2. PulpDist Web Application

The PulpDist web application is a Django-based web service that can be set up to monitor a network of Pulp servers.

Current iterations focus primarily on status monitoring, leaving configuration tasks to command line scripting tools. Longer term, some configuration tasks may be permitted through forms in the web application.

This page focuses on deployment of a single PulpDist web app instance with a colocated Pulp server. Other configurations are of course possible - the two communicate solely through the Pulp REST API (Note: the PulpDist web app does not yet cache results received from the Pulp server, nor has it been optimised to make full use of server side batch queries and filtering, so expect poor performance from the current version if the two aren’t running on the same web server and abysmal performance if they aren’t at least on the same LAN).

2.1. Deployment

The first step in deploying a standard PulpDist web application with a colocated Pulp server is:

$ sudo yum install pulpdist-plugins pulpdist-httpd

(Note: prebuilt RPMs are not yet available from the public repo. See Building the PulpDist RPMs)

If you’re using a custom Django settings file, then package that as an RPM with a dependency on pulpdist-django and install the custom RPM instead of pulpdist-httpd. More on that below.

After installation, a few configuration settings need to be adjusted.

  1. Update /etc/pulp/pulp.conf in accordance with the Pulp Installation Guide, including:

    • setting up OAuth authentication
    • setting up LDAP user authentication
    • changing the default password
    • Ensure the file is not world-readable (as both the OAuth key and the admin password allow full access to the Pulp server)

    There are various certificate related settings in this file that can be safely ignored for current PulpDist installations. They relate to the use of access controlled repositories, which PulpDist doesn’t currently support. Setting up the AMQP messaging support is also an option, but not required.

  2. Update /etc/pulpdist/site.conf in accordance with the embedded comments. Notably:

    • Enter the initial list of system administrators
    • Set the passphrase for encrypted database fields
    • Generate and enter a private Django secret key (see below)

  3. Update /etc/httpd/conf.d/pulpdist.conf to set the Kerberos domain correctly (and, optionally, add a keytab reference for single-sign-on support). Note that pulpdist-httpd makes a number of assumptions that are only valid when using Kerberos for authentication - if you want to do something else (e.g. use Django’s native authentication), install pulpdist-django instead (either directly or an RPM dependency) and include pulpdist.django_app as an installed application in a custom Django site definition.

  4. Initialise and start the Pulp server. This will start both the MongoDB data store as well the Apache web server (note that running Pulp’s init.d scripts directly doesn’t appear to work correctly):

    $ service pulp-server init
$ service pulp-server start

  5. Update /etc/pulp/admin/admin.conf to replace localhost.localdomain with the fully qualified domain of the server

  6. Optionally, set up a separate administrator account for the Pulp server and restrict the default admin account to read-only access (currently used via the web UI over OAuth)

    # Use the default account to add a new administrator
pulp-admin auth login --username admin
pulp-admin user create --username ncoghlan --name "Nick Coghlan" --ldap
pulp-admin role add --role super-users --user ncoghlan

# Use the new administrator account to restrict the default account
pulp-admin auth login --username ncoghlan
pulp-admin role create --role read-only
pulp-admin permission grant --resource / --role read-only -o read
pulp-admin role add --role read-only --user admin
pulp-admin role remove --role super-users --user admin

# Check the permissions have been updated appropriately
pulp-admin permission show --resource /

  7. Log in to the PulpDist web application as one of the system administrators configured in Step 2. Click the “Site Admin” link, then use the Django admin UI to add a reference to the colocated Pulp server. The fields are as follows:

    • Pulp site: name used in the user interface for this server
    • Hostname: fully qualified hostname for this server (will be checked by SSL)
    • Oauth key: the Pulp OAuth key configured in Step 1
    • Oauth secret: the Pulp OAuth secret configured in Step 1

The following command can be used to generate a fresh Django secret key:

python -c 'from random import choice; print("".join([choice("abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789!@#$%^&*(-_=+)") for i in range(50)]))'

2.2. Django Admin CLI

The command line interface for Django administration of the site is available as:

$ sudo python -m pulpdist.manage_site --help

Refer to the Django documentation for details of what this command supports (like the default manage.py, pulpdist.manage_site is a thin convenience wrapper around django-admin).

2.3. REST API

The Rest API is relative to the assigned base URL for the django_pulpdist application (/pulpdist/ by default):

api/  # API root

api/servers/                           # All configured Pulp servers
api/servers/<server_id>/               # Specific server
api/servers/<server_id>/repos          # -> api/repos/<server_id>
api/servers/<server_id>/content_types  # -> api/content_types/<server_id>
api/servers/<server_id>/distributors   # -> api/distributors/<server_id>
api/servers/<server_id>/importers      # -> api/importers/<server_id>

api/repos                                      # All repos on all servers
api/repos/<server_id>/                         # All repos on server
api/repos/<server_id>/<repo_id>/               # Specific repo
api/repos/<server_id>/<repo_id>/importer       # Importer config & status
api/repos/<server_id>/<repo_id>/distributors   # Assigned distributors
api/repos/<server_id>/<repo_id>/sync_history   # Past sync operations

api/content_types                         # All content types on all servers
api/content_types/<server_id>/            # All content types on server
api/content_types/<server_id>/<type_id>/  # Specific content type definition

api/distributors                           # All distributors on all servers
api/distributors/<server_id>/              # All distributors on server
api/distributors/<server_id>/<plugin_id>/  # Specific distributor definition

api/importers                           # All importers on all servers
api/importers/<server_id>/              # All importers on server
api/importers/<server_id>/<plugin_id>/  # Specific importer definition