Dotfiles Boshrelease

For higher productivity with bosh ssh.

What does this release do

Inspired by cloudfoundry-community/root-env-boshrelease, dotfiles-boshrelease aims to make a better admin experience for bosh ssh, which is crucial for both dev & ops on BOSH based infrastructures.

Dotfiles-boshrelease and root-env-boshrelease are similar in a sense that both enables the customization of /root directory. However they do it in different ways.

root-env-boshrelease customizes /root by downloading a tarball from a url daily and then replace the /root. The good thing of such implementation is one can update /root without recreating release/re-deploying. However a concern would be downloading root-executing scripts to production servers might not be the best practice. Also, dotfiles usually should not be changing in a daily pace.

In contrast, dotfiles-boshrelease only use local rc files from /var/vcap/jobs/shrc. They are deployed by bosh. If you remove shrc from manifest, your admin environment will be (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.

What if I want to add some more bash sugar?

A property shrc.extra_commands are provided for you to inject your own commands easily. The value of extra_commands will be executed after .shrc.
On the other hand, you can also just fork and modify this project, then use bosh to create, upload and deploy your own release.

BIG NOTES

1. It is known that if you modify shrc.extra_commands (although this should not happen frequently), all jobs those have shrc installed will be re-deployed since the templated files are changed. Considering that it is common to have shrc installed on ALL jobs, this will trigger re-deploy on ALL jobs, and sometimes it is known to be a pain in the ass.
2. 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.
• packages bins: add packages/*/bin to PATH.
• cd $HOME: Home sweet home.

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: dotfiles will remove /home/*/.ssh/authorized_keys before it injects public keys, in order to keep system safe. If you unfortunately set /home/vcap/.ssh/authorized_keys, it will be removed.

4. extrarc:

• You can inject commands from manifest by overriding shrc.extra_commands property. However be careful not to crash your machine ^_^

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. properties dump:

• Use show-bosh-properties command to see properties that's used by bosh-template. Useful for debugging.

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.)