VMCK

Installation

1. Set up a local nomad cluster:

   • Install nomad:

     mkdir /tmp/cluster; cd /tmp/cluster
     curl -OL https://releases.hashicorp.com/nomad/0.8.7/nomad_0.8.7_linux_amd64.zip
     unzip nomad_0.8.7_linux_amd64.zip

   • Create a configuration file, /tmp/cluster/nomad.hcl, with the following content, replacing eth0 with the default network interface, which you can determine by running route | grep default | awk '{print $8}':

     advertise {
       http = "{{ GetInterfaceIP `eth0` }}"
       serf = "{{ GetInterfaceIP `eth0` }}"
     }
     server {
       job_gc_threshold = "5m"
     }
     client {
       enabled = true
       network_interface = "eth0"
     }

   • Run nomad:

     cd /tmp/cluster
     ./nomad agent -dev -config=./nomad.hcl &

2. Set up the VMCK server:

   pipenv install
   echo 'SECRET_KEY=changeme' > .env
   echo 'DEBUG=true' >> .env
   pipenv run ./manage.py migrate

Usage

• Run the web server:

  pipenv run ./manage.py runserver

• Create a job:

  pipenv run ./manage.py createjob

VM images

Each job spins up a QEMU virtual machine to evaluate the submission. It needs a disk image, which can be downloaded from https://github.com/mgax/vmck-images, or built using contrib/build.py, which downloads an Ubuntu cloud image, prepares a cloud-init configuration, applies it, and exports the resulting image. Run it with an argument to specify the output path:

./contrib/build.py /tmp/bionic.qcow

Testing

With a Nomad cluster running on localhost:4646, run pipenv run pytest, and enjoy. By default, the test suite will use a mock vm, implemented with a docker backend, instead of qemu. To run the tests with the qemu backend, set TESTING_BACKEND=qemu in the .env file.

To make the qemu tests run faster you can mirror the VM image locally and override the URL in the local .env file - see testsuite/settings.py for the default image.

Troubleshooting

• QEMU fails to start with error qemu-system-x86_64: Invalid host forwarding rule 'tcp:${attr.unique.network.ip-address}:10674-:22' (Bad host address): the host address has changed (e.g. because it moved to a different WiFi hotspot). Restart Nomad and it should pick up the new address.