1. RPM Packaging for Sysadmins
David Nalley
@ke4qqq on twitter/identi.ca
New presentation available at:
The non-code portions of this presentation are licensed under a Creative Commons, Attribution, Share Alike 3.0, unported license.
Why are you here??
I have given this presentation to people inherently interested in distributions, but not to sysadmins
What breakup of distributions/OS
Solaris??
Deb?
RPM??

2. # whoami Recovering sysadmin F/LOSS community guy Packager for Fedora
Work for an ISV who packages software

3. Schedule Spend first hour or so getting through slides
This is designed to be interactive – please don't bore others by making them listen only to me – ask questions!, interact!
Break – OM NOMs
Spend 15 or so minutes getting access to VMs in 'the cloud'
Spend the rest of the class doing some hands on work with packages.

4. OS-specific or distro-specific installable container for software
define: package
OS-specific or distro-specific installable container for software

5. Why should sysadmins care?
SO WHAT?

6. Why should sysadmins care?
Automation – packaging makes decisions ahead of time

7. Why should sysadmins care?
Automation – packaging makes decisions ahead of time
Anyone still doing:
tar -zxvf foo.tar.gz
cd foo
./configure
make
make install

8. Why should sysadmins care
Repeatability
Using packages means that you will get the same behavior and files in the same location on subsequent installs

9. Why should sysadmins care?
Documentation:
Packages are documentation – provided you keep the original work. Building a package is far better than maintaining installation instructions.

10. Why should sysadmins care?
Easier customization
Need to deploy a package with different compiler options?
Need to patch the source for some cool new option?

11. Why should sysadmins care?
Security:
No compilers on hosts
Running your own package repository means you can ensure that every host with a given package will get updates.

12. Why should sysadmins care
Single source of truth for software (think Ruby gems, Python PyPi, Perl CPAN, PHP Pear)

13. Sysadmins should package F/LOSS for: fame peer review experience
Packaging for F/LOSS
Sysadmins should package F/LOSS for:
fame
peer review
experience

14. Packaging is really a snapshot of being a sysadmin
Automating
Configuration
Documenting
Doing things right the first time

15. Examples Learning by reading a book/website takes days or weeks
Hopefully learning by seeing examples from someone else will be faster
Longum iter est per preaecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!

16. Red Hat Package Manager Used by RHEL, SLES, Fedora, and a few others
RPM
Red Hat Package Manager
Used by RHEL, SLES, Fedora, and a few others

17. Resources Maximum RPM: http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm/
Build Service at openSuSE:
IBM DeveloperWorks – good generic docs

18. Setting up your environment
Fedora: yum install fedora-packager
SLES/openSuSE: yast -i osc
RHEL: yum install rpmbuild (or rpm-build)
Even within RPM changes there are some rather large differences.
For instance, openSuSE handles changelog differently, and places it in a separate file.
Fedora now uses sha-256, while RHEL uses MD5.

19. Setting up your environment
/usr/lib/rpm/macros
rpmdev-tree
mkdir -p ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS ~rpmbuild/RPMS \ ~/rpmbuild/SPECS ~rpmbuild/SOURCE \
~/rpmbuild/BUILD ~/rpmbuild/BUILDROOT

20. spec files – heart of rpm building
spec files are the instruction manual for the build process.

21. rpmbuild rpmlint mock koji Novell's Open Build Service
Tools
rpmbuild
rpmlint
mock
koji
Novell's Open Build Service
mock – creates chroot, installs requirements and builds
koji – uses mock to build, but does it for mulitple environments (EL4, EL5, F11, F12, etc). Fedora makes a build server available – must have a fedora account.
OBS – provides multiple distro and arch build service – last I checked multiarch support limited.

22. More tools (imperfect)
cpan2rpm
rust.sourceforge.net
pear make-rpm-spec Foo.tgz
gem2rpm
python setup.py bdist_rpm –spec-only

23. Contents of a spec file headers – information about the package
scripts – the real work
files – identifying ownership and permissions
changelog – who changed what when
Novell has started moving changelogs out of spec files.

24. spec file framework Name: Version: Release: 1%{?dist} Summary: Group:
License:
URL:
Source0:
BuildRoot: %(mktemp -ud %{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}- XXXXXX)
BuildRequires:
Requires:
%description

25. spec file framework %prep %setup -q %build %configure
make %{?_smp_mflags}
%install
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
make install DESTDIR=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT
%clean
%files
%defattr(-,root,root,-)
%doc
%changelog

26. Building the spec file
%{!?python_sitelib: %define python_sitelib %(%{__python} -c "from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib; print get_python_lib()")}
Name: zapplet
Version:
Release: %{dist}
Summary: Zenoss Tray Applet
Group: Applications/Communications
License: GPLv2+
URL:
Source0: %{version}.tar.gz
Source1:
BuildRoot: %{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}-root- %(%{__id_u} -n)
BuildRequires: python python-setuptools-devel desktop-file-utils
Requires: pygtk2
BuildArch: noarch
%description
Zapplet is a tray applet for monitoring aspects of Zenoss from the desktop.

27. Building the spec file %prep %setup -q -n zapplet-%{version}
cp %{SOURCE1} ./README.fedora
%build
CFLAGS="%{optflags}" %{__python} setup.py build
%install
rm -rf %{buildroot}
%{__python} setup.py install -O1 --skip-build --root %{buildroot}
desktop-file-install --add-category="Network" -- dir=%{buildroot}%{_datadir}/applications zapplet.desktop
rm -rf %{buildroot}%{_sysconfdir}/xdg/autostart/zapplet.desktop

28. Building the spec file %clean rm -rf %{buildroot} %files
%defattr(-,root,root,-)
%{python_sitelib}/*
%{_bindir}/%{name}
%{_datadir}/applications/zapplet.desktop
%doc README.fedora
%changelog
* Mon Jan David Nalley 0.1-4
- Made changes suggested by ianweller to fix cvs issues
* Sun Dec David Nalley 0.1-3
- Made changes suggested by Brian Pepple
* Sat Dec David Nalley 0.1-2
- Making corrections suggested by Fabian Affolter
* Sun Dec David Nalley 0.1-1
- Initial packaging efforts

29. rpmbuild -ba /path/to/zapplet.spec
Building
rpmbuild -ba /path/to/zapplet.spec

30. rpmlint and other checks
rpmlint /path/to/zapplet.spec
rpmlint /path/to/zapplet src.rpm
rpmlint /path/to/zapplet noarch.rpm
And you are going to install and test it first, right?

31. Example 1 - php-gettext Simple No real compilation
Places files in correct place
Heavily commented

32. Example 2 - sheepdog Requires compilation
Relatively heavy dependencies

33. Example 3 - rubygem-logging
Simple – created by external tool
Requires registration with additional 'package' manager
Similiar things needed for CPAN, Pear, etc.

34. Questions and contacts reminders
IRC: ke4qqq on irc.freenode.net
Blog: