -eu for your flight safety. Don't shoot your feet.

What is done by default

1. inputrc:

• Enable word jump (alt + Left/Right);
• Enable history search (alt + Up/Down; alt + p/n; PageUp/PageDown)
• Completion-ignore-case on

2. shrc:

• Frequently used dirs: link to $HOME (vcap, packages, jobs, sys/log, etc..)
• PS1: Meaningful and colorful PS1. You can set your favorite PS1 color in spec. Dotfiles disables the Stemcell(3306+) built-in PS1 by default. You can re-enable it by setting shrc.disable_stemcell_prompt to false in the manifest.
• packages bins: add packages/*/bin to PATH.

3. extra_users:

• Set shrc.extra_users property to let dotfiles create admin account and inject public key for you. Note that there is a sanity check when creating account. If user's name and public_key failed to pass the check, they will be ignored. For more details, check bin/add-users.erb.
• CAVEAT: $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys are removed on start before injecting the new keys for all users created by dotfiles.

4. extrarc:

• You can inject commands from manifest with shrc.extra_commands property. However be careful not to crash your machine ^_^
• You can inject commands based on VM role using shrc.extra_role_commands.

5. shrc/userbin:

• ack
• (home made) link-apps: link warden container directories to $HOME/app.
• (home made) wwsh: a shortcut to wsh into warden containers.
• (home made) haste: a hastebin client, is convenient when you have a internal hastebin server.

6. completion:

• monit completion
• wwsh completion

7. set-ps1

• A small function set-ps1 helps you to set informative prompt. By default it puts information such as spec.deployment, job_name/index, ip on PS1.
• You can also easily customize your prompt with set-ps1. Check set-ps1 -h for details.

Something else

For some reason, by default the bash in stemcell doesnot recognize .profile or .bash_profile, and it will only read the already existed .bashrc. Therefore this release use .bash_aliases to trigger customized shrc script.

Reference

• Inspired by root-env
• ack
• monit.complete is taken from linsong/my_bash
• haste bash client are modified from haste-client

Author

Weichu Liu (Rakuten, Inc.)