Blog Migration Notes

Hopefully you can’t notice it much, but I recently ported this blog from Pelican to Hugo.

There were a few reasons driving this:

  • I was using reStructuredText and wanted to move to something supporting markdown. Pelican supports both formats so that wasn’t enough to move to another platform.

  • The provisioning for my Pelican environment wasn’t captured anywhere and the thought of capturing the state of the Python packages and Pelican themes was daunting. The single-executable Gitea program has been working out well, so I hoped the same with the single-executable Hugo package.

    Had I poked around a little on the web first, I may have followed the approach from this article on using Pelican with nix, but I ended up with a pretty basic flake.nix setup instead.

  • I wanted to try out something new. OK, so maybe that’s the only reason I migrated.

Switching themes

The old blog was using the Pelican flex theme.

At first, I tried using the Hugo flex theme, but it didn’t support that sweet left sidebar, so I went with the Hugo hyde theme instead and overrode the layout and CSS until it looked as close as possible to the old blog.

This is another area where if I had spent more time looking for themes I probably would have found one closer to what I was already using. But tweaking the hyde theme gave me a excuse to realize how much I still dislike working with CSS.

Go templates are so ugly

Tweaking the theme layouts was my first exposure to Go templates. I get that they’re popular since they’re in the Go standard library, and they’re designed for speed, but after working with Jinja for many years I didn’t find them easy to work worth. Some weirdness I ran into:

  • Prefix notation for conditionals ala {{ if eq $value 1}}.
  • Use of index instead of array-style syntax ala {{ index some_dict value }} instead of {{ some_dict[value] }}
  • The . value changing based on context

Actual post migration

I wrote a quick and dirty script to port the Pelican content over to Hugo. The script extracted the Pelican-style meta data, then called pandoc to convert the reStructuredText to markdown, and then added Hugo-style metadata back to the post.

This got the content about 90% converted. One problem I ran into was that Hugo uses draft: true to signify draft posts, where Pelican uses status: Draft. I fixed these manually since I have so few posts.

The second issue was that pandoc’s choice of syntax tags on the code blocks was often wrong, and again I fixed these blocks manually.

Click here to see the full migration script in all it's glory. 
# convert the pelican rst files to Hugo md

import json
import os
import re
import subprocess
import sys
import yaml

re_title = re.compile(r'^\#*$')
re_meta = re.compile(r'^:([^:]+):\s+(.*)$')

def convert_meta(filename):
    meta_data = {}
    regular_data = ""
    title = ''
    with open(filename,"r") as a_file:

        # Going to do this quick and dirty.
        # Read the file line by line and look ones that match ':something:
        for a_line in a_file:

            if title == "":
                title_match = re_title.match(a_line)
                if not title_match:
                    title = a_line.rstrip()
                    meta_data['title'] = title

            a_match = re_meta.match(a_line)
            if a_match:
                value = a_match.group(2)
                if ',' in value:
                    rhs = value.split(',')
                else:
                    rhs = value

                meta_data[a_match.group(1)] = rhs
            else:
                regular_data += a_line

    meta_dump = yaml.safe_dump(meta_data, default_flow_style=False)

    temp_filename = "/tmp/temp.rst"
    with open(temp_filename, "w") as temp_file:
        temp_file.write(regular_data)

    name, extension = os.path.splitext(filename)
    new_name = name + ".md"

    # Have pandoc convert the file and read the output to a string
    subprocess.run('pandoc -f rst -t markdown -o /tmp/temp.md /tmp/temp.rst', shell=True)
    with open("/tmp/temp.md", "r") as temp_out:
        temp_contents = temp_out.read()

    with open(new_name, "w") as out_file:
        out_file.write('---\n')
        out_file.write(meta_dump)
        out_file.write('---\n\n')
        out_file.write(temp_contents)

# Walk through all the rst files under the directory.
for  root, dirs, files in os.walk('.'):
    for a_file in files:
        if a_file.endswith('.rst'):
            convert_meta(root + "/" + a_file)

Preprocessing of diagrams

I had one post in the old blog that used the Pelican PlantUML plugin, but Hugo doesn’t have something comparable. I poked around with converting that diagram to Mermaid as per https://gohugo.io/content-management/diagrams/, but pulling in a mermaid.js file that was over two megs to render a single static diagram seemed like overkill.

Instead I switched to preprocessing the diagram with PLantUML and updating the post to show the SVG image instead.

Here’s my Makefile for running plantuml on any of the diagrams that need updating. I went with make so I won’t have to re-render unchanged diagrams on each blog post. Yes, I spent more than five seconds remembering how to use pattern rules even though I currently have only one PlantUML diagram.

PUMLS := $(wildcard diagrams/*.puml)
SVGS  := $(PUMLS:diagrams/%.puml=static/images/%.svg)

.PHONY: plantuml
plantuml: ${SVGS}

static/images/%.svg: diagrams/%.puml
	plantuml -tsvg $< -o ../static/images

It didn’t consider using GoAT diagrams since I wanted the diagrams to be in GraphViz style so I didn’t have to worry about layout issues.

Vale is pretty nice

I also started using Vale as a prose linter and it’s working out OK after I turned off the ’no first person’ and ’no use of the verb to-be’ rules. Here’s the .vale.ini I’m currently using:

IgnoredScopes = code
StylesPath = .styles

MinAlertLevel = suggestion
Vocab = Base

Packages = Google, write-good

[*]
BasedOnStyles = Vale, Google, write-good

[*.md]
Google.FirstPerson = off
Google.Parens = off
write-good.E-Prime = off
Vale.Terms = off

hugo blog

Gitea Notes

This post captures some notes on using Gitea as a git forge and issue tracker after using it for around 6 months.

The good

In general, everything pretty much works as expected, and provisioning went smoothly:

  • It's deployed as a single go executable on the git server, and then a single go executable on each build server.

    Gitea doesn’t require any external dependencies which avoid getting sucked into dependency hell.

