GEC2: Gentoo EC2, Puppet and Portage Tools

Copyright 2008 Tim Dysinger
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

This project is a hybrid EC2, Puppet & Portage management tool for
Gentoo Linux images.  With it you can build a Gentoo EC2 image from
scratch, bundle it, upload it to Amazon and fire it up.  All
software management from the image stage to the running instance
(ongoing) is managed by Puppet.  Additionally there is a portage
overlay for packages helpful to running servers at ec2.

Even if you just want to use gentoo and don't want to bother with
puppet, this project can be of use to you.  The base images are nothing
more than gentoo base system, dhcp, ddclient, openntp, syslog,
vixie-cron, postfix, java, ruby & rubygems, puppet and amazon api/ami
tools.  This is pretty small and (besides puppet) is the base minimum
to run an ec2 instance & exercise the api/ami tools.

If you don't feel like messing around with creating images for ec2
from scratch (or just want to mess around with a good solid ec2
optimized gentoo image), then just use one of the following public
images I created (they were created using this same process and are
the end product):

ami-d22cc8bb m1.small  32-bit 1-core "athlon-xp" optimized
ami-c02cc8a9 m1.large  64-bit 2-core "opteron"   optimized
ami-c12cc8a8 m1.xlarge 64-bit 4-core "opteron"   optimized
ami-5d2dc934 c1.medium 32-bit 2-core "prescott"  optimized
ami-332cc85a c1.xlarge 64-bit 8-core "nocona"    optimized

=========================================================================
If you would like to dig in or customize your image follow the following:
=========================================================================

Now that we have some dog food to eat, you can just fire up one of the
gentoo public images above.  Use the proper image that matches the
instance type you are targeting.

Rsync this project to your build server and login
$ rsync -r -u root@myec2buildserver:~/gec2
$ ssh myec2buildserver
$ cd gec2

Update ruby & gems on your build server.
$ gem update
$ gem install rake amazon-ec2 aws-s3 hpricot facter --no-rdoc --no-ri
$ gem clean

Look in the example dir and copy env.yml to the base dir with your
correct aws account attributes. Then run rake to assemble the base
gentoo image.

$ rake -t image:configure ;# or nohup it so you can logout if you want

This may take a couple hours as 100% of the OS is compiled for the CPU
and Architecture of the image type. If all goes well you'll have a
fully created chroot gentoo image. I say "If all goes well" becase
gentoo is very hands on as things change in the portage tree.

You then need to bundle it for ec2, upload and register it.

$ rake -t image:upload

If all goes well you should have a nice fresh image for yourself in a
bucket all registered and ready to launch. I say "If all goes well"
because sometimes the upload process to s3 fails.  Just try it again.

Now start a puppet master server

$ rake -t run[us-east-1c,c1.medium,ami-XXXXYYY,lolcatz,lolcatz]

Now setup your cluster module and users and your node declarations
like the example.  Then sync up your puppet master manifests & modules

$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/lolcatz.pem
$ rsync -r -u root@my.amazon.lolcatz.master.server.com:/etc/puppet

Start some puppets (node names must match your nodes on the nodes.pp manifest)
$ rake -t instance:run[us-east-1c,c1.medium,ami-XXXXYYY,lolcatz,curious]
$ rake -t instance:run[us-east-1c,c1.medium,ami-XXXXYYY,lolcatz,puffball]

HINT: As you are working with puppet. Log into the master server and run
puppet and puppet master in debug mode.

$ puppetmaster --no-daemonize -v -d ; # on puppetmaster
$ puppet $PUPPET_EXTRA_OPTS --test -d ; # on puppets