Maintainer’s Guide

This guide is intended for anybody interested in:

It’s not intended as a primer on the underpinning technologies, we assume that readers are technically proficient. If you just want to use ViPER and you’re looking for help the please refer to the setup guide or user’s guide.

ViPER is an easy-to-install virtual machine running popular open source preservation tools with graphical user interfaces. It was created by the [Open Preservation Foundation(https://openpreservation.org/)] (OPF) and funded by the Dutch Digital Heritage Network (DDHN). ViPER is maintained by the OPF and the National Archives of the Netherlands.

Technologies

You’ll need at least familiarity with the following software and technologies to follow the guide.

Operating system

Debian 11 (Bullseye) was chosen as a base OS. The two main criteria that guided the decision were stability and long update cycles.

Virtualisation

Provisioning

Provisioning covers installation of the software tools and dependencies as well as configuration of the OS and user environment. Ansible is a cross platform IT automation tool that simply requires SSH access to the target machine. We use this to roll out the configuration and tools.

Setup & initialisation

The vagrant machine is configured by a Vagrantfile which can be set up with the appropriate virtual machine template:

vagrant init debian/bullseye64

Before starting the machine we want to configure a few things out of the box. By default Vagrant machines are headless, i.e. all access via terminal and SSH with no GUI. We also need to provision the memory and number of CPUs available to the machine. While cores and memory are plentiful on a development workstation, 2 virtual CPUs and 4GB or RAM are sensible starting parameters. Anything requiring significantly more compute power would struggle to satisfy the accessible research environment brief. These parameters can be adjusted in situ regardless.

We can set these up for a Virtual Box VM by adding the following lines to our Vagrantfile, we’ll also set a VM name while we’re at it:

config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
  # Name the prototype machine
  vb.name = "ViPER"
  # Display the VirtualBox GUI when booting the machine
  vb.gui = true
  # Customize the CPUs (2x) and memory (4GB) on the VM:
  vb.cpus = 2
  vb.memory = "4096"
  # Now set an execution cap at 50 % if required
  # vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--cpuexecutioncap", "50"]
  # We need extra Video RAM for display flexibility
  vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--vram", "128"]
end

We can now bring the machine up with the command vagrant up, this takes a while first time, that’s because the initial provisioning tasks.

Provisioning with Ansible

Vagrant features built in support for Ansible provisioning out of the box. The following section of the Vagrantfile invokes Ansible provisioning the first time that the VM is started using the vagrant up command. After first start the provisioning section can be invoked alone by using the vagrant provision command. The Vagrantfile section looks like:

config.vm.provision "ansible" do |ansible|
  # Use the playbook ./ansible/initialise-env.yaml
  ansible.playbook = "ansible/initialise-env.yml"
  # Let's ask for verbose output in case of problems
  ansible.verbose = "vv"
  # Limit the use of this playbok to a particular host
  ansible.limit = "env.ddhn.test"
  # Ansible job requirements
  ansible.galaxy_role_file = "ansible/requirements.yml"
  ansible.galaxy_command = "ansible-galaxy install --role-file=%{role_file}"
  # The inventory file that sets up details for the vagrant machine
  ansible.inventory_path = "ansible/vagrant.yml"
end

Ansible Playbook

The playbook ansible/initialise-env.yaml is the list of roles that set up the virtual research environment. An Ansible role is simply a set of tasks that achieve a desired state, e.g. install software, copy files, etc..

Ansible Roles

The next sections break down the sub-roles describing the general steps taken and the rationale.

ddhn.setup

The ddhn.setup role handles the setup of the environment, updating the OS, installing dependencies, creating accounts and the like. The main role simply calls four sub-roles.

Server tasks

The ‘server.yml’ sub-role:

Pre-requisites

The prerequisites.yml sub-role installs any apt package dependencies. The package list is the ddhn_env_apt_defaults variable in the roles’ main default file.

User tasks

The user.yml sub-role creates a sudo user to administer the environment. Again, the task is configurable using variables in the roles’ main default file.

Security

The security role hardens SSH access, no password and no root access, while setting up firewall rules. The thinking is that the environment should be secure with port access only opened where required.

viper.tools

The viper.tools role installs the digital preservation tools. It comprises a series of sub-roles, one for each tool. The general workflow for a tool is: