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Instance Setup Code

Exosphere uses Ansible to configure and provision new instances. (Among other things, it installs and configures Docker and Apache Guacamole server for the one-click terminal and remote desktop environment.) The setup code is stored in the ansible/ directory of the Exosphere repository.

By default, new instances pull this code from the master branch of the upstream exosphere/exosphere repository. This is true even for instances which are launched using a different branch or fork of Exosphere.

You may wish to configure Exosphere to deploy instances using your own (modified) instance setup code, for development/testing purposes or as customized for your own organization. To do that, you must push the code to a git repository somewhere that new instances can download from, and then set two options in config.js:

  • instanceConfigMgtRepoUrl to the git repository URL that new instances can download your setup code from
  • instanceConfigMgtRepoCheckout to the repository branch/tag/commit that should be checked out (defaults to master if left null)

Note that Exosphere downloads the specified repo and runs the playbook stored at ansible/playbook.yml, so implement your changes by modifying that playbook.

To test the instance setup code locally on a cloud instance, do this:

python3 -m venv /opt/ansible-venv
. /opt/ansible-venv/bin/activate
pip install ansible-core
ansible-pull --url https://gitlab.com/exosphere/exosphere.git --directory /opt/instance-config-mgt -i /opt/instance-config-mgt/ansible/hosts /opt/instance-config-mgt/ansible/playbook.yml

Optionally, pass the --checkout argument to specify a git branch/tag or commit hash.

For now, we are using only built-in Ansible modules, because Exosphere uses the lightweight ansible-core package.

Ansible variables currently used

Exosphere sets these variables when running the instance setup code on a new instance.

variable type required description
guac_enabled boolean no deploys Apache Guacamole to serve terminal (and optionally desktop)
gui_enabled boolean no deploys VNC server, configures Guacamole to serve graphical desktop
workflow_source_repository string no source git repository to use for deploying a Binder container
workflow_repo_version string no git reference (branch, tag, commit) for the above binder repository

Additional Scripts

Exosphere deploys additional scripts in assets/scripts/ for easy use on instances. The only script currently deployed this way is mount-ceph.py and all examples below will reference that script.

As users are instructed to run these scripts using curl https://[exosphere_domain]/assets/scripts/mount-ceph.py | sudo python3 -, these commands will not work correctly when developing on localhost. The suggested way to test modifications to these scripts is:

  1. Download or copy the current script code to an instance
  2. Run locally with sudo python3 mount-ceph.py instead of curl ... | sudo python3 -
  3. Make changes as needed. Either:
    • Edit assets/scripts/mount-ceph.py copying to your instance as needed to test changes
    • Edit the script locally on the instance, updating assets/scripts/mount-ceph.py when finished