System administration is a relatively new profession. Without a standard curriculum, practitioners have different philosophies and practices. It is challenging for new sysadmins because every organization implements differently: the how and why of system setup, how and why of maintenance, and the how and why of disaster recovery and growth.
A software tool can respond faster than a human sysadmin to a deviation from configuration policy (something being broken). The corrective action can be automated, so chaos is kept to a minimum while not requiring human action.
Why WordPress? Installing WordPress involves coordinating multiple system components into a harmonious whole. It is a great demonstration of the power of automated configuration management. It involves copying and editing files, installing packages, and starting and restarting services.
Manually installing WordPress often takes tens of minutes. An automated install under CFEngine greatly shortens the time required and most importantly provides a repeatable and auditable experience.
Lastly, an introduction to CFEngine is out of scope for this post, but you can learn more here, here, and here.
Automating WordPress Installation
The two main parts of infrastructure involved in making WordPress work are a web server and a database. In this example, we'll use Apache httpd and MySQL as well as assume a Red Hat (or derivative) system.
The most up to date version of the cfengine implementation of this post can be found here: https://github.com/cfengine/contrib/raw/master/wordpress_installer.cf
You can run this policy with:
cf-agent -f /var/cfengine/inputs/wordpress_installer.cf
The rest of this post covers the manual steps you might do to install WordPress and also the equivalent implementation in CFengine.
Ordering Things
Below shows the control promise which controls the behavior of cf-agent including which files it should import (the standard Cfengine library) and in what sequences to examine and keep bundles (collections) of promises.
body common control
{
bundlesequence => {
"packages_installed",
"services_up",
"wordpress_tarball_is_present",
"wordpress_tarball_is_unrolled",
"configuration_of_mysql_db_for_wordpress",
"wpconfig_exists",
"wpconfig_is_properly_configured",
"allow_http_inbound",
};
inputs => { "/var/cfengine/inputs/cfengine_stdlib.cf" };
}
Get the Right Packages
With that order given above, let's start by ensuring we have all the necessary packages. We will use the "yum" package_method since we are using a Red Hat derivative.
The packages_installed bundle depicted in below promises to restart the httpd if any packages are added to cover the case where httpd is up and running, but "php" and "php-mysql" are missing, and Cfengine installs them.
bundle agent packages_installed
{
vars: "desired_package" slist => {
"httpd",
"php",
"php-mysql",
"mysql-server",
};
packages: "$(desired_package)"
package_policy => "add",
package_method => yum,
classes => if_repaired("packages_added");
commands:
packages_added::
"/sbin/service httpd graceful"
comment => "Restarting httpd so it can pick up new modules.";
}
Apache and MySQL
Now let's make sure httpd and mysqld are running with the services_up bundle shown below:
bundle agent services_up {
processes:
"^mysqld" restart_class => "start_mysqld";
"^httpd" restart_class => "start_httpd";
commands:
start_mysqld::
"/sbin/service mysqld start";
start_httpd::
"/sbin/service httpd start";
}
The "restart_class" is used to scan the "ps" output for the named string, and if not found, the right hand side class will be set. We can then use that to launch a command to start the server.
Downloading WordPress
The next section shows the wordpress_tarball_is_present bundle where we make sure we have a copy of WordPress in an arbitrary location - let's say in /root. We'll need it later to install WordPress under the httpd document root.
We test using Cfengine built-in test function "fileexists()". If the file exists the "wordpress_tarball_is_present" class gets defined. (A class is Cfengine implicit if/then test. If it is defined, the test passes. If it is not defined it does not. In other words, defined = true, not defined = false.)
If the file does not exist, the "wordpress_tarball_is_present" class will not be defined and the commands promise will download it. If the file does exist, no action will be taken.
bundle agent wordpress_tarball_is_present
{
classes:
"wordpress_tarball_is_present" expression =>
fileexists("/root/wordpress-latest.tar.gz");
reports:
wordpress_tarball_is_present::
"WordPress tarball is on disk.";
commands:
!wordpress_tarball_is_present::
"/usr/bin/wget -q -O /root/wordpress-latest.tar.gz
http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz"
comment => "Downloading WordPress.";
}
Unpacking WordPress
Next, we test if the WordPress directory exists under the document root (assumed to be "/var/www/html").
If it doesn't, we'll extract our WordPress tarball to the docroot using "tar".
Note that the "tar" extract promise depends on the earlier promise that the tar ball is on disk. Because Cfengine does three passes through the promises when it runs: on the first pass, the tar ball will be downloaded if necessary; on the second pass, Cfengine will extract it. This is an example of convergence to desired state, part of the basic philosophy of Cfengine.
