puppet-tilde

This is an experimental, alpha Puppet module for setting up an Ubuntu server in the style of tilde.club.

What is in master is generally guaranteed to have been tested casually on an AWS EC2 micro running Ubuntu 14.04 at tilde.town, but aside from that, there are no guarantees about the code. YMMV. I'm trying to keep the README up to date as I change things / add features.

Installation

All of these steps assume you are running as the root user.

• Install the puppet and puppetmaster packages (they can be on the same server). 3.4.x+ is required.
• puppet module install jfryman-nginx -v 0.0.10 (must install v0.0.10, see here)
• apt-get install -y puppetmaster puppet.
• puppet module install camptocamp-postfix
• Set up hiera:
• add a hiera.yaml to /etc/puppet/
• ln -s /etc/puppet/hiera.yaml /etc/hiera.yaml
• mkdir /etc/puppet/hieradata
• add and configure common.yaml to /etc/puppet/hieradata/
• cd /etc/puppet/modules
• apt-get install -y git-core
• git clone https://github.com/nathanielksmith/puppet-tilde.git tilde
• git clone https://github.com/nathanielksmith/puppet-ngircd ngircd
• edit site.pp and save to /etc/puppet/manifests/site.pp
• puppet agent -t --server={your_tilde_host_name}

Adding Users

To add users to your tilde server, add them to your common.yaml (or whatever) like so:

tilde::users:
  vilmibm:
    pubkey: '...'
  cmr:
    pubkey: '...'
  datagrok:
    pubkey: '...'

The module purges any non-system users not managed by Puppet; in other words, to ban a user, simply delete them from the tilde::users hash in common.yaml.

You can also specify pubkey_type in the user hash if the user is fancy and not using ssh-rsa. The supported types are whatever is supported by puppet's authorized key type

Password based logins are not currently supported. You'll have to manually enable that if you want it.

/etc/skel

/etc/skel is managed as a set of files in the module. If you'd like to modify these, make a local branch on the module and edit away. You can add or remove files from the directory (note, old users will not retroactively get changes to /etc/skel).

Nginx

Currently, the module looks for tilde::hostname (e.g. tilde.town or tilde.farm or drawbridge.club) and sets up an Nginx virtual host with:

• a homepage for your tilde server (/var/www/<your domain>/index.html)
• user directories (/~<username>) which map to /home/<username>/public_html
• server names $hostname and www.$hostname
• IMPORTANT Make sure port 80 is open for your server.

IRC

The module sets up ngircd for you.

• localhost only
• irc alias added to users' .bashrc file.
• per-user irssi configuration this will auto-connect to the server and auto-join #<hostname> where hostname is a .-less string substitution of the hostname you specified as tilde::hostname.

It does not set up an operator. IRC governance is up to the autonomous collective to determine.

Mail

The module sets up postfix for you. Just like tilde.club, it's local mail only. Alpine and mutt are installed by default.

MotD

There is basic Message of the Day support. To customize the motd, make a branch of the checked out puppet module and edit templates/motd.erb. The default template just has a basic cowsay with a few instructions (and shows your server's hostname).

A motd alias that just runs cat /etc/motd is also added by the aliases file in /etc/skel.

NNTP (Usenet)

The program inn2 is set up and configured for local access. The clients slrn, tin, and alpine are all installed by default. In order to transfer news with peers, you must enable both inbound and outbound traffic on TCP port 119 (for EC2 users, this may mean editing your security groups, for others it may mean editing iptables rules).

IMPORTANT: Make sure port 119 is open for your server.

IMPORTANT: Refer to the example common.yaml file to see how to configure newsgroups/peers. No groups are configured by default.

Quota support

This module enables 3mb user quotas for all non-system users. You'll need to add the usrquota option to your / mount with something like this in your site.pp, though, for it to work:

mount { '/':
    ensure  => 'mounted',
    device  => 'LABEL=cloudimg-rootfs',
    dump    => '0',
    fstype  => 'ext4',
    options => 'defaults,discard,usrquota',
    pass    => '0',
    target  => '/etc/fstab',
  }
}

If you do not want disk quotas, include the tilde class like this in your site.pp:

class { 'tilde':
    use_quota => false,
}

Or configure common.yaml with:

tilde::use_quota: false

TODO

• A "customization" section in this README on how to modify things like the server's homepage or /etc/skel.
• Flags for switching on/off various services from common.yaml (if you don't want NTTP, for example).

Authors

• Nathaniel Smith nks@lambdaphil.es
• Chris Roddy cmr@mdc2.org

License

This module is licensed under the terms of the GNU Public License version 3 (GPLv3)