bosh-stemcell

Tools for creating stemcells

Building a stemcell

Once-off manual steps:

  1. Upload a keypair called "bosh" to AWS that you'll use to connect to the remote vm later
  2. Create "bosh-stemcell" security group on AWS to allow SSH access to the stemcell (once per AWS account)
  3. Add instructions to set BOSH_AWS_... environment variables

  4. Install the vagrant plugins we use:

    vagrant plugin install vagrant-berkshelf
vagrant plugin install vagrant-omnibus
vagrant plugin install vagrant-aws --plugin-version 0.5.0

Bring up the vagrant stemcell building VM

From a fresh copy of the bosh repo:

export BOSH_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=YOUR-AWS-ACCESS-KEY
export BOSH_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=YOUR-AWS-SECRET-KEY
cd bosh-stemcell
vagrant up remote --provider=aws

Build the stemcell from inside the VM

Substitute <current_build> with the current build number, which can be found by looking at bosh artifacts. The final two arguments are the S3 bucket and key for the OS image to use, which can be found by reading the OS_IMAGES document in this project.

vagrant ssh -c '
  cd /bosh
  CANDIDATE_BUILD_NUMBER=<current_build> http_proxy=http://localhost:3142/ bundle exec rake stemcell:build[vsphere,esxi,centos,nil,go,bosh-os-images,bosh-centos-6_5-os-image.tgz]
' remote

Run the stemcell locally with Fusion

VMware Fusion is the preferred local virtual environment. You can purchase it here. Once you have Fusion installed:

  • Unpack the stemcell tarball.
  • Rename the new image file to image.tgz and untar that as well. You should now have an image.ovf file.
  • Start VMware Fusion and import this file (File -> Import)
  • Save the imported OVF as image.vmwarevm in the tmp folder.
  • You should see a new VM in your VM library.
  • Double click that new VM and it should be booted.

Add the NIC

Before starting the VM in VirtualBox:

  1. Add a network interface (Virtual Machine > Settings > Add Device... > Network Adapter)
  2. Select NAT networking (the default)

Run the stemcell locally with VirtualBox

Import the VM

  • The stemcell is dropped into bosh/tmp/bosh-stemcell-???-vsphere-esxi-centos.tgz.
  • Untar that file. You now have a file named image.
  • Rename that to image.tgz, and untar that file. You now have a file named image.ovf.
  • Double click on that file to open it in VirtualBox.

Add the NIC

Before starting the VM in VirtualBox:

  1. Add a network interface (Settings > Network > Adapter 1 > Enable)
  2. Select NAT networking (the default)
  3. Click on advanced
  4. Click on Port Forwarding and enable the following rule:
    • Name: SSH
    • Protocol: TCP
    • Host IP: 127.0.0.1
    • Host Port: 3333
    • Guest IP: blank
    • Guest Port: 22

Boot the VM

Save the configuration and boot the VM. Once you're booted, login as root/c1oudc0w.

Configure network locally

Fusion

$ grep subnet /Library/Preferences/VMware\ Fusion/*/dhcpd.conf
/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/vmnet1/dhcpd.conf:subnet 172.16.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/vmnet8/dhcpd.conf:subnet 172.16.210.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {

ifconfig eth0 172.16.210.30/24 up
route add default gw 172.16.210.2 eth0

VirtualBox

You'll want to pick an IP that's not in use by your stemcell building vm. 10.0.2.30 should be fine.

ifconfig eth0 10.0.2.30/24 up
route add default gw 10.0.2.2 eth0

Test the network with ping 8.8.8.8

Build an OS image

A stemcell with a custom OS image can be built using the stemcell-building VM created earlier.

vagrant ssh -c '
  cd /bosh
  bundle exec rake stemcell:build_os_image[ubuntu,trusty,/tmp/ubuntu_base_image.tgz]
  bundle exec rake stemcell:build_with_local_os_image[aws,xen,ubuntu,trusty,go,/tmp/ubuntu_base_image.tgz]
' remote