The goal

Several projects are implementing bootstrapping a 'vanilla' system:

We all know that installing software and managing it, should be done by config management systems. But what if you can't run it yet, because you are missing dependencies?

F.i. both puppet, vagrant, chef, veewee, fog all have need to bootstrap ruby on machine.

The goal of this project to a bundle these efforts in a shared gem that can create templates. An additional step could be to handle the ssh bootstrap itself but that's for the future.

Invoking would be typical:

    bootstrapcode=Theseboots.strap(platform,
        [ "ruby", { version => "1.9.2", type => "source", ... ],
        [ "chef", { version => "0.9.14", type => "gem", ...],
        [ "puppet", { version => "2.6.14", type => "system", ...],

platform would something like "ubuntu-10.10-i386" or "debian-...-x64"

This would result in some bash code that can be execute on a box (potentially over ssh)

Example ubuntu:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install build-essentials
apt-get install -y build-essential wget zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libffi-dev
cd /usr/src/local
wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org//pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-p0.tar.bz2
tar xjf ruby-1.9.2-p0.tar.bz2
cd ruby-1.9.2-p0
./configure
make
make install
gem install chef
apt-get install puppet

• Additional options would be to things like proxies, paths, ....
• Or for python based, do the same

What about knife bootstrap?

I'm aware that the 'knife bootstrap' uses scripts that you can extend. But

• In some cases you don't want to install the dependency of chef (has native gems f.i.)
• I would like to get only puppet going
• I would like to choose the way the scripts is execute: so maybe not chef doing an ssh, but using rundeck, or fog.ssh or why not vnc or rdp)
• And they can be reused in the java world jclouds

What about rvm?

Rvm does a great job at integrating different version of ruby, BUT it always compiles from source . I know there have been efforts to make it work offline, but still it's compile from source.

This is currently an idea, but I'm going to make a headstart for my mccloud and veewee

Let me know if you want to collaborate on this.

Patrick

P.S. I'm not sure where this goes, and it could be that each vendor has to implement it himself, we'll see. Anyway, I'm happy to contribute the scripts if this project becomes obsolete