  • Porting existing repos into Gitea went smoothly.

    After that the workflow feels like using GitLab or GitHub.

    It works, and it's been a joy.

  • The workflow support mirrors GitHub actions a bit too closely, as per below, but workflows work as expected.

  • Template repos work really well, as per below.

The bad and the ugly

Most of these are minor UI choices Gitea made that I don't like. There's certainly nothing here to force me to switch to another forge.

  • I don't really like that you have to open issues against a repo, and that there's not a good way to move issues between repos.

    If you end up opening an issue against the wrong repo, you have to close the first issue and open a second issue in the correct repo.

  • For some reason, I always have trouble adding new users to a repo.

    It's done through the https://<git-server>/<organization-name>/<repo-name>/settigs/collaboration page.

    You can also define a collection of users called a 'team' for an organization at https://<git-server>/<organization-name>/teams and then add the team to the repo.

    I don't like the 'collaborator' terminology since it makes me feel like a quisling. 🤷

  • Gitea can convert issue instances to links, but you have to use a kludgy '<organization-name>/<repo-name>#<issue-number>' format.

    It would be better if the organization-name and repo-name weren't needed and defaulted to the current repo's values.

  • I always have trouble finding the commit graph for a repo.

    Go to the '<> Code' link for the repo, then the 'Commits' link, and there should be a 'Commit Graph' link next to the branch name.

    It should also be available at [https://<gitea-server>/<org-name>/<repo-name>/graph]{.title-ref}.

  • Setting up branch protection was a little hard.

    To do it, go the Settings for the repo, then click the 'Branch' button, then click the 'Add New Rule' button.

    I enabled the 'Require Signed Commits' and 'Enable Status Check' checks.

    The Status check pattern format is '<name of .gitea/workflows workflow> / < job name> (<git trigger>)'.

    For example, my workflow file looks like below, making the status check 'On Push Workflows / On-Push-Job (push)'.

    If you've already triggered the workflow, it should show up on the page in a text box below the setting.

    name: On Push Workflow
run-name: ${{ gitea.actor }} pushed out some changes. 🚀
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - "*"

jobs:
  On-Push-Job:
<<clipped the rest of the workflow>>

The surprising

I ran into one pleasant surprise and two that weren't as pleasant.

  • Cloning from Gitea template repos worked really well, even working on file names.

    I had a file named test_${REPO_NAME_CAMEL}.py in the tests directory of my template repo, and Gitea successfully created the file with the correct name.

    Make sure the .gitea/template file in the template repo includes all the files that the templates should create. It wasn't enough for me to add a tests directory .gitea/template. I had to add tests/** to get Gitea to apply the templates to everything under the tests directory.

  • Setting up Gitea to sign merge commits was a big hassle

    I spent a lot of time trying to add the key to /home/git/.gnupg, but Gitea expects the key to be at /var/lib/gitea/home/data/.gnupg.

    Thanks to Ivan's post for pointing out the correct directory.

  • I'll close with the biggest gotcha I've run into: The actions/checkout@v4 steps used to checkout repo code during .gitea/workflows was cloning the actions repo from GitHub.

    The whole reason for spinning up a local forge was to be able to keep working when GitHub was down, or when it enshittified past the point of usefulness.

    To avoid this GitHub dependency, I added the block below to /etc/gitea/app.ini, then created an 'actions' organization and pushed a mirror of https://github/actions/checkout.git into the 'actions' organization.

    Once I did this, and restarted Gitea, I saw the workflows cloning from https://<my-gitea-server>/actions/checkout instead of https://github/actions/checkout.

    [actions]
DEFAULT_ACTIONS_URL = self

    Note the Gitea FAQs do call out this behavior.

gitea

An Exploration into Jinja2 Unit Tests Wth Pytest

This post covers an approach I've used for add pytest-style unit tests to my Salt-related projects.

The content below may be specific to Salt, but the testing techniques should work on any project using Jinja2.

Project Directory Structure

In my existing salt project repo, I added a tests subdirectory, a setup.cfg with the contents below, and added a test target to the project's Makefile.

I also installed the pytest and jinja2 eggs in a virtualenv in my working directory.

    ├─ test_project repo
    ├─── .git
    ├─── init.sls
    ├─── map.jinja
    ├─── templates
    ├─────── some_template.cfg
    ├─── tests
    ├─────── conftest.py
    ├─────── test_init.py
    ├─────── test_map.py
    ├─────── test_some_template.py
    ├─── setup.cfg
    ├─── Makefile
    ├─── env
    ├─────── ... pytest
    ├─────── ... jinja2

Here's a snippet of the Makefile for kicking off the tests:

Note that since the tests are python code, you should run them through whatever linters and style-checkers you're using on the rest of your python code.

    test:
        py.test-3
        pycoderstyle ./tests/*.py

And here's the setup.cfg:

Without the extra '--tb=native' argument, pytest would sometimes through an internal error when jinja ended up throwing exception, as we'll see later below.

    [tool:pytest]
    python_files = test_*.py tests/__init__.py tests/*/__init__.py
    #uncomment the line below for full unittest diffs
    addopts =
            # Any --tb option except native (including no --tb option) throws an internal pytest exception
            # jinja exceptions are thrown
            --tb=native
            # Uncomment the next line for verbose output
            # -vv

    [pycodestyle]
    max-line-length=999
    ignore=E121,E123,E126,E226,E24,E704,E221,E127,E128,W503,E731,E131,E402

Note there is a test*.py file for each file that includes Jinja2 markup.

tests/conftest.py

The conftest.py contains the common fixtures used by the tests. I've tried adding docstring comments to explain how to use the fixtures, but also see the examples.

    import pytest
    from unittest.mock import Mock

    import jinja2
    from jinja2 import Environment, FileSystemLoader, ChoiceLoader, DictLoader, StrictUndefined


    class RaiseException(Exception):
        """ Exception raised when using raise() in the mocked Jinja2 context"""
        pass

    @pytest.fixture()
    def mocked_templates(request):
        """ A dict of template names to template content.
            Use this to mock out Jinja 'import "template" as tmpl" lines.
        """
        mocked_templates = {}
        return mocked_templates


    @pytest.fixture(autouse=True)
    def jinja_env(request, mocked_templates):
        """  Provide a Jinja2 environment for loading templates.
             The ChoiceLoader will first check when mocking any 'import' style templates,
             Then the FileSystemLoader will check the local file system for templates.

