usage.md

Usage

dl Command and Subcommands

dl is the dev-lxc command line tool.

dev-lxc subcommands and some options can be auto-completed by pressing the Tab key.

You only have to type enough of a dev-lxc subcommand to make it unique.

For example, the following commands are equivalent:

dl help
dl he

Display dev-lxc help

dl help

dl help <subcommand>

Configure a cluster

See the configuration docs to learn how to use the dl init command to create and configure a dev-lxc.yml file.

cluster-view, tks, tls commands

The dev-lxc-platform comes with some commands that create and manage helpful tmux/byobu sessions to more easily see the state of a cluster.

Running the cluster-view command in the same directory as a dev-lxc.yml file creates a tmux/byobu session with the same name as the cluster's directory.

cluster-view can also be run with the parent directory of a dev-lxc.yml file as the first argument and cluster-view will change to that directory before creating the tmux/byobu session.

The session's first window is named "cluster".

The left side is for running dev-lxc commands.

The right side updates every 0.5 seconds with the cluster's status provided by dl status.

The session's second window is named "shell". It opens in the same directory as the cluster's dev-lxc.yml file.

The tls and tks commands are really aliases.

tls is an alias for tmux list-sessions and is used to see what tmux/byobu sessions are running.

tks is an alias for tmux kill-session -t and is used to kill tmux/byobu sessions. When specifying the session to be killed you only need as many characters of the session name that are required to make the name unique among the list of running sessions.

I recommend switching to a different running tmux/byobu session before killing the current tmux/byobu session. Otherwise you will need to reattach to the remaining tmux/byobu session. Use the keyboard shortcuts Alt-Up/Down to easily switch between tmux/byobu sessions.

Cluster status

Run the following command to see the status of the cluster.

dl status

This is an example of the output.

chef.lxc            NOT_CREATED

analytics.lxc       NOT_CREATED

supermarket.lxc     NOT_CREATED

node-1.lxc          NOT_CREATED

Specifying a Subset of Servers

Many dev-lxc subcommands can act on a subset of the cluster's servers by specifying a regular expression that matches the desired server names.

For example, the following command will show the status of the Chef Server.

dl status chef

Start cluster

Starting the cluster the first time takes awhile since it has a lot to download and build.

dl up

A test org, users, knife.rb and keys are automatically created in the bootstrap backend server in /root/chef-repo/.chef for testing purposes.

The knife-opc plugin is installed in the embedded ruby environment of the Private Chef and Enterprise Chef server to facilitate the creation of the test org and user.

Note: You also have the option of running the prepare-product-cache subcommand which downloads required product packages to the cache.
This can be helpful when you don't want to start building the cluster yet but you want the package cache ready when you build the cluster later.

dl prepare-product-cache

Print Chef Automate Credentials

If the cluster has a Chef Automate server you can use the print-automate-credentials subcommand to see what the login credentials.

dl print-automate-credentials

Create chef-repo

Create a .chef directory in the current directory with appropriate knife.rb and pem files.

Use the -p option to also get pivotal.pem and pivotal.rb files.

Use the -f option to overwrite existing knife.rb and pivotal.rb files.

dl chef-repo

Now you can easily use knife to access the cluster.

knife client list

Stop and start the cluster

dl halt
dl up

Run arbitrary commands in each server

dl run-command chef 'uptime'

Attach the terminal to a server

Attach the terminal to a server in the cluster that matches the REGEX pattern given.

dl attach chef

Create a snapshot of the servers

Save the changes in the servers to snapshots with a comment.

dl halt
dl snapshot -c 'this is a snapshot comment'

List snapshots

dl snapshot -l

Restore snapshots

Restore snapshots by name.

Leave out the snapshot name or specify LAST to restore the most recent snapshot.

dl snapshot -r
dl up

Destroy snapshots

Destroy snapshots by name or destroy all snapshots by specifying ALL.

Leave out the snapshot name or specify LAST to destroy the most recent snapshots.

dl snapshot -d

Destroy cluster

Use the following command to destroy the cluster's servers.

dl destroy

Show Calculated Configuration

Mostly for debugging purposes you have the ability to print the calculated cluster configuration.

dl show-config