CloudLab Profile: Localdev (in ALPHA)

NOTE: If you are new to CloudLab, it is highly recommended that you read through CloudLab manual: Getting Started before proceeding.

This repository contains:

1. A CloudLab experiment profile slate-localdev for SLATE local development.
2. An associated Ansible playbook used to further provision an experiment based on this profile.

Requirements

Install the required Python packages using a preferred method.

For convenience, this repository includes several pre-defined methods:

• Anaconda (Conda): ./environment.yml
• Pip: ./requirements.txt

Develop the slate-localdev CloudLab Profile

The CloudLab profile is defined in ./profile.py using the geni-lib Pip package. Further details on authoring the profile can be found in CloudLab manual: Describing a profile with python and geni-lib.

Provision a CloudLab Experiment

WARNING: The experiment is not a private machine. As such, create a short-lived GitHub ssh key with no passphrase (this will become your github_ssh_key in Ansible).

1. Create an experiment on CloudLab using this profile (slate-localdev).

2. Clone this repository and copy ./ansible/playbook/group_vars/cloudlab.yml.tmpl to ./ansible/playbook/group_vars/cloudlab.yml.

3. Replace the placeholder variables with actual values.

4. Append the following to your SSH config file (~/.ssh/config) using actual values:

   ## CloudLab & SLATE Local Development
   Host cloudlab-slate-localdev
   HostName <cloudlab hostname>
   IdentityFile </path/to/privatekey>
   Port 22
   User <cloudlab user>
   

5. Provision the running experiment via Ansible:

   (python env) /path/to/repo/ansible $ ./provision.sh
   Using /path/to/repo/ansible/playbook/ansible.cfg as config file
   
   PLAY [cloudlab] ************************
   PLAY RECAP ************************
   node1   : ok=18   changed=9    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0

6. Test connecting to the experiment via SSH:

   $ ssh cloudlab-slate-localdev
   Enter passphrase for key '/path/to/privatekey':
   Welcome to Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.15.0-56-generic x86_64)
   
   * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
   * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
   * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage
     Last login: Fri Jan 13 10:18:00 2023 from 38.94.243.206
     cloudlab_user@node1 ~
     $

Things to Note

• The Ansible playbook will only check out the github_branch branch of github_repo_url the first time the experiment is provisioned.
• Running the Ansible playbook over and over again will not overwrite the cloned git repository.
• CloudLab experiments expire roughly 16 hours after creation unless otherwise extended.
• Make sure to commit and push to GitHub before the experiment expires.

Resources

• CloudLab homepage
• CloudLab manual