             The DictLoader is first so the Jinja won't end up using the FileSystemLoader for
             templates pulled in with an import statement which doesn't include the 'with context'
             modifier.

             Setting undefined to StrictUndefined throws exceptions when the templates use undefined variables.
        """

        test_loader=ChoiceLoader([
           DictLoader(mocked_templates),
           FileSystemLoader('.'),
        ])

        env = Environment(loader=test_loader,
                          undefined=StrictUndefined,
                          extensions=['jinja2.ext.do', 'jinja2.ext.with_', 'jinja2.ext.loopcontrols'])

        return env


    @pytest.fixture(scope='session', autouse=True)
    def salt_context():
        """ Provide a set of common mocked keys.
            Currently this is only the 'raise' key for mocking out the raise() calls in the templates,
            and an empty 'salt' dict for adding salt-specific mocks.
        """

        def mocked_raise(err):
            raise RaiseException(err)

        context = {
            'raise': mocked_raise,
            'salt': {}
        }

        return context

init.sls

For purposes of the sections below, here's what the init.sls looks like:

    #!jinja|yaml
    # {% set version = salt['pillar.get']('version', 'latest') %}
    # version: {{ version }}

    # {% if version == 'nope' %}
    #     {{ raise("OH NO YOU DIDN'T") }}
    # {% endif %}

Mock out the Jinja Context

Let's test out that rendering init.sls should return a version key with some value.

Being able to mock out the salt pillar.get() function was a big breakthrough with respect to being able to write any sort of unit tests for the Salt states.

    @pytest.fixture
    def poc_context(self, salt_context):
        """ Provide a proof-of-concept context for mocking out salt[function](args) calls """
        poc_context = salt_context.copy()

        def mocked_pillar_get(key,default):
            """ Mocked salt['pillar.get'] function """
            pillar_data = {
                'version' : '1234'
            }
            return pillar_data.get(key, default)

        # This is the super sauce:
        # We can mock out the ``salt['function'](args)`` calls in the salt states by
        # defining a 'salt' dict in the context, who's keys are the functions, and the values of mocked functions
        poc_context['salt']['pillar.get'] = mocked_pillar_get

        return poc_context


    def test_jinja_template_poc(self, jinja_env, poc_context):
      """ Render a template and check it has the expected content """

      # This assumes the tests are run from the root of the project.
      # The conftest.py file is setting the jinja_env to look for files under the 'latest' directory
      template = jinja_env.get_template('init.sls')

      # Return a string of the rendered template.
      result = template.render(poc_context)

      # Now we can run assertions on the returned rendered template.
      assert "version: 1234" in result

Mocking a raise() error

Now, let's see how we can test triggering the raise() error based on the pillar data:

    @pytest.fixture
    def bad_context(self, salt_context):
        """ Lets see what happens if the template triggers a raise() """

        # The base salt_context from conftest.py includes a 'raise' entry that raises a RaiseException
        bad_context = salt_context.copy()
        bad_context['salt']['pillar.get'] = lambda k, d: 'nope'
        return bad_context

    def test_raise_poc(self, jinja_env, bad_context):
        """ Try rendering a template that should fail with some raise() exception """

        with pytest.raises(RaiseException) as exc_info:
            template = jinja_env.get_template('init.sls')
            result = template.render(bad_context)

        raised_exception = exc_info.value
        assert str(raised_exception) == "OH NO YOU DIDN'T"

Mocking imported templates

Sometimes the Jinja templates may try import other templates which are either out of scope with respect to the current project, or the import doesn't include the 'with context' modifier, so the Jinja context isn't available when rendering the template.

In this case we can used with DictLoader portion of the jinja_env to mock out importing the template.

In this example, lets assume the following template file exists in the templates directory:

    {%- import 'missing.tmpl' as missing -%}
    Can we mock out missing/out of scope imports ?

    Mocked: {{ missing.perhaps }}
    Macro Call: {{ missing.lost('forever' }}

Now here is a test that can mock out the missing.tmpl contents, including the lost() macro call:

    def test_missing_template(self, jinja_env, mocked_templates, salt_context):
        """
        In this example, templates/missing-import.tmpl tries to import a non-available 'missing.tmpl' template.
        The ChoiceLoader checks DictLoader loader, which checks mocked_templates and finds a match
        """

        mocked_templates['missing.tmpl'] = """
           {% set perhaps="YES" %}
           {% macro lost(input) %}MOCKED_LOST{% endmacro %}
        """
        missing_template = jinja_env.get_template('templates/missing-import.tmpl')
        missing_result = missing_template.render(salt_context)
        assert "Mocked: YES" in missing_result
        assert "Macro Call: MOCKED_LOST" in missing_result

Mocking a macro call

Let's say I have a Jinja2 macro defined below:

    #!jinja|yaml

    # {% macro test_macro(input) %}
    #   {% if input == 'nope' %}
    #     {{ raise("UNACCEPTABLE") }}
    #   {% endif %}
    #   {% set version =  salt['pillar.get']('version', 'latest') %}
    "macro sez {{ input }}":
      test.show_notification:
      - text: "{{ input }}"

    "version sez {{ version }}":
      test.show_notifications:
      - text: "{{ version }}"

