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Open Terms Archive Ansible Collection

This repository contains the opentermsarchive.deployment Ansible collection. This Ansible collection provides playbooks to set up the infrastructure of and deploy Open Terms Archive applications.

To prevent confusion between the notion of Ansible Collection and an Open Terms Archive Collection, this documentation will refer to Ansible Collection only as “Playbook”, as this is the main entry point to interact with it.

Installation

Ansible is required to use this playbook.

This playbook can be installed from Ansible Galaxy manually with the ansible-galaxy command-line tool:

ansible-galaxy collection install opentermsarchive.deployment

It can also be included in a requirements.yml file using the format:

---
collections:
- name: opentermsarchive.deployment

And installed with the command:

ansible-galaxy collection install -r requirements.yml

Usage

Once installed, the playbook deploy allows to set up the two main Open Terms Archive applications: Engine and Federation API.

The playbook can be executed using the ansible-playbook command-line tool:

ansible-playbook opentermsarchive.deployment.deploy

It is possible to check the playbook execution without actually applying changes with the check and diff options:

ansible-playbook opentermsarchive.deployment.deploy --check --diff

See “Using collections” in Ansible’s user guide for more information about Ansible collections.

Configuration

Configuration is done through various files located in the deployment folder. Below is an example of the directory structure:

deployment/
  ├── inventory.yml
  ├── pm2.config.cjs
  ├── github-bot-private-key
  └── .env

  • Inventory File — inventory.yml

This file is mandatory

The inventory.yml file defines the hosts and the variables required for the deployment. This file should contain all the necessary variables as described below.

Variable Description Required or default value
ota_source_repository URL of the declarations repository to deploy required
ota_source_repository_branch Git branch or tag of the source repository main
ota_directory Directory path where the code will be deployed on the server Name of the repository

These variables are defined in the inventory file, for example:

all:
  hosts:
    127.0.0.1:
      ansible_user: debian
      ota_source_repository: https://github.com/OpenTermsArchive/demo-declarations.git
      ota_source_repository_branch: master
      ota_directory: demo

Changes on a existing deployment

If the ota_source_repository is changed on an existing target, the application has to be stopped before the new configuration is deployed.

  • PM2 Configuration File — pm2.config.cjs

This file is mandatory

The pm2.config.cjs file is used to configure the PM2 process manager, which is used to start the applications.

  • GitHub Bot Private Key — github-bot-private-key

The github-bot-private-key file contains a private SSH key for accessing and pushing to SSH Git URLs. This file is required if ota_source_repository is an SSH Git URL or if the URLs for versions and/or snapshots repositories in the config/production.json file of the source repository are SSH Git URLs.

It is strongly recommended to encrypt this file if is is checked in to a public repository.

  • Environment Variables File — .env

The .env file contains the environment variables for the deployed applications.

It is strongly recommended to encrypt this file if is is checked in to a public repository.

File encryption

Sensitive configuration files should be encrypted using Ansible Vault.

Examples of encrypting and decrypting a file:

  • Encrypt the github-bot-private-key file: ansible-vault encrypt github-bot-private-key
  • Decrypt the github-bot-private-key file: ansible-vault decrypt github-bot-private-key
  • Encrypting with a password stored in a file:
    • echo 'your_password' > vault.key
    • ansible-vault encrypt --vault-password-file vault.key github-bot-private-key

To run the playbook with encrypted files:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml --ask-vault-pass

Or with a password file:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml --vault-password-file vault.key

Please note that encrypted files will be decrypted and stored in plaintext on the deployment server. Always protect access to your production server.

Playbook execution refinement

Use tags to refine playbook execution. Example commands:

Tag Description Command Example
start Start Open Terms Archive applications ansible-playbook opentermsarchive.deployment.deploy --tags start
stop Stop Open Terms Archive applications ansible-playbook opentermsarchive.deployment.deploy --tags stop
restart Restart Open Terms Archive applications ansible-playbook opentermsarchive.deployment.deploy --tags restart
infrastructure Set up the infrastructure only ansible-playbook opentermsarchive.deployment.deploy --tags infrastructure
infrastructure Skip the infrastructure ansible-playbook opentermsarchive.deployment.deploy --skip-tags infrastructure

Development

Requirements

  1. Install Ansible.
  2. Install Vagrant.
  3. Install VirtualBox to manage virtual machines. If Docker is prefered, or on an Apple Silicon machine, install Docker instead.
  4. Create a dedicated SSH key with no password: ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/ota-vagrant -q -N "". This key will be automatically used by Vagrant.

VirtualBox is not compatible with Apple Silicon (M1…) processors. To use vagrant on this kind of machine, specifying the Docker provider will be required. Since MongoDB cannot be installed on ARM, it is skipped in the infrastructure installation process. This means the MongoDB storage repository cannot be tested with Vagrant with an Apple Silicon processor.

Usage

For testing this collection, a virtual machine description file is provided, inside the tests folder, to be used with Vagrant.

All following commands must be executed from the tests folder:

cd tests

Launch VM

vagrant up

With an Apple Silicon processor or to use Docker instead of VirtualBox, use vagrant up --provider=docker.

Then the code can be deployed to the running machine with all the options described before.

Test collection

Testing the Ansible collection locally is crucial to ensure that changes function properly before submitting them as a pull request.

The testing environment is preconfigured for Open Terms Archive maintainers. For other contributors, the inventory file tests/inventory.yml needs to be updated to specify repositories where they have authorizations. Additionally, the github-bot-private-key file should be updated.

Follow these instructions to test the collection in a local environment:

  • Ensure you have a clean testing environment to prevent interference from previous configurations:
vagrant destroy
vagrant up
  • Apply the changes to the virtual machine:
ansible-playbook ../playbooks/deploy.yml
  • Connect to the virtual machine to verify that changes were applied successfully:
vagrant ssh # use "vagrant" as password
  • Check that everything works as intended within the virtual machine. Depending on the nature of changes made, you can monitor logs or execute commands to validate functionality:
pm2 logs

Troubleshooting

If you encounter a Permission denied error at the “Gathering Facts” step of the playbook, this most likely means the Vagrant-managed SSH key is not loaded in your SSH agent.

  1. Identify which SSH key is used by Vagrant:
vagrant ssh-config | grep IdentityFile
  1. Add the private key to your SSH agent:
ssh-add /path/to/your/vagrant/private_key

License

The code for this software is distributed under the European Union Public Licence (EUPL) v1.2. Contact the author if you have any specific need or question regarding licensing.