Bootstrapping an Elexis development and testing environment made easy!

Bootstrapping and testing Elexis took me (Niklaus) many hours when I started working on Elexis.
Therefore I was always looking for clever shortcuts to create a simple, reproducible build environment.
With this project I am coming much closer!

Preparing the 0.1 release took me a few days of work and confronted me (again) with all the small, pesky details I had to overcome to run my Jenkins CI under
http://ngiger.dyndns.org/jenkins/. The readme is found as readme.v1.textile.

With version 0.2 is a complete rewrite using the facilities offered by Puppet 3.0. Also it is already much closer to my ideas from the Elexis-Admin project.

Useage, questions, examples are beeing maintained in the Wiki

What you can do with your fancy new virtual machine(s)

By default I only actived the node “devel” in the Vagrantfile in the variable systemsToBoot. Therefore a vagrant up will just bring up a single machine where developers. In the Vagrantfile you find also a number of ports which you can use to access the different services offered by the virtual machine.

• Login via as user vagrant with password vagrant. The vagrant user has (via sudo) all rights.
• Several users (you must the password first via sudo passwd myUser). E.g.
  bq. grep rgw /etc/passwd
  rgw:x:1201:1201:Without him there would be no Elexis. Thanks a lot!:/home/rgw:/bin/bash

• KDE
• Juno under /opt/eclipse/eclipse-rcp-juno-SR2/eclipse/ and the Debian Eclipse-RCP via /usr/bin/eclipse
• Jubula /opt/jubula_6.0.01011
• elexis-bootstrap under /home/elexis/elexis-bootstrap
• jenkins (no jobs defined)
• Latex to build all *.tex files
• The Opensource Elexis under /opt/elexis_opensource/2.1.7.rc2
• The Medelexis variant under /opt/elexis/current
• A mysql-server accessible via mysql -u elexis --password=elexisTest. Also accessible via network.
• A postgresql-server psql -U elexis --password -h localhost
• Both database servers have two empty databases elexis and test to play with.
• If you know how to patch hieradata/common.yaml you may customize sending e-mal via smtp.

Feature only for server/database and with correct configuration

• Minimal support for the elexis-cockpit
• Daily backup of elexis database
• X2go-server

The virtual machines are all connect to the local network via a bridge interface. Therefore a VM node server can be seen by all other machines around to test Elexis even easier.

Howto improve/extend the existing puppet receipes

From Best Practices

The classes, defined types, and plugins in a module should all be related, and the module should aim to be as self-contained as possible.

I also created for each (mini-) feature a file .pp in the tests folders of the module. This allows me to test/debug a feature like this.

cd /path/to/checkout @sudo puppet apply --confdir . modules/x2go/tests/client.pp --debug

puppet testing on the development

Test the module java on a machine where you have a working copy of this project, just call (in your own development environemnt):
cd /path/to/checkout
vagrant provision

puppet testing on the target

cd /path/to/checkout
vagrant ssh
sudo puppet apply --modulepath /tmp/vagrant-puppet/modules-0 /tmp/vagrant-puppet/modules-0/java/tests/init.pp --debug

git howto

• See Git-Tools
• Common usage
• If you make changes or add a new module, fork the original module into your github account, then
• git submodule add https://github.com/<yourname>/puppet-x2go modules/x2go
• To ease pushing to your personal github account use git remote add github gitgithub.com:/puppetlabs-mysql.git@
• This enables you to use cd modules/x2go && git push github
• To update all submodules call git submodule foreach git pull origin master

create a base box

See the readme.texile in the subfolder definitions. This was used to create the Elexis-Wheezy-amd64.box which can be downloaded
via http://ngiger.dyndns.org/downloads/Elexis-Wheezy-amd64-20130423.box

Adapt for a new client

To distinguish between the various scenarios we use puppet environemnts. The following environemnts are predefined here

• empty # minimal build
• demoDB # create an elexis OpenSource installation with a demo database for playing
• developer # create a developer environment (eclipse-IDE, mysql, postgres DB-Servers)
• mustermann # a typical scenario for a medical practice

The configuration of each of these scenarios is kept as a hiera yaml file named hieradata//.yaml. To made it usable for the production scenario I add usually a soft link from .yaml to production.yaml.

The mustermann scenarios has some additional configuration for its main server under hieradata/mustermann/server.mustermann.com.yaml.

When I have a new client client a usually create a configuration directory (e.g. a git repository /opt/clients/musterfrau/configuration) and create a logical link to it as hieradata/mustefrau.
On each of the machines to provision of my client I will create a clone of the configuration and link hieradata/production to it.

Using such a scenario is done add —environement=scenario to the puppet command line argument.

TODO/Goals

Goals to be achieved before declaring feature completeness

• Integrate changes/suggestion to make the project interesting for more developpers (let it fullfill theirs and my requirements). I started with my requirements but I will happy to help others to try to find a solution which works fine for everybody!

Coming soon (aka prototypes exist and worked almost):

• Backups/Restore Database from server/backup
• Installation of Beta release
• install elexis versions correctly, via apt or Elexis-installer (resolved for Linux, missing for Samba/Windows-Clients)
• Postgres Online Backup
• Add LibreOffice to test elexis text plugins
• Setup mail-delivery/archiving
• Daily backup onto an encrypted external hard disk
• netboot

Probably for Release 0.3

• Add support for Elexis client testing under MacOSX
• Support 32-bit and 64-bit Jubula GUI-tests in the Jenkins
• Minimal setup for a medical practice (DB & backup)
• include https://forge.puppetlabs.com/erwbgy/system/readme to for a simple way configure the system

To be determined

• Full support PostgresSQL
• Investigate, decide/document how different developpers/OC may refine/add files/requirements
• Adapt KDE to match some preferences (e.g. keyboard layout, tabs for the konsole application)
• Support several javas (e.g. Sun-Java-6, OpenJDK-6, OpenJDK-7)
• backup and anonymiser scripts/setup for MySQL/PostgresSQL, e.g. http://www.slideshare.net/roidelapluie/postgresql-90-ha-at-rmll-2012
• os/db-user elexis (dito Arztx, MPAx,oc)
• Deutsch als Vorgabesprache (veewee with elexisBaseBox passes validation, but cannot be used)
• Merge project with elexis-admin
• Have at least 2 additional developpers using at least a part of the puppet stuff
• Have at least 5 beta installation in medical practices
• Specify specific version of jenkins and its plugins

Move stuff to docker containers

The following services should be moved to docker containers

• elexis-cockpit
• mysql/postgresql server
• wiki

Feature that might be in 1.0 or later

• Add support for Elexis client testing under Windows (Puppet has only initial support for windows)

History

• Release 0.2: April 25, 2013. Support server and backup (still some features mixing). Compiling the elexis-bootstrap project with Elexis 2.1.7
• Release 0.1: July 15, 2012. Runs Jubula integration tests with Elexis 2.1.6 on a Debian Squeeze 32-bit machine

Ideas/comments are welcome. Use the elexis-develop mailing list or contact the author directly via niklaus.giger@member.fsf.org