    # {% endmacro %}

Testing out this macro is a little more involved, since first we have to include calls to the macro after rendering the template. Note we're reusing the poc_context fixture defined earlier so the pillar.get() call is still mocked out to return 1234 for the version"

    def test_get_pillar_from_macro(self, jinja_env, poc_context):
        """
        If we want to reference the mocked context in the macros, we need
        to render the source + macro call within a context.
        """

        # The '[0]' is because get source returns a (source,filename,up-to-date) tuple.
        template_source = jinja_env.loader.get_source(jinja_env, 'macro.sls')[0]
        new_template = jinja_env.from_string(template_source + "{{ test_macro('hello') }}")
        result = new_template.render(poc_context)

        assert "macro sez hello" in result
        assert "version sez 1234" in result

It's also possible to check that the macro raises an error based on the input:

    def test_raise_from_macro(self, jinja_env, salt_context):
        """
        In this test, try forcing a raise() from within a macro
        """

        with pytest.raises(RaiseException) as exc_info:
             template_source = jinja_env.loader.get_source(jinja_env, 'macro.sls')[0]
             new_template = jinja_env.from_string(template_source + "{{ test_macro('nope') }}")
             result = new_template.render(salt_context)

        raised_exception = exc_info.value
        assert str(raised_exception) == "UNACCEPTABLE"

FECUNDITY: Checking for undefined variables during template rendering

Back in the day I learned that one of the virtues of a scientific theory was 'fecundity', or the ability for the theory to predict new behavior the original theory hadn't considered.

It looks like this may be called fruitfulness now, but still whenever I stumble across something like this, I shout out 'FECUNDITY' internally to myself. :shrug:

While I was working on this project, I noticed the jinja Environment constructor has an undefined argument that defaulted to Undefined. I also noticed StrictUndefined was another value that the undefined argument could use.

It would be useful if the tests could throw exceptions when they ran into undefined variables. This could happen from typos in the templates, or possibly not mocking out all the globals variables used in a template.

So I tried making an jinja Environment with undefined=StrictUndefined, and wrote a test with template with a typo in a variable name to see if the test would raise an exception, and it did !

This is much more useful than the default jinja behavior where Jinja would give the typo a value of None and would likely surface in the output as a empty string.

It's also more useful than setting undefined to DebugUndefined, which sometimes raised an exception, but sometimes left the un-modified '{{ whatever }}' strings in the rendered templates. Bleh.

Here's the sample template I used, called unexpected_variable.sls. It's the same as the original init.sls, but with a 'verion' typo:

    #!jinja|yaml

    # {% set version = salt['pillar.get']('role:echo-polycom:version', 'latest') %}
    # version: {{ version }}

    # {% if verion == 'nope' %}
    #     {{ raise("OH NO YOU DIDN'T") }}
    # {% endif %}

And let's try adding this test, which is the same as the earlier test_jinja_template_poc() test, but with the buggy template:

    def test_unexpected_variable(self, jinja_env, poc_context):
        """ Render a template and check it has the expected content """

        # This assumes the tests are run from the root of the project.
        # The conftest.py file is setting the jinja_env to look for files under the 'latest' directory
        template = jinja_env.get_template('unexpected_variable.sls')

        # Return a string of the rendered template.
        result = template.render(poc_context)

        # Now we can run assertions on the returned rendered template.
        assert "version: 1234" in result

This test will fail with an undefined error exception below ! Cool. I can fix the typo, and rerun the test to get it passing again ! FECUNDITY !

    ==================================================== FAILURES =======================================================
    _________________________________________ TestJinja.test_unexpected_variable __________________________________________
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "/my/working/dir/test_jinja_template_poc.py", line 150, in test_unexpected_variable
        result = template.render(poc_context)
      File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jinja2/asyncsupport.py", line 76, in render
         return original_render(self, *args, **kwargs)
      File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jinja2/environment.py", line 1008, in render
         return self.environment.handle_exception(exc_info, True)
      File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jinja2/environment.py", line 780, in handle_exception
         reraise(exc_type, exc_value, tb)
       File "/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/jinja2/_compat.py", line 37, in reraise
         raise value.with_traceback(tb)
       File "unexpected_variable.sls", line 6, in top-level template code
         # {% if verion == 'nope' %}
     jinja2.exceptions.UndefinedError: 'verion' is undefined
    ========================================= 1 failed, 5 passed in 0.89 seconds ==========================================

Running the tests

The tests are kicked off via 'pytest' like any other python project using pytest.

workstation:~/projects/test_project.git# source ./env/bin/activate
(env) workstation:~/projects/test_project.git# pytest
===================================================================== test session starts =====================================================================
platform linux -- Python 3.6.8, pytest-2.9.2, py-1.4.32, pluggy-0.3.1
rootdir: /vagrant, inifile:
plugins: catchlog-1.2.2
collected 5 items

latest/tests/test_jinja_template_poc.py .....

Credit

I based this work on some ideas from the blog post A method of unit testing Jinja2 templates by alexharv074.

jinja2 pytest salt

TS Stands For Test Station

Every now and then someone will come along and spraypaint yellow "TS"'s on the sidewalks around the neighorhood with arrows next to them. The arrows they lead to little square metal covers with a hole in the middle.

From 99% Invisible, I figured it had something to do with the gas line since it was yellow, and that they was probably some sort of access point under the covers, but I couldn't figure out why they were using 'TS' instead something like 'GL' or 'GAS'.

Recently I found one of the TS's pointing to a more informative cover:

A yellow spraypainted 'TS' pointing to a metal cover including the text 'Test Station'.

Apparently it's the test station for a Cathodic Protection System.

now-you-know infrastructure test-stations

Podman/Testinfra/Salt Lessons Learned

Oh my, less than two years between posts. I'm on a roll !

I've been looking into using Podman and Testinfra to test Salt states.

I'd like to add some unit tests and a Containerfile to an existing repo of salt states, where running 'pytest' in the repo's workspace would spin up the container and run the tests against it, and then tear down the container.

The tests would run 'salt state.apply' commands against the container, applying different sets of pillar data depending on the test.

