Metadata-Version: 1.0
Name: mr.awsome
Version: 0.3
Summary: A script allowing to setup Amazon EC2 instances through configuration files.
Home-page: http://github.com/fschulze/mr.awsome
Author: Florian Schulze
Author-email: florian.schulze@gmx.net
License: UNKNOWN
Description: **Overview**
        
        mr.awsome is a commandline-tool (aws) to manage and control Amazon
        Webservice's EC2 instances. Once configured with your AWS key, you can
        create, delete, monitor and ssh into instances, as well as perform scripted
        tasks on them (via fabfiles).
        Examples are adding additional, pre-configured webservers to a cluster
        (including updating the load balancer), performing automated software
        deployments and creating backups - each with just one call from the
        commandline. Aw(e)some, indeed, if we may say so...
        
        **Installation**
        
        mr.awsome currently requires buildout for installation, because there is no
        entry point defined in the egg and the entry point requires an argument to be
        set. You can do it with a part like the following::
        
        [aws]
        recipe = zc.recipe.egg
        eggs = mr.awsome
        entry-points =
        aws=mr.awsome:aws
        assh=mr.awsome:aws_ssh
        arguments = configpath="${buildout:directory}/etc/deployment"
        
        **Configuration**
        
        To authorize itself against AWS, mr.awsome uses the following two environment
        variables::
        
        AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
        AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
        
        You can find their values at `http://aws.amazon.com`_ under *'Your Account'-'Security Credentials'.*
        
        All other information about server instances is located in ``aws.conf``, which
        needs to reside in the configpath set in the buildout part.
        
        Before you can create a server instance with the ``create`` command described below, you first have to declare a security group in
        your ``aws.conf`` like this::
        
        [securitygroup:demo-server]
        description = Our Demo-Server
        connections =
        tcp 22 22 0.0.0.0/0
        tcp 80 80 0.0.0.0/0
        
        The security group is used for both the firewall settings, as documented in
        the AWS docs, and to find the server instance associated with it.
        
        Then you can add the info about the server instance itself like this::
        
        [instance:demo-server]
        keypair = default
        securitygroups = demo-server
        region = eu-west-1
        placement = eu-west-1a
        # we use images from `http://alestic.com/`_
        # Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic server 32-bit Europe
        image = ami-a62a01d2
        startup_script = startup-demo-server
        fabfile = `fabfile.py`_
        
        **Startup scripts**
        
        The startup_script option above allows you to write a script which is run
        right after instance creation to setup your server. This feature is supported
        by many AMI images and was made popular by `http://alestic.com/`_ (See
        `http://alestic.com/2009/06/ec2-user-data-scripts`_).
        
        Most of the time these are bash scripts like this (for Ubuntu in this case)::
        
        #!/bin/bash
        set -e -x
        export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
        apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y
        
        The ``set -e -x`` is for debugging. You can see the commands which ran and their output in ``/var/log/syslog`` once you are logged into the server.
        
        The startup scripts have a maximum size of 16kb. You can check the size with
        the ``debug`` command of the ``aws`` script.
        
        The startup script is basically a template for the Python string format
        method (See `http://docs.python.org/library/string.html#formatstrings`_). So
        anything inside curly brackets is expanded. To get normal curly brackets,
        when you write bash functions etc, just double them like this::
        
        function LOG() {{ echo "$*"; }}
        
        If you want to include any files for something like ssh ``authorized_keys``, you do something the following::
        
        authorized_keys: file,escape_eol ssh-authorized_keys
        
        #!/bin/bash
        ...
        /bin/bash -c "echo -e \"{authorized_keys}\" >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys"
        
        
        So the startup script basically has rfc822 syntax (internally the e-mail
        parser is used). The ``file,escape_eol`` tells the script that the ``ssh-
        authorized_keys`` string should be used as a filename for a file which is then
        read and the ``\n`` characters are escaped so the resulting string can be used
        in the ``echo -e`` command.
        
        You have the following possibilities (brain dump, needs fleshing out):
        -   file
        -   base64
        -   format
        -   template
        -   gzip
        -   escape_eol
        
        In addition to that, you have access to some more variables. For example full
        access to the server config in the aws.conf. With servers[demo-
        server].instance.dns_name for example, you can get the current DNS name of
        the server (this only works with other servers already started, not the one
        for which the startup script is for, since the DNS isn't set at the time the
        script is created).
        
        **Controlling instances**
        
        -   start
        -   stop
        -   status
        
        **Snapshots**
        
        (Needs description of volumes in "Configuration")
        
        **SSH integration**
        
        mr.awsome provides an additional tool ``assh`` to easily perform SSH based
        operations against named EC2 instances. Particularly, it encapsulates the
        entire *SSH fingerprint* mechanism, as EC2 instances are often short-lived and
        normally trigger warnings, especially, if you are using elastic IPs.
        
        Note:: it does so not by simply turning off these checks, but by transparently updating its own fingerprint list (it relies on the console output of the instance to provide the fingerprint via the AWS API, some imags may not be configured to do so) when adding new instances.
        
        The easiest scenario is simply to create an SSH session with an instance. You
        can either use the ssh subcommand of the aws tool like so::
        
        aws ssh SERVERNAME
        
        Alternatively you can use the assh command direct, like so::
        
        assh SERVERNAME
        
        The latter has been provided to support scp and rsync. Here are some
        examples, you get the idea::
        
        scp -S `pwd`/bin/assh some.file demo-server:/some/path/
        rsync -e "bin/assh" some/path fschulze@demo-server:/some/path
        
        
        **Fabric integration**
        
        Since ``Fabric <http://fabfile.org/`_>`_ basically works through ssh, all the
        bits necessary for ssh integration are also needed for Fabric. To make it
        easy to run fabfiles, you specifiy them with the "fabfile" option in your
        aws.conf and use the ``do`` command to run them.
        
        Take the following `fabfile.py`_ as an example::
        
        from fabric.api import env, run
        
        env.reject_unknown_hosts = True
        env.disable_known_hosts = True
        
        def get_syslog():
        run("echo /var/log/syslog")
        
        If you have that fabfile for the demo-server above, you can then run the
        command with "bin/aws demo-server do get_syslog".
        
        For more info about fabfiles, read the docs at `http://fabfile.org/`_.
        
        .. _http://aws.amazon.com: http://aws.amazon.com/
        .. _http://alestic.com/: http://alestic.com/
        .. _fabfile.py: http://fabfile.py/
        .. _http://alestic.com/2009/06/ec2-user-data-scripts:
        http://alestic.com/2009/06/ec2-user-data-scripts
        .. _http://docs.python.org/library/string.html#formatstrings:
        http://docs.python.org/library/string.html#formatstrings
        .. _http://fabfile.org/: http://fabfile.org/
        
        
        Changelog
        =========
        
        0.3 - 2010-02-08
        ----------------
        
        * Removed the ``[host_string]`` prefix of the ``do`` command output.
        [fschulze]
        
        0.2 - 2010-02-02
        ----------------
        
        * Snapshots automatically get a description with date and volume id.
        [fschulze]
        
        * The ssh command can now be used with scp and rsync.
        [fschulze]
        
        
        0.1 - 2010-01-21
        ----------------
        
        * Initial release
        [fschulze]
        
Platform: UNKNOWN
