Creating my development environment

I need a place to build applications and test them out. I want to be able to show friends and spin up new projects quickly. I want to be able to recreate the server quickly.

For my development environment I'll use Debian Linux, and set up support for Docker and Perl.

I will rent a Debian 10 machine from Linode. Any host who provides root access to a Debian 10 virtual machine will suffice for setting this up. I like Linode, and they provide a guide if you've never done this type of thing before.

Setting Up The Server

Now that I have rented a server and gained root access to the virtual machine, I will begin setting it up.

Docker Install

First, I'll install docker. This follows the installation guide provided by docker.


#!/bin/bash

apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gnupg lsb-release
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg
echo   "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \
	$(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
apt-get update
apt-get install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose
docker run hello-world

Puppet Install

Next I will install puppet. This will allow me to codify all of the rules for setting up the server.


#!/bin/bash

wget https://apt.puppet.com/puppet-tools-release-buster.deb
wget https://apt.puppet.com/puppet7-release-buster.deb
dpkg -i puppet-tools-release-buster.deb puppet7-release-buster.deb
rm puppet-tools-release-buster.deb puppet7-release-buster.deb
apt-get update
apt-get install kitty-terminfo puppet-agent pdk

Before I continue I will log out of the machine and log back in so the $PATH can update.

The file /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/environment.conf will be updated. I want to have the modules divided into base, profile, and role modules. Modules will be installed into the base directory when we use puppet module install, but I will add my custom modules to the role directory.

I will edit the file /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/environment.conf to include the following content.


modulepath = ./modules/base:./modules/profile:./modules/role:$basemodulepath

With these changes in place, I can install the puppet modules I need.


#!/bin/bash

puppet module install puppetlabs-accounts
puppet module install puppetlabs-ntp
puppet module install saz-sudo

Setting Up Puppet For The First Time

Docker and puppet have been installed and the puppet environment is set up. Now it's time to create a module to set up the development environment from here. I will create the role directory and cd there, then create my module.


cd /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/modules/
mkdir role
cd role
pdk new module modfoss_devel
cd modfoss_devel
pdk new class modfoss_devel

The instructions that puppet runs are stored in manifest files. The default manifest file is init.pp, this file I will replace with the following contents to define the instructions for setting up the server.


class modfoss_devel {
    include accounts
    include sudo
    include ntp

    file { "/etc/profile.d/locallib.sh":
        ensure => 'present',
        content => 'eval "$(perl -I$HOME/perl5/lib/perl5 -Mlocal::lib)"',
    }

    package { 'git':
        ensure => 'installed',
    }
    
    # Install local lib
    package { 'liblocal-lib-perl':
        ensure => 'installed',
    }
    
    # Install cpanminus
    package { 'cpanminus':
        ensure => 'installed',
    }

    # libpq is required for perl PSQL lib building
    package { 'libpq-dev':
        ensure => 'installed',
    }

    # libssl is required for perl SSL lib building
    package { 'libssl-dev':
        ensure => 'installed',
    }
    
    # libz is required for perl SSL lib building
    package { 'libz-dev':
        ensure => 'installed',
    }
    
    # Build essential is required to compile Perl things
    package { 'build-essential':
        ensure => 'installed',
    }
}

This manifest file includes other modules like accounts and sudo. I could configure those in the code, but I prefer to use Heria to configure it with a yaml file.

The configuration file, /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/production/data/common.yaml, should look roughly like this.



# Sudo Configuration
sudo::configs:
  'sudo':
    'content' : '%sudo ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL'

## User Shell Accounts
accounts::group_defaults:
  system: true
accounts::group_list:
  admins: {}
  users:  {}
accounts::user_defaults:
  groups: [ 'users' ]
  managehome: true
  system:     false
accounts::user_list:
  symkat:
    groups:
      - sudo
      - docker
    sshkeys:
      - ssh-rsa AAAAB3Nzas....== symkat@laptop
      - ssh-rsa AAAAB3Nsdf....== symkat@desktop

The configuration for sudo says that users in the sudo group will not need a password. I create a user for myself, in the appropriate groups and add ssh keys.

Now that everything is in place, I can run the following to configure the server:


puppet apply -e "include modfoss_devel"

Making It Easier Next Time

Now that I have run through making this, I want to make it easier to get here in the future. I've combined the scripts above, and added a bit more to it so that it will install the entire environment from a fresh Debian 10 install with just one command.


curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/symkat/modfoss_devel/master/install.sh | bash -s - YOUR.HOST.NAME.com

The repository is available on GitHub @ symkat/modfoss_devel.

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