Project Directory Structure

First let's set up a directory structure for the project that includes the states, their tests, and any needed test data. In the case of salt states, the test dtaa will be pillar files and files served by ext_pillar. The directory structure below is what I ended up using:

    ├─ test_project repo
    ├─── .git
    ├─── env
    ├────── ... testinfra egg
    ├─── Containerfile
    ├─── setup.cfg
    ├─── tests
    ├───── test_*.py
    ├───── data
    ├──────── ext_pillar
    ├──────── pillar
    ├────────── top.sls
    ├────────── test_zero.sls
    ├────────── test_one.sls
    ├────────── ...
    ├──────── top.sls
    ├─── test_project
    ├───── *.sls
    ├───── *.jinja
    ├───── templates
    ├──────── *.jinja
    ├───── files
    ├───── ...

Assuming all these files are stored in git, there's a .git directory from when you cloned the repo

The 'env' directory is a python virtualenv under 'env', where the testinfra egg has been installed. You can skip the virtualenv if you're pulling in testinfra from a global package.

Containerfile is, well a Podman Containerfile, and setup.cfg contains some pytest-specific settings.

The tests directory is where the testinfra test_*.py files are stored.

The tests/data/pillar directory will end up be mapped to the /srv/pillar directory in the test container. Similarly tests/data/ext_pillar will be mapped to /srv/ext_pillar.

The salt-states directory includes the *.sls and *.jinja files, and any other salt-related subdirectories like 'templates', 'files', 'macros', etc. This directory will be mapped to /srv/salt/project in the container.

Containerfile

The Containerfile I'm using for this project is below.

# I'm using Ubuntu 20.4 for this project-under-test so pull in the stock Ubuntu image for that version
FROM ubuntu:focal
RUN apt-get update

# The stock image doesn't include curl, so install it and bootstrap salt
# Longterm, I would host the bootstrapping script internally in case that site disappeared.
RUN apt-get install -y curl
RUN curl -L https://bootstrap.saltproject.io | sh -s --

# Configure salt run as a masterless minion
RUN echo "file_client: local" > /etc/salt/minion.d/masterless.conf
RUN printf "local" > /etc/salt/minion_id

# Set up the /srv/salt environment
RUN mkdir -p /srv/salt
RUN mkdir -p /srv/ext_pillar/hosts/local/files
RUN printf "ext_pillar:\n  - file_tree:\n      root_dir: /srv/ext_pillar\n" >>  /etc/salt/minion.d/masterless.conf

# Delay setting up /srv/salt/top.sls until the container starts. so PROJECT can be sent in as a ENV
RUN printf "printf \"base:\\n    '*':\\n      - \${PROJECT}\\n\" > /srv/salt/top.sls" >> /root/.bashrc

# Create a local user
RUN useradd local_user

# The Salt git states apparently assume git is already installed on the host, so install it.
RUN apt-get install -y git

Building and verifying the saltmasterless:latest image

Using this Containerfile, I built a saltmasterless:latest image:

workstation:~/projects/test_project.git# podman build -t saltmasterless:latest .

Then with this image, I can start a container that includes volumes mapping the tests/data/pillar ro /srv/pillar, tests/data/ext_pillar to /srv/ext_pillar, and test_project to /srv/salt:

workstation:~/projects/test_project.git# podman run -it --env "PROJECT=test_project" -v ${PWD}/test_project:/srv/salt/test_project -v ${PWD}/tests/data/pillar:/srv/pillar -v ${PWD}/tests/data/ext_pillar:/srv/ext_pillar/hosts/local/files --name test_box --hostname local saltmasterless:latest
root@local:/#
root@local:/# find /srv
root@local:/# exit
workstation:~/projects/test_project.git# podman rm -f test_box

setup.cfg

The setup.cfg file is mostly used to tell pytest to ignore the salt states directory:

tests/data/pillar/top.sls

As mentioned above the tests/data/pillar directory will be mapped to /srv/pillar in the container, but let's look at the top.sls a little closer. From the Containerfile, /etc/salt/minion_id was set to 'local', so normally the top.sls file will end up using /srv/pillar/test_zero.sls for it's pillar data.

But lets say we want to run a test with some other pillar data. In that case , in the test we'll use the salt-call '-id' argument to run the command as a different minion id. So with the top.sls file below, running 'salt-call --local -id=test_one state.apply' will use the test_one.sls pillar data instead of test_zero.sls

{{ "{{ saltenv }}" }}:

  '*':
  - match: glob
  - ignore_missing: True

  'local':
  - test_zero

  'test_one':
  - test_one

  'missing_mandatory_pillar_item':
  - missing_mandatory_pillar_item

tests/test_project.py host fixture

The tests/test_project.py file includes a host fixture based on https://testinfra.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples.html#test-docker-images. Note that the podman_cmd is pretty much the same as the command used above when testing the container. The cwd-related logic is because the -v args required full path names.

# scope='session' uses the same container for all the tests;
# scope='function' uses a new container per test function.
@pytest.fixture(scope='session')
def host(request):

    cwd = os.getcwd()

    podman_cmd = "podman run -d -it --env PROJECT=test_project -v ${PWD}/test_project:/srv/salt/test_project -v ${PWD}/tests/data/pillar:/srv/pillar -v ${PWD}/tests/data/ext_pillar:/srv/ext_pillar/hosts/local/files --name test_box --hostname local saltmasterless:latest bash"
    podman_cmd = podman_cmd.replace("${PWD}",cwd)
    podman_cmd_list = podman_cmd.split(' ')

    # run a container
    podman_id = subprocess.check_output(podman_cmd_list).decode().strip()
    # return a testinfra connection to the container
    yield testinfra.get_host("podman://" + podman_id)

