Usage

The expected use case is as follows:

Let’s say you have a Linux machine “myserver” and you want to setup these software systems on it:

• Postfix

• PostgreSQL

• collectd

Create a folder to contain the fabfile.py etc. Let’s also assume you will have other machines to setup, and you want to commit all this to source control.

Recommended project structure is like:

myproject
└── machines
    └── myserver
        ├── fabfile.py
        ├── files
        │   └── etc
        │       ├── collectd
        │       │   └── collectd.conf
        │       └── postfix
        │           └── main.cf
        └── Vagrantfile

More details on these below.

fabfile.py

This is a “typical” fabfile, to the extent there is such a thing. This file contains Fabric “tasks” which may be executed on the target machine via SSH. For more on that concept see Defining and running task functions.

In this example we define “bootstrap” tasks for the setup, but that is merely a personal convention. You can define tasks however you need:

"""
Fabric script for myserver
"""

from fabric import task
from wuttamess import apt, sync


# nb. this is used below, for file sync
root = sync.make_root('files')


@task
def bootstrap_all(c):
    """
    Bootstrap all aspects of the server
    """
    bootstrap_base(c)
    bootstrap_postgresql(c)
    bootstrap_collectd(c)


@task
def bootstrap_base(c):
    """
    Bootstrap the base system
    """
    apt.dist_upgrade(c)

    # postfix
    apt.install(c, 'postfix')
    if sync.check_isync(c, root, 'etc/postfix'):
        c.run('systemctl restart postfix')


@task
def bootstrap_postgresql(c):
    """
    Bootstrap the PostgreSQL service
    """
    apt.install(c, 'postgresql', 'libpq-dev')


@task
def bootstrap_collectd(c):
    """
    Bootstrap the collectd service
    """
    apt.install(c, 'collectd')
    if sync.check_isync(c, root, 'etc/collectd'):
        c.run('systemctl restart collectd')

Above you can see how WuttaMess is actually used; it simply provides convenience functions which can be called from a Fabric task.

But Fabric (and fabsync for file sync operations) are doing the heavy lifting. The goal for WuttaMess is to further abstract common operations and keep the task logic as “clean” as possible.

See also these functions which are used above:

• wuttamess.apt.dist_upgrade()

• wuttamess.apt.install()

• wuttamess.sync.make_root()

• wuttamess.sync.check_isync()

files

This folder contains all files which must be synced to the target machine as part of setup. As shown in the example above, the files structure should “mirror” the target machine file system.

The check_isync() function may be called with a “subpath” to sync just a portion of the file system. It returns True if any files were modified, so we can check for that and avoid restarting services if nothing changed.

Note that in global module scope, we create the “root” object for use with file sync. This is then passed to the various sync functions.

This uses the fabsync library under the hood; for more on how that works see fabsync.

Vagrantfile

This file is optional but may be useful for testing deployment on a local VM using Vagrant. For example:

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|

  # live machine runs Debian 12 "bookworm"
  config.vm.box = "debian/bookworm64"

end

For more info see docs for Vagrantfile.

Running Tasks via CLI

With the above setup, first make sure you are in the right working directory (wherever fabfile.py lives):

cd myproject/machines/myserver

Then run whichever tasks you need, specifying the connection info for target machine like so:

fab -e -H root@myserver.example.com bootstrap-all

Fabric uses SSH to connect to the target machine (myserver.example.com) and runs the specified task on that machine.

Testing with a Vagrant VM will likely require a more “complicated” command line. See output from vagrant ssh-config for details specific to your VM, but the command may be something like:

fab -e -H root@192.168.121.42 -i .vagrant/machines/default/libvirt/private_key bootstrap-all

Troubleshooting SSH

In some cases troubleshooting the SSH connection can be tricky. A rule of thumb is to first make sure it works without Fabric.

Try a basic connection with the same args using SSH only:

ssh root@myserver.example.com

Or for a Vagrant VM:

ssh root@192.168.121.42 -i .vagrant/machines/default/libvirt/private_key

You may want to edit your ~/.ssh/config file as needed. However this usually is done for “normal” machines only, not for Vagrant VM.

Once that works, then the fab command should also work using the same args…