Isolated, Scalable, & Lightweight Environment for Training

Make IT training a smoother process...

A container based system for teaching Linux based software with minimal participation and configuration effort. ISLET supports running many different training environments concurrently and has a plugin system for extending functionality. The participation barrier is set very low, students only need an SSH client to connect to ISLET.

Uses

• Event and staff training
• Capture the flag competitions
• Development environments

Demo

You can quickly try out ISLET on some of my dev systems. Password is demo

ssh demo@islet1.jonschipp.com
ssh demo@islet2.jonschipp.com

Design

####Simplified Diagram

####Detailed Flowchart

Installation

Installation of ISLET is very simple and it can be done in two ways:

On the host operation system

make install

Or as a Docker container which requires little to no modification to the host

make install-contained

Target:	Description:
install	Install ISLET: install-files + configuration
install-contained	Install ISLET as a container, no modification to host system
update	Downloads and install new code (custom changes to default files will be overwritten)
uninstall	Uninstall ISLET (Recommended to backup your stuff first)
mrproper	Removes files that did not come with the source
install-docker	Installs latest Docker from Docker repo (Debian/Ubuntu only)
docker-config	Reconfigures Docker storage backend to limit container and image sizes
user-config	Configures a user account called demo w/ password dem
security-config	Configures sshd with islet relevant security in mind
iptables-config	Installs iptables ruleset

GNU make accepts arguments if you want a customized installation (not supported):

make install INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/islet USER=training
make user-config INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/islet USER=training PASS=training
make security-config INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/islet USER=training
make uninstall INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/islet USER=training

Variable:	Description:
CONFIG_DIR	ISLET config files directory (def: /etc/islet)
INSTALL_DIR	ISLET installation directory (def: /opt/islet)
CRON	Directory to place islet crontab file (def: /etc/cron.d)
USER	User account created with user-config target (def: demo)
PASS	User account password created with user-config target (def: demo)
SIZE	Maximum container and image size with configure-docker target (def: 2G)
IPTABLES	Iptables ruleset (def: /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/iptables-rules)
NAGIOS	Location of nagios plugins (def: /usr/local/nagios/libexec)
PORT	The SSH port on the host when installing ISLET as a container (def: 2222)
PACKAGE	Type of package to build for make package (def: deb)

Updating

Updating an existing ISLET installation is very simple:

For an existing host installation (make install):

make update

For an existing container installation (make install-contained):

docker pull jonschipp/islet

Dependencies

• Linux, Bash, Cron, OpenSSH, Make, SQLite, and Docker

The configure script will check for dependencies

./configure

Typically all you need is make, sqlite, and docker (for Debian/Ubuntu):

apt-get install make sqlite
make install-docker

The included installation scripts are designed to work with Debian/Ubuntu systems.

Note: Installing ISLET as container (make install-contained) only requires Docker

Debian/Ubuntu

The following make targets will install ISLET and configure the system with security in mind for ISLET. It is designed to be a quick way to get a working system with a good configuration.

Install ISLET on the host:

make install
make user-config
make security-config    # Configure islet relevant security with sshd
chown root:islet /var/lib/docker /var/lib/docker/repositories-*
chmod g+x /var/lib/docker
chmod g+r /var/lib/docker/repositories-*

Install ISLET as a container on the host:

make install-contained	# Installs ISLET as a container

See the SECURITY file for more information on manually securing the system. See the ADMIN file for more information on administering the system.

Adding Training Environments

See Docker's image documentation

1. Build or pull in a new Docker image

2. Create an ISLET config file for that image. You can use make template for an example.

3. Place it in /etc/islet with a .conf extension.

It should now be available from the selection menu upon login.

More info: [Mailing List] (https://groups.google.com/d/forum/islet)