    # at the end of the test suite, destroy the container
    subprocess.check_call(['podman', 'rm', '-f', podman_id])

tests/test_project.py full salt run test

Here's a test that does a full salt state.apply on the container. This test is slow, since the container starts are with just salt and git installed, and the project-under-test is making a lot of changes. Note theuse of the '--local' argument to tell salt to try to pull data from a saltmaster.

def test_full_salt_run(host):
    print('running salt-call state.apply.  This will take a few minutes')
    cmd_output = host.run('salt-call --state-output=terse --local state.apply')

    print('cmd.stdout: ' + cmd_output.stdout)

    assert cmd_output.rc == 0
    assert cmd_output.stderr == ''

tests/test_project.py alternative pillar data test

In this example, suppose ./test_project/map.jinja included a check like below:

{% if not salt['pillar.get']('mandatory_pillar_item') %}
  {{ raise('mandatory_pillar_item is mandatory') }}
{% endif %}

And then there's a 'missing_mandatory_pillar_item' in the ./test/data/pillar/top.sls as per above, and a ./test/data/pillar/missing_mandatory_pillar_item.sls file exists that's missing the mandatory pillar item.

Then a test like below could force a salt run that uses this pillar data by using the '--id' argument as per below, and an assertion could check the error was raised.

def test_missing_mandatory_pillar_itemn(host):
    print('running another salt-call state.apply with bad pillar data.')
    cmd_output = host.run('salt-call --state-output=terse --local --id=missing_mandatory_pillar_item state.apply')
    assert "mandatory_pillar_item is mandatory" in cmd_output.stderr
    assert cmd_output.rc != 0

Running the tests

The tests are kicked off via 'pytest' like any other python project using pytest.`

workstation:~/projects/test_project.git# source ./env/bin/activate
(env) workstation:~/projects/test_project.git# pytest
...
================================================================================ 3 passed in 333.88s (0:05:33) ================================================================================

What's Next

  • Set up the salt bootstrapping so it'll work without having to reach out to bootstrap.saltproject.io
  • Move the host fixture out of /tests/test_project.py to ./tests/conftest.py
  • Speed up the tests. As mentioned above, a full 'salt state.apply' for a project can take a few minutes on my workstation

podman testinfra salt

Expired CA Notes

Recently, I ran some tests to see what would happen when my root CA cert expired, and what I'd need to do to update the cert.

Spoiler alert: Updating the CA cert was not that hard...

First I created a CA that expired in 2 hours using the new-ca.py code below:

from OpenSSL import crypto

#Following script will create a self signed root ca cert.
from OpenSSL import crypto, SSL
from os.path import join
import random

CN='expired-ca-test'
pubkey = "%s.crt" % CN #replace %s with CN
privkey = "%s.key" % CN # replcate %s with CN

pubkey = join(".", pubkey)
privkey = join(".", privkey)

k = crypto.PKey()
k.generate_key(crypto.TYPE_RSA, 2048)

# create a self-signed cert
cert = crypto.X509()
cert.get_subject().CN = CN
cert.set_serial_number(0)
cert.gmtime_adj_notBefore(0)
cert.gmtime_adj_notAfter(7200)  # CA is only good for 2 hours
cert.set_issuer(cert.get_subject())
cert.set_subject(cert.get_subject())
cert.set_version(2)
xt = crypto.X509Extension(b'basicConstraints',1,b'CA:TRUE')
cert.add_extensions((xt,))

cert.set_pubkey(k)
cert.sign(k, 'sha512')
pub=crypto.dump_certificate(crypto.FILETYPE_PEM, cert)
priv=crypto.dump_privatekey(crypto.FILETYPE_PEM, k)
open(pubkey,"wt").write(pub.decode("utf-8"))
open(privkey, "wt").write(priv.decode("utf-8") )

This block is based on how the ancient certmaster program created its CA.

Then I created a expired-ca-test.srl with contents "01"

> echo 01 > expired-ca-test.srl

Then I issued a cert against this CA:

> openssl genrsa -out pre-expired-example.key 4096
> openssl req -new -key pre-expired-example.key -out pre-expired-example.csr
> openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in pre-expired-example.csr -CA expired-ca-test.crt  -CAkey expired-ca-test.key  -CAserial expired-ca-test.srl -out pre-expired-example.crt
> openssl x509 -in pre-expired-example.crt -text
> openssl verify -verbose -CAfile expired-ca-test.crt pre-expired-example.crt
pre-expired-example.crt: OK

Then I waited 2 hours and went back to check the certs:

> openssl x509 -in expired-ca-test.crt -noout -enddate
notAfter=Oct  2 17:41:11 2022 GMT

Then I tested what would happen if I tried verifying the cert signed with the expired CA:

> openssl verify -verbose -CAfile expired-ca-test.crt pre-expired-example.crt
CN = expired-ca-test
error 10 at 1 depth lookup: certificate has expired
error pre-expired-example.crt: verification failed

THIS FAILED. I thought previously signed keys would continue to verify against the expired CA but new certs wouldn't be created. Instead previously signed certs won't validate against the expired CA.

Then I tried signing a new cert with the expired CA. Certainly this fail, right ?

> openssl genrsa -out expired-example.key 4096
> openssl req -new -key expired-example.key -out expired-example.csr
> openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in expired-example.csr -CA expired-ca-test.crt -CAkey expired-ca-test.key -CAserial expired-ca-test.srl -out expired-example.crt

THIS WORKED in that it created the cert, though verification still fails:

> openssl verify -verbose -CAfile expired-ca-test.crt expired-example.crt
CN = expired-ca-test
error 10 at 1 depth lookup: certificate has expired
error expired-example.crt: verification failed

Now lets see what happens if we update the CA cert with the update-ca.py script below.

This is almost the same as the new-ca.py script above, except the original CA key is reused instead of generating a new key. Also the CN and serial number need to be the same as the original expired CA cert.