Because Cfengine is convergent in its operation, the above cf-agent command can be run multiple times, and the system will always stay at or approach the desired state, never get further away from it. It can fight entropy and system state drift.
bundle agent wordpress_tarball_is_unrolled
{
classes:
"wordpress_directory_is_present" expression =>
fileexists("/var/www/html/wordpress/");
reports:
wordpress_directory_is_present::
"WordPress directory is present.";
commands:
!wordpress_directory_is_present::
"/bin/tar -C /var/www/html -xvzf /root/wordpress-latest.tar.gz"
comment => "Unrolling wordpress tarball to /var/www/html/.";
}
Configuring MySQL
Next, we use the "mysql" command to create the database for the application data store as well as credentials to access it:
bundle agent configuration_of_mysql_db_for_wordpress
{
commands:
"/usr/bin/mysql -u root -e \"
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS wordpress;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.*
TO 'wordpress'@localhost
IDENTIFIED BY 'lopsa10linux';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;\"
";
}
Please note the above command (like all these promise bundles) is convergent to desired state - it will either get us to the desired state if we are not there, or keep us there if we are there already.
The desired state is a "wordpress" database that can be accessed via a "wordpress" user with the password "lopsa10linux".
Adding the WordPress Config
Let's copy the sample config file WordPress ships with to wp-config.php if it doesn't exist.
First, we check if wp-config.php exists using the built-in "fileexists()" function. If wp-config.php exists, this will set a "wordpress_config_file_exists" class.
This class will be used to control what happens next: if the class is set, no changes will be made to the system; we'll just report wp-config.php is there. If the class is not defined, we'll report wp-config.php is not there, and then put it there by copying it from wp-config-sample.php
bundle agent wpconfig_exists
{
classes:
"wordpress_config_file_exists"
expression => fileexists("/var/www/html/wordpress/wp-config.php");
reports:
wordpress_config_file_exists::
"WordPress config file /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-config.php is present";
commands:
!wordpress_config_file_exists::
"/bin/cp -p /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php \
/var/www/html/wordpress/wp-config.php"
comment => "Creating wp-config.php from wp-config-sample.php";
}
Here is the wp-config-sample.php sample config:
// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here');
/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'username_here');
/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here');
Taking the sample config above, we can use the "replace_patterns" in cfengine_stdlib.cf to replace database_name_here with our database name, and so on. Just like using a template, we replace placeholders with actual values.
bundle agent wpconfig_is_properly_configured
{
files:
"/var/www/html/wordpress/wp-config.php"
edit_line => replace_default_wordpress_config_with_ours;
}
bundle edit_line replace_default_wordpress_config_with_ours
{
replace_patterns:
"database_name_here" replace_with => value("wordpress");
replace_patterns:
"username_here" replace_with => value("wordpress");
replace_patterns:
"password_here" replace_with => value("lopsa10linux");
}
Configure IPTables
As a finishing touch, let's make sure our host firewall allows inbound connections on port 80 TCP (Figure 9).
The is our most complicated promise bundle. There are three levels of abstraction: a "files" type promise that edits a file using "edit_line" type promise bundle uses "insert_lines" (from cfengine_stdlib.cf) which has an attribute "location" which is defined (in a separate promise attribute body) as before the iptables rule for accepting established TCP connections.
Incidentally, this promise bundle will also restart iptables if it edits the iptables config file.
Abstracting the details allows the sysadmin to see at a high level what's going on without being blinded by too many details at once, yet the details are accessible to examination if needed.
bundle agent allow_http_inbound
{
files:
redhat:: # tested on RHEL only, file location may vary on other OSs
"/etc/sysconfig/iptables"
edit_line => insert_HTTP_allow_rule_before_the_accept_established_tcp_conns_rule,
comment => "insert HTTP allow rule into /etc/sysconfig/iptables",
classes => if_repaired("iptables_edited");
commands:
iptables_edited::
"/sbin/service iptables restart"
comment => "Restarting iptables to load new config";
}
bundle edit_line insert_HTTP_allow_rule_before_the_accept_established_tcp_conns_rule
{
vars:
"http_rule" string => "-A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT";
insert_lines: "$(http_rule)",
location => before_the_accept_established_tcp_conns_rule;
}
body location before_the_accept_established_tcp_conns_rule
{
before_after => "before";
first_last => "first";
select_line_matching => "^-A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT.*";
}
To summarize, here is what the policy can do:
- Install Web server and required httpd modules (php, php-mysql);
- Install Web app in httpd docroot
- Install and configure the database for the Web app
- Configure the Web app to use the database
- Configure the host firewall
There is a more sophisticated version of this automated WordPress installer in Aleksey's "CFEngine 3 Examples Collection" ( http://www.verticalsysadmin.com/cfengine/cfengine_examples.tar ), see 2030_More_Examples._EC2._Example102_wordpress_installation.cf
Further Reading
Aleksey has been a UNIX/Linux system administrator for 13 years, and will share his knowledge during the "Time Management for System Administrators" session at the So Cal Linux Expo on 20 Jan 2011 (http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale10x/events/scale-university) and "Automating System Administration using CFEngine 3", a 3 day hands-on course, in the Bay Area on 25-27 January 2012 and in Los Angeles on 20-22 February 2012.
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