FOGMACHINE README
A poignant and heartwarming guide to setting up a mini-cloud
by Steve Salevan <ssalevan@redhat.com>
v. 0.1
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CONTENTS
--------
1. INTRODUCTION
2. PREREQUISITES
3. INSTALLING THIS MASSIVE THING
4. BEST PRACTICES
5. COMMENTS/ISSUES?

1. INTRODUCTION
---------------
It seems that we hear the phrase 'cloud computing' every day, be it on Slashdot
or in some marketing literature somewhere, yet few people can really give
you a straight answer as to what a cloud is or how the concept can be used 
to make your life easier.  Fogmachine aims to give some definition to these
questions, to supply you with a means to create your own cloud, and to give
you tools to manipulate the virtual machines running inside your cloud.

Fogmachine is based upon Facebook's shiny new Tornado framework and works in
tandem with Cobbler, Michael DeHaan's awesome provisioning tool.  Cobbler is
used to provision virtual guests, while libvirt is used to query virtual guests
and hosts for pertinent information.

Finally, a disclaimer...  Fogmachine is a massive hack, inside a bug, 
wrapped in a kludge.  I wouldn't recommend running it in production unless you 
possess an ace team of crackerjack security and performance experts to aid you
in its deployment, as little mind has been paid towards these particular
aspects of its functionality.

2. PREREQUISITES
----------------
First off, ensure that you have the following packages and their related
dependencies installed on your machine:

libvirt
libvirt-python
python
python-devel
python-elixir
python-pycurl
python-simplejson
MySQL-python

Next, as it isn't yet packaged for any Linux distribution, download and install
the latest version of Tornado from its website:

http://www.tornadoweb.org/

Finally, ensure that you have a Cobbler server running and available and a
number of machines (virtual hosts) running either the Xen or QEMU hypervisor.

3. INSTALLING THIS MASSIVE THING
--------------------------------
At this early stage of development, configuration for Fogmachine is going to be
a little front-heavy, and I apologize in advance for any pain and suffering
you may experience.  Follow this sstep-by-step guide, though, and you should
be golden:

1. Edit main.py:
Set the COBBLER_HOST variable to the hostname of your cobbler server.
Set the LISTEN_PORT variable to the port you wish Tornado's HTTP server to
listen on

2. Edit fogmachine/model.py:
(If you don't want to use the built-in sqlite database)
Set the metadata.bind variable to the SQLAlchemy database connection string
corresponding to the backend database you wish to use.  For more information:

http://www.sqlalchemy.org/docs/05/reference/sqlalchemy/connections.html?highlig
ht=create_engine#sqlalchemy.create_engine

3. On Cobbler server, edit /etc/cobbler/settings:
Add in the following line:
fogmachine_server: <hostname:port to your fogmachine server>

4. Copy the contents of the folders in fogmachine's ks_scripts folder into
the corresponding directories in /var/lib/cobbler/

5. Edit virthosts.conf:
Add a line for each virtual host machine you wish to include within your
'cloud'; instructions for doing so are provided within supplied config file

6. Start the Fogmachine daemon by running the fogmachined executable in the
fogmachine directory

5. COMMENTS/ISSUES?
-------------------
At the moment, there is no trac or wiki available for Fogmachine, so if you
run into issues related to Fogmachine, send me an e-mail at ssalevan@redhat.com
and I'd be glad to help you out.
butt