Verification will fail if the CN or serial number values are not the same as the original CA, but unfortuanetly I didn't save the errors from when I tried using 'updated-ca-test' as the CN, or when I tried bumping up the serial number to 1.

from OpenSSL import crypto

#Following script will create a self signed root ca cert.
from OpenSSL import crypto, SSL
from os.path import join
import random

CN='updated-ca-test'
pubkey = "%s.crt" % CN #replace %s with CN
privkey = "%s.key" % CN # replcate %s with CN

pubkey = join(".", pubkey)
privkey = join(".", privkey)

# Instead of creating a new key, use the old CA's key
# nope: k = crypto.PKey()
# nope: k.generate_key(crypto.TYPE_RSA, 2048)
st_key=open('expired-ca-test.key', 'rt').read()
k = crypto.load_privatekey(crypto.FILETYPE_PEM, st_key)

# create a self-signed cert
cert = crypto.X509()
cert.get_subject().CN = 'expired-ca-test'  # keep the same CN as the old CA cert
cert.set_serial_number(0)                  # keep the same serial number as the old CA cert
cert.gmtime_adj_notBefore(0)
cert.gmtime_adj_notAfter(63072000)  # CA is only good for 2 years
cert.set_issuer(cert.get_subject())
cert.set_subject(cert.get_subject())
cert.set_version(2)
xt = crypto.X509Extension(b'basicConstraints',1,b'CA:TRUE')
cert.add_extensions((xt,))

cert.set_pubkey(k)
cert.sign(k, 'sha512')
pub=crypto.dump_certificate(crypto.FILETYPE_PEM, cert)
priv=crypto.dump_privatekey(crypto.FILETYPE_PEM, k)
open(pubkey,"wt").write(pub.decode("utf-8"))
open(privkey, "wt").write(priv.decode("utf-8") )

Note that this code creates a updated-ca-test.key that's the same as expired-ca-test.key, so I could have continued using expired-ca-test.key in the cert creation below.

> diff expired-ca-test.key updated-ca-test.key
> echo $?
0

Next I created an updated-ca-test.srl file. I could have continuned using expired-ca-test.srl

> cp expired-ca-test.srl updated-ca-test.srl

Now let's see if the new CA can be used to create a new cert:

> openssl genrsa -out post-expired-example.key 4096
> openssl req -new -key post-expired-example.key -out post-expired-example.csr
> openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in post-expired-example.csr -CA updated-ca-test.crt  -CAkey updated-ca-test.key  -CAserial updated-ca-test.srl -out post-expired-example.crt
> openssl x509 -in post-expired-example.crt -text
> openssl verify -verbose -CAfile updated-ca-test.crt post-expired-example.crt
post-expired-example.crt: OK

Now verify the old cert verifies using the new CA:

> openssl verify -verbose -CAfile updated-ca-test.crt pre-expired-example.crt
pre-expired-example.crt: OK

THIS WORKED. The updated CA could be used to verify both new and previous created certs Hurray !!

Conclusion

An expired/expiring root CA may be a hassle, but it's not catastrophic. The biggest pain should be pushingout the updated root CA everywhere the cert is being used in your environment. If you're using an orchestration/CM tool like Salt or Ansible, updating the root CA cert shouldn't be too bad, but remember to reload or restart any services using the cert to force the updated CA cert to read.

Sources

openssl x509 expiration

A workaround for running deja-dup as root in Ubuntu 20.04

I found a workaround for the Duplicity fails to start issue where 'sudo deja-dup' would fail with the python stacktrace mentioned in the launchpad ticket.

The ticket was not very useful, so I started looking at the various files in the stacktrace and saw line from /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/duplicity/backends/giobackend.py was within an "if u'DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS' not in os.environ" block.

So I wondered what would happen if I let that environment variable pass into the sudo environment. I tried 'sudo -E deja-dup' as per preserve the environment. This didn't result in a stacktrace, but it ended up running the backup as the normal non-root user, probably because the preserved environment included the USER and HOME variables along with the DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS variable.

Then I tried preserving just DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS with 'sudo --preserve-env=DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS deja-dup', it worked as expected.

So the hint here is that when presented with a stacktrace don't be afraid to "Use the Source, Jean Luc".

A image of Patrick Stewart playing Gurney Halleck from David Lynch's Dune film, with the meme text 'Use the Source, Jean Luc'.

deja-dup ubuntu

How I orgmode

This post covers how I'm keeping my orgmode notebooks synced between my desktop and phone. There are also some tips on how I resolve merge conflicts in my notebooks and other hints for using Orgzly.

Setup

orgmode diagram

Owncloud Server

Set up an owncloud server somewhere where both my desktop and phone can reach it.

Desktop: Owncloud client and git repo

On the desktop, install the owncloud client and configured ~/owncloud to be shared with the server. Also set up an ~/owncloud/org directory and add an ~/org symlink that points to ~/owncloud/org. This is mostly to make it easier to access the org files.

Update your emacs and/or vi configs to support orgmode. I'll update the org files in the editor that's more convenient at the time, though I'll use emacs if I need to update the deadline of a task.

I've also added .git to the owncloud and did a 'git init' in the ~/owncloud/org directory. This repo will be used in the 'Handling Conflicts' section below.

Create or move your notebook files into the ~/owncloud/org directory and make sure they have a '.org' extension. Verify that the org files are being synced to the owncloud server.

Make sure your owncloud client is set to start when your desktop reboots.

Phone: Owncloud client and Orgzly

Install the owncloud client on your phone. Configure it to sync with the owncloud server and verify it's syncing the notebook files from the server.

Also install and configure Orgzly. For the syncing the repositories [use WebDAV]{.title-ref} with the URL https://<your-owncloud-server>/remote.php/webdav/org. I originally tried using local storage, but I couldn't get that to work.

Then for each of the notebooks, [set the link]{.title-ref} to https://<your-owncloud-server>/remote.php/webdav/org. Update one of your notebooks with Orgzly and verify the change is synced to your desktop.

Day-to-day Usage

Throughout the day, I'm usually using Orgzly, checking the Agenda tab for overdue and upcoming tasks, and adding new tasks and notes.

