Client requirements

BSDploy and its dependencies are written in Python and thus should run on pretty much any platform, although it’s currently only been tested on Mac OS X and FreeBSD.

Server requirements

Warning

BSDploy is intended for initial configuration of a jail host before any jails have been installed. While technically possible, BSDploy is not intended for managing existing systems with non-BSDploy jails. Running against hosts that have not been bootstrapped by BSDploy can result in loss of data.

A FreeBSD system that wants to be managed by BSDploy will

  • need to have ezjail installed
  • as well as Python
  • must have SSH access enabled (either for root or with sudo configured).
  • have ZFS support (BSDploy does not support running on non-ZFS filesystems)

Strictly speaking, BSDploy only needs Python for the initial configuration of the jailhost. If you chose to perform that step yourself or use a pre-existing host, you won’t need Python on the host, just ezjail.

Normally, BSDploy will take care of these requirements for you during bootstrapping but in situations where this is not possible, manually providing the abovementioned requirements should allow you to apply BSDploy’s host configuration anyway.

BSDploy supports FreeBSD >= 9.2, including 10.3.

Client Installation

Since BSDploy is still early in development, there is currently only a packaged version for FreeBSD but no others such as i.e. homebrew, aptitude etc.) available yet.

You can however install beta releases from PyPI or a bleeding edge development version from github.

Installing on FreeBSD

BSDploy is available from FreeBSD ports as sysutils/bsdploy, for details check it at FreshPorts.

Installing from PyPI

BSDploy and its dependencies are written in Python, so you can install them from the official Python Packaging Index (a.k.a. PyPI).

The short version:

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virtualenv .
source bin/activate
pip install bsdploy

(1) BSDploy has specific requirements in regards to Fabric and ansible (meaning, their latest version will not neccessarily work with the latest version of BSDploy until the latter is adjusted) it is therefore strongly recommended to install BSDploy into its own virtualenv.

To do so, you will need Python and virtualenv installed on your system, i.e.

  • on Mac OS X using homebrew you would install brew install pyenv-virtualenv.
  • on FreeBSD using pkg you would pkg install py27-virtualenv

(2) To use the version installed inside this virtualenv it is suggested to ‘source’ the python interpreter. This will add the bin directory of the virtualenv (temporarily) to your $PATH so you can use the binaries installed inside it just as if they were installed globally. Note, that the default activate works for bash, if you’re using tcsh (the default on FreeBSD you will have to source bin/activate.csh)

Installing from github

To follow along the latest version of BSDploy you need Python and virtualenv plus – obviously – git. Then:

git clone https://github.com/ployground/bsdploy.git
cd bsdploy
make

This will check out copies of BSDploy’s immediate dependencies (ploy and friends) and create the ploy* executables inside bin. You can either add the bin directory to your path or symlink them into somewhere that’s already on your path, but as described above, it is recommended to source the virtualenv to have a ‘global’ installation of BSDploy:

source bin/activate

When keeping your checkout up-to-date it is usually a good idea to update the ploy packages (located inside src), as well. The best way to do so is to use the provided develop command after updating the bsdploy repository itself like so:

git pull
bin/develop up -v

The -v flag will show any git messages that arise during the update.