Picking the Right Hammer for the Job

Red Hat Satellite Server is a key tool in the provisioning process for the systems in our Labs.  In one of our labs we have an older deployment running Satellite 6 which maps to the upstream project The Foreman version 1.11.  Since I want to be able to perform repeatable operations on this server, I need to make Web API calls.

The easiest way to do this is to use the Hammer CLI. But it turns out the version of Hammer is somewhat tied to the version of Satellite server; the version I have in Fedora 27 Does not talk to this older Satellite instance.  So, I want to run an older Hammer.

I decided to use this as an opportunity to walk through running an RPM managed application targetted for RHEL 6/EPEL 6 via Docker.

Edit: actually, this might not be the case, but the rest of the learning process was interesting enough that I kept working at it.
Edit2: This was necessary, see the bottom. Also, the 1.11 in the URL refers to the upstream repo for theforeman. I’d use a different repo for building using supported RH RPMs.

Here is what I learned.

It took some trial and error to get to the following Dockerfile

FROM index.docker.io/centos:6
 MAINTAINER Adam Young <ayoung@redhat.com>
 
COPY foreman.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/
 RUN yum -y install centos-release-scl yum-utils
 RUN yum-config-manager --enable rhel-server-rhscl-6-rpm
 RUN yum -y install rh-ruby22
 RUN yum -y install tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli &&\
 yum -y clean all
 
CMD /usr/bin/hammer

The reason I have the separate RUN lines as opposed to using the &&\ line continuation technique is that I wanted a faster turnaround time for making changes;

With this docker file, I can build the image using

docker build -t hammer-cli .

And run the CLI using

docker run hammer-cli

which produces the output

Usage:
 hammer [OPTIONS] SUBCOMMAND [ARG] ...
 
Parameters:
 SUBCOMMAND subcommand
 [ARG] ... subcommand arguments
 
Subcommands:
 defaults Defaults management
 shell Interactive shell
 
Options:
 --autocomplete LINE Get list of possible endings
 --csv Output as CSV (same as --output=csv)
 --csv-separator SEPARATOR Character to separate the values
 --interactive INTERACTIVE Explicitly turn interactive mode on/off
 One of true/false, yes/no, 1/0.
 --output ADAPTER Set output format. One of [base, table, silent, csv, yaml, json]
 --show-ids Show ids of associated resources
 --version show version
 -c, --config CFG_FILE path to custom config file
 -d, --debug show debugging output
 -h, --help print help
 -p, --password PASSWORD password to access the remote system
 -r, --reload-cache force reload of Apipie cache
 -s, --server SERVER remote system address
 -u, --username USERNAME username to access the remote system
 -v, --verbose be verbose

If I want to pass command line arguments to the command, I can override the entrypoint.  To get help I can run:

docker run hammer-cli /usr/bin/hammer --help

But trying to run a non-trivial command seems to fail:

$ docker run hammer-cli /usr/bin/hammer host
Error: No such sub-command 'host'
 
See: 'hammer --help'

Perhaps I need additional plugins?

On a functioning system, I can run

hammer user list

And get a response. What other RPMS are on there:

$ rpmquery -a | grep hammer
 tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli-0.5.1.13-2.el7sat.noarch
 tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman_remote_execution-0.0.5.3-1.el7sat.noarch
 tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman_bootdisk-0.1.3.3-1.el7sat.noarch
 tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman_tasks-0.0.10.3-1.el7sat.noarch
 tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_katello-0.0.22.29-1.el7sat.noarch
 tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman_discovery-0.0.2.3-1.el7sat.noarch
 tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_import-0.11.2-1.el7sat.noarch
 tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_csv-2.2.1.1-1.el7sat.noarch
 tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman_docker-0.0.6-1.el7sat.noarch
 tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman-0.5.1.10-1.el7sat.noarch
 tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman_admin-0.0.5-1.el7sat.noarch

Lets add these in to the docker file and see if it makes a difference;

After much trial and error, it turns out the issue is with a few things, including DNS. I did need the plugins above.  I finally got the command to run like this:

docker run hammer-cli /usr/bin/hammer -p redacted -u tester -s https://10.3.76.6 host list

 

Here is my final dockerfile

FROM index.docker.io/centos:6
MAINTAINER Adam Young <ayoung@redhat.com>
 
COPY foreman.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/
RUN yum -y install centos-release-scl yum-utils
RUN yum-config-manager --enable rhel-server-rhscl-6-rpm
RUN yum -y install rh-ruby22
RUN yum -y install tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli \
tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli \
tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman_remote_execution \
tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman_bootdisk \
tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman_tasks \
tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_katello \
tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman_discovery \
tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_import \
tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_csv \
tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman_docker \
tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman \
tfm-rubygem-hammer_cli_foreman_admin
RUN yum -y clean all
 
CMD /usr/bin/hammer

Edit: 2 so I DID need this version of Hammer, as the host create failed using the latest. I was able to createa host using the following command:

docker run  hammer-cli  /usr/bin/hammer  \
       -p redacted -u tester \
       -s https://10.3.76.6 \
       host create \
       --name blade02 \
       --architecture x86_64 \
       --domain mydomain.net \
       --operatingsystem "RedHat 7.4" \
       --partition-table "Kickstart default" \
       --location Phoenix \
       --hostgroup "MYDOMAINHOSTGROUP" \
       --interface="primary=true, \
            mac=D8:D3:85:C3:3C:08" \
       --organization DEMO \
       --root-pass redacted

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