README_pejacevic

Notes about the piuparts installation on pejacevic.debian.org and it’s slave(s)

This document describes the setup for https://piuparts.debian.org - it’s used for reference for the Debian System Administrators (DSA) as well as a guide for other setting up a similar system, with the piuparts source code installed from git. For regular installations we recommend to use the piuparts-master and piuparts-slaves packages as described in /usr/share/doc/piuparts-master/README_server.txt

Installation

piuparts.debian.org is a setup running on two systems:

  • pejacevic.debian.org, running the piuparts-master instance and an apache webserver to display the results.

  • piu-slave-ubc-01.debian.org, running four piuparts-slave nodes to run the actual tests.

piuparts installation from source

  • basically, apt-get build-dep piuparts - in reality both systems get their package configuration from git.debian.org/git/mirror/debian.org.git

  • pejacevic runs a webserver as well (see below for apache configuration)

  • Copy ‘https://salsa.debian.org/debian/piuparts/blob/develop/update-piuparts-master-setup’ and ‘https://salsa.debian.org/debian/piuparts/blob/develop/update-piuparts-slave-setup’ to the hosts which should be master and slave. (It’s possible and has been done for a long time to run them on the same host.( Run the scripts as the piupartsm and piupartss users and clone that git repository into ‘/srv/piuparts.debian.org/src’ in the first place. Then checkout the develop branch.

  • Ideally provide ‘/srv/piuparts.debian.org/tmp’ on (a sufficiently large) tmpfs.

  • sudo ln -s /srv/piuparts.debian.org/etc/piuparts /etc/piuparts

  • See below for further user setup instructions.

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User setup

On pejacevic the piuparts-master user piupartsm needs to be created, on piu-slave-ubc-01 a piupartss user is needed for the slave. Both are members of the group piuparts and ‘/srv/piuparts.debian.org’ needs to be chmod 2775 and chown piuparts(sm):piuparts.

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‘~/bashrc’ for piupartsm and piuparts

Do this for the piupartsm user on pejacevic and piupartss on the slave(s)::

piupartsm@pejacevic$ cat >> ~/.bashrc <<-EOF

# added manually for piuparts
umask 0002
export PATH="~/bin:\$PATH"
EOF

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set up ssh pubkey authentification

Then create an SSH keypair for piupartss and put it into ‘/etc/ssh/userkeys/piupartsm’ on pejacevic, so the piupartss user can login with ssh and run only piuparts-master. Restrict it like this::

$ cat /etc/ssh/userkeys/piupartsm
command="/srv/piuparts.debian.org/share/piuparts/piuparts-master",from="2001:41c8:1000:21::21:7,5.153.231.7",no-port-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding ssh-rsa ...

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Setup sudo for the slave(s)

This is actually done by DSA:

‘/etc/sudoers’ for piu-slave-ubc-01:

# The piuparts slave needs to handle chroots.
piupartss       ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/piuparts *, \
                                /bin/umount /srv/piuparts.debian.org/tmp/tmp*, \
                                /usr/bin/test -f /srv/piuparts.debian.org/tmp/tmp*, \
                                /usr/bin/rm -rf --one-file-system /srv/piuparts.debian.org/tmp/tmp*

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Apache configuration

Any other webserver will do but apache is used on pejacevic (and maintained by DSA)::

<VirtualHost *:80>
       ServerName piuparts.debian.org

       ServerAdmin debian-admin@debian.org

       ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/piuparts.debian.org-error.log
       CustomLog /var/log/apache2/piuparts.debian.org-access.log combined

       DocumentRoot /srv/piuparts.debian.org/htdocs
       AddType text/plain .log
       AddDefaultCharset utf-8

       HostnameLookups Off
       UseCanonicalName Off
       ServerSignature On
       <IfModule mod_userdir.c>
               UserDir disabled
       </IfModule>
</VirtualHost>

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Running piuparts

Updating the piuparts installation

Updating the master, pejacevic.debian.org::

holger@pejacevic~$ sudo su - piupartsm update-piuparts-master-setup develop origin

Updating the slave(s), for example on piu-slave-ubc-01.debian.org::

holger@piu-slave-ubc-01~$ sudo su - piupartss update-piuparts-slave-setup develop origin

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Running piuparts

When running piuparts in master/slave mode, the master is never run by itself, instead it is always started by the slave(s).

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Starting and stopping the slaves

Run the following script under your user account to start four instances of piuparts-slave on pejacevic, piuparts-master will be started automatically by the slaves.:

holger@piu-slave-ubc-01:~$ sudo -u piupartss -i slave_run

There are several cronjobs installed via ‘~piupartsm/crontab’ and ‘~piupartss/crontab’) to monitor both master and slave as well as the hosts they are running on.

It’s possible to kill a slave any time by pressing Ctrl-C. Pressing Ctrl-C once will wait for the current test to finish, pressing twice will abort the currently running test (which will be redone). Clean termination may take some time and can be aborted by a third Ctrl-C, but that may leave temporary directories and processes around.

See the ‘piuparts_slave_run (8)’ manpage for more information on ‘slave_run’.

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Joining an existing slave session

Run the following script under your user account::

holger@pejacevic:~$ sudo -u piupartss -i slave_join

See the ‘piuparts_slave_join (8)’ manpage for more information on ‘slave_join’.

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Generating reports for the website

‘piuparts-report’ is run daily at midnight and at noon from ‘~piupartsm/crontab’ on pejacevic.

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Cronjobs to aid problem spotting

Some cronjobs to aid problem spotting reside in ‘~piupartsm/bin/’ and are run daily by ‘~piupartsm/crontab’.

  • ‘detect_network_issues’ should detect failed piuparts runs due to network issues on the host.

  • ‘detect_stale_mounts’ should detect stale mountpoints (usually of /proc) from failed piuparts runs.

More checks should be added as we become aware of them.

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New Stable Release

The server exports data, used by DDPO et al. to display test results by package. With a new release of Debian Stable, a number of tasks are required to update the summary data appropriately:

  • Edit ‘piuparts.conf.pejacevic’ to set ‘json-sections = none’ for the sections that now represent oldstable (‘foo’, ‘bar2foo’, ‘foo-proposed’, etc.).

  • In particular, make sure that oldoldstable releases, and older, are not included in the global report (‘distro-info’ only goes back to oldstable).

  • Update the ‘distro-info-data’ package, so that ‘piuparts-report’ can correctly assign sections to distribution names.

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Authors

Last updated: November 2022

Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org> David Steele <steele@debian.org>