I'm access the Notebooks on the desktop less frequently, mostly archiving completed tasks, and adding links and notes to research tasks. I also tend to move tasks between notebooks from the desktop.

Handling Recurring Events

I ignore the scheduled time setting in Orgzly, and only set the deadlines with warning times. Then I treat the notification that's generated from warning time passing as the time I should start on a task.

For repeating events, I use the '++' modifier for tasks. This way if I miss a few iterations of a task it will add the next iteration in the future.

I'm also try to set an appropriate warning period when setting tasks.

It took me a while to figure out I could tap on the date itself to bring up a calender instead of being limited to the 'today', 'tomorrow', and 'next week' options. <shrug>.

Handling Conflicts

Sometimes when I'm updating the notebooks on both my desktop and phone, orgzly will say there's a conflict.

When this happens I go to my desktop and make a checkpoint commit of any outstanding changes on the ~/owncloud/org repo. Then I push the Notebook from Orgzly (the Cloud with the 'up' arrow.

Then on the desktop, I do a 'git diff' and adjust Notebook as needed.

Usually this includes adding some new notes or adjusting some deadlines.

orgmode orgzly owncloud

Importing Stock Transactions Into Gnucash With Python

I use GnuCash, but keeping my 401(k) accounts up to date has always been a tedious, manual process.

I came up with the python snippet below to handle the import, but it was a pain to write since I couldn't find any examples for setting up stock or mutual fund transactions.

The SetSharePriceAndAmount method ended up being key, and I only found that by searching through the gnucash source.

The GncNumeric class also ended up being more of a pain to use than I expected. There's probably a better way to use it, but the 'multiple values by 1000000/100000' approach is working for me now.

I'm using the stock GnuCash and python-gnucash version 2.6.19 available in Ubuntu 18.04, so this stuck using python 2.7.

#!/usr/bin/python2.7

import csv
from datetime import datetime

import gnucash

session = gnucash.Session("xml://yourfile.gnucash")
book = session.book
root_account = book.get_root_account()

usd = book.get_table().lookup('ISO4217','USD')

# There's probably a better way to use 'Your:Retirement:Contributions' instead ....
contrib_acct = root_account.lookup_by_name("Your").lookup_by_name("Retirement").lookup_by_name("Contributions")

parent_acct = root_account.lookup_by_name("401k")

with open('your_transactions.csv', 'rb') as trans_csv:
  trans_reader = csv.reader(trans_csv, delimiter=',')

  # Skip over the first row since it's headers
  header = next(trans_reader)

  for description, date, fund_name, share_price_str, share_amount_str, amount_str in trans_reader:
    child_account = parent_acct.lookup_by_name(fund_name)

    posting_date = datetime.strptime(date,"%m/%d/%y")

    tx = gnucash.Transaction(book)
    tx.BeginEdit()

    tx.SetCurrency(usd)

    tx.SetDatePostedTS(posting_date)
    tx.SetDescription(description)

    sp1 = gnucash.Split(book)
    sp1.SetParent(tx)
    sp1.SetAccount(child_account)

    # GncNumeric(n,d) represents numbers as fractions of the form n/d, so GncNumeric(1234567/1000000) = 1.234567
    # There's probably a better way to do this...
    share_price = gnucash.GncNumeric(float(share_price_str)*(10**6), 10**6)
    share_amount = gnucash.GncNumeric(float(share_amount_str)*(10**6), 10**6)

    # share_price * share_amount == amount, so I could have used that instead using the value from the csv
    amount = gnucash.GncNumeric(float(amount_str)*(10**6), 10**6)

    # ( ˘▽˘)っ♨  This is the secret sauce for setting the number of shares and the price.
    sp1.SetSharePriceAndAmount(share_price, share_amount)

    sp2 = gnucash.Split(book)
    sp2.SetParent(tx)
    sp2.SetAccount(contrib_acct)
    sp2.SetValue(amount.neg())

    tx.CommitEdit()
session.save()
session.end()

Special thanks to this post for providing most of the code above.

python gnucash

Elixir on Centos 7

I'm at the point with a Elixir/Phoneix side project that I'm thinking about deployment.

The first big stumbling block was that development environment (Ubuntu 16.04) wasn't the same as my deployment environment (Centos 7). For Ubuntu, I could pull the latest Elixir packages from Erlang Solutions, but they don't host Centos Elixir packages, and the version of Elixir on EPEL is over 4 years old - old enough that 'mix deps' on my project was erroring out.

I found the posts below about installing Elixir on Centos 7 but, they involve cloning the Elixir repo and building it from source, but I don't want development tools like git and gcc on my production machines.

I also found https://www.vultr.com/docs/how-to-install-the-phoenix-framework-on-centos-7 but it involves downloading a precompiled mystery meat bundle off GitHub. The https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir site doesn't mention that these precompiled bundles are available or explain how to rebuild the bundles. The elixir-lang.org install page mentioned the precompiled bundle, but still, that's too mysterious for me.

Maybe one of those links works for you, but what I want is a way to build a more recent version of the Elixir rpm than what was available in EPEL. That way I can recompile and package Elixir on a development machine, and then only copy the rpm up to my production machine.

It looks like Elixir in EPEL is waiting for the Erlang 18 release to get promoted in EPEL, so maybe I can take the existing Elixir packaging source and build it against the latest Erlang packages from Erlang Solutions.

I found the packaging source at https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/elixir and after poking around a bit I came up with Vagrantfile below. It seems to be working OK so far. :

<script src="https://gist.github.com/jude/1ed06603135cb47c4bb59e52e8c96af0.js"></script>

Lessons learned

  • spectool is my new favorite utility.
  • Make sure your Elixir development environment is as close as possible to your deployment environment.

Next steps

  • Convert the Vagrantfile into a Dockerfile or start using vagrant-lxc

elixir centos

Older Posts >