Posted by mpaler on May 1, 2010 at 10:19pm
Can someone please set me straight?
What is Launchpad?
What is BCFG2?
What is the advantage of "rolling your own" (ala http://groups.drupal.org/node/50408) vs. using the Mercury AMIs?
Mercury AMI vs Lauchpad BCFG2
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you cant install AMIs at your
you cant install AMIs at your random vps/deticated hosting.
FAQ!
This is helpful stuff for us as we prepare a FAQ and other documentation.
Launchpad is a free/public development environment which is used by many big Open Source projects to help with their development. It was started by the Ubuntu project (and is backed by Canonical), but is also used by Mysql and some other big guys. This is where we host all the code which isn't appropriate for Drupal's CVS (e.g. our system configuration files).
BCFG2 is a system for managing system configurations. We use this to insure that all PANTHEON servers are up to date and correctly configured. It is similar to systems like Puppet and Chef, but is written in Python and uses XML rather than Ruby as its method for storing configuration data.
AMIs are only usable on Amazon's EC2 infrastructure. If you want to use a different host, you will either need to work with someone who's a PANTHEON partner (e.g. Linode, Voxel, Rackspace, and hopefully many more) or go the DIY route on your own Ubuntu server.
https://pantheon.io | http://www.chapterthree.com | https://www.outlandishjosh.com
FAQ++
Hi Josh,
Thanks for taking a stab at these rather high level questions. I think these types of questions are really good for orienting game newbs like me.
Regarding Launchpad -- I see now it's a VCS based on Bazaar. If one installs the Mercury AMI into EC2, are we still able to take advantage of version updates to Mercury using the Pantheon Launchpad? In other words, once my AMI is up and running, can I update my instance via Launchpad/Bzr? If so, how does one update their instance using Launchpad?
Is Pressflow a separate update via the Pressflow launchpad? or do the Mercury updates cover Pressflow as well? I guess begs the question, exactly what is in the Pantheon Launchpad?
Thanks so much for your help -- I can probably come up with lots and lots of FAQs! ;)
re: FAQ++
Pantheon is the name of the overall project, Mercury is one of (the first infact) the servers from the Project. Launchpad is used by Pantheon to store BCFG2 config files to make Mercury servers.
One can get updates to their Mercury install via the /usr/local/bin/update_mercury.sh script. This script grabs updates from the Pantheon launchpad project and applies them using BCFG2. This script should work regardless if one used our pre-made AMIs or built their own server using the instructions we provide (our AMIs are made using the same instructions). Note that this only works within versions (ie, Mercury 1.0, Mercury 1.1). Instructions on how to update a Mercury server to a new version will be posted to the documentation tab of groups.drupal.org/pantheon once Mercury 1.1 is released.
Pressflow can be updates using the /usr/local/bin/update_pressflow.sh script.
Hope this helps,
Greg
--
Greg Coit
Systems Administrator
http://www.chapterthree.com
dry run?
Hi Greg,
What sort of updates can be gotten by running update_mercury.sh?
Is there a recommended method for performing a "dry run" update to make sure it doesn't bring down your server? I suppose I could clone my entire install and do a dry run there, no?
How about the pressflow update? Any recommended procedures there?
Thanks,
Mike
re: dry run?
Mike,
update_mercury.sh checks launchpad for updates to the mercury config and applies them using BCFG2. The updates it receives are based on the launchpad path it's looking for (to find out what path BZR is using, type "cd /var/liv/bcfg2; bzr info):
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~pantheon-developers/pantheon/1.0/ (also http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~pantheon-developers/pantheon/bcfg2/) only receives bug fixes now
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~pantheon-developers/pantheon/1.1/ is our next release - currently in beta
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~pantheon-developers/pantheon (http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~pantheon-developers/pantheon/trunk) is our development branch
You can run bcfg2 in dry run mode (to see what it's going to apply). To do so, run the commands in /usr/local/bin/update_mercruy.sh and add the -n flag to bcfg2.
As for pressflow, as long as you keep your site files in /var/www/sites, you should be able to run /usr/local/bin/update_pressflow.sh (or "cd /var/www; bzr pull plp:pressflow") without effecting your server.
Hope this helps,
Greg
--
Greg Coit
Systems Administrator
http://www.chapterthree.com
I get the feeling BCFG2 is
I get the feeling BCFG2 is stronger in reporting than puppet and chef. Are there any downsides to it?
re: I get the feeling BCFG2 is
BCFG2 is still in active development and has some great new features in 1.1.0 (currently in rc3) that we would like to use but we're fighting some bad interactions between rc3 and lucid. We're working with the bcfg2 team to make sure these are fixed before 1.1.0 is released.
Greg
--
Greg Coit
Systems Administrator
http://www.chapterthree.com