Guignol

Be the puppeteer. Order your EC2 instances to start, stop, die, or be created from the command line. Let Guignol deal with DNS mappings and attaching EBS volumes.

Released under the Simplified BSD License.

Guignol -- manipulate EC2 instances from your command line.

Tasks:
  guignol clone SOURCE       # Print a new config similar to the server named SOURCE
  guignol create PATTERNS    # Create and start all instances matching PATTERNS and their volumes
  guignol execute COMMAND    # Execute a command over SSH on instances
  guignol fixdns [PATTERNS]  # Make sure the DNS mappings are correct for servers matching PATTERNS
  guignol help [TASK]        # Describe available tasks or one specific task
  guignol kill PATTERNS      # Terminate all instances matching PATTERNS
  guignol list [PATTERNS]    # List the status of all known instances
  guignol start PATTERNS     # Start all instances matching PATTERNS, attach their volumes, and setup DNS records
  guignol stop PATTERNS      # Stop all instances matching PATTERNS, and remove DNS records
  guignol uuid [COUNT]       # Print random UUIDs

Install Guignol:

$ gem install guignol

Guignol relies on the excellent Fog gem to connect to Amazon's APIs. Start by setting up your ~/.fog:

# ~/.fog
:default:
  :aws_access_key_id:      ABCDEF....
  :aws_secret_access_key:  123456....

Alternatively you can pass crendentials for Guignol by setting the AWS_SECRET_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY environment variables, or by setting :aws_access_key_id and :aws_secret_access_key in guignol.yml (see below).

# list all instances available
guignol list

# list instances that match a particular pattern
guignol list web

# list instances with AWS identifiers
guignol list <pattern> --with-instance-ids

# list instance ids only in a format suitable for being passed to `xargs` or `elba`
guignol list <pattern> --porcelain

Guignol doesn't care about the list of instances that live on your EC2 account, only what it's configured to deal with. This should prevent destroying other's instances when using (for instance) a shared AWS/IAM account !

Teach Guignol about your instances by adding them to its config file. Each instance needs at least a name an a UUID (both will become tags on your instance):

# ~/.guignol.yml
---
hello-world:
  :uuid: AF123799-3F55-4F0B-8E58-87C67A5977BA

Guignol will read its configuration from the first file in the following list:

• the value of the GUIGNOL_YML environment variable,
• ./guignol.yml, ./config/guignol.yml, ~/.guignol.yml

guignol uuid will output a new UUID if you need one. You can also use uuidgen if your distro come with it.

And that's it for configuration!

Now create your instance:

$ guignol create hello-world
hello-world: building server...
hello-world: updating server tags
hello-world: waiting for public dns to be set up...
hello-world: updating root volume tags
hello-world: created as ec2-46-137-53-32.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com

You can log in as soon as the command returns.

Of course, you can stop, start, or kill your instance.

You can run any command against multiple instances by listing names and (ruby) regular expressions to designate lists of instances.

$ guignol kill "hello.*"
hello-world: tearing server down...
hello-world: waiting for instance to become stopped or terminated...
hello-world: instance now shutting-down
hello-world: instance now terminated

If targeting multiple machines, guignol will run in parallel.

Parallelism is disabled on Ruby 1.9.3+, as it doesn't deal well with SSL connections in that case.

Yes, Guignol will also create and attach your EBS volumes when starting up instances. Just add a :volumes entry to your instance configuration:

:volumes:
  fubar-swap:
    :uuid: 9D5A278E-432C-41DB-9FB5-8AF5C1BD021F
    :dev:  /dev/sdf
    :size: 4
    :delete_on_termination: true
  fubar-data:
    :uuid: E180203F-9DE1-4C6A-B09B-33B2FAC8F36E
    :dev:  /dev/sdg
    :size: 20
    :delete_on_termination: false

Guignol will take care of creating your instances in the right availability zone if its volumes already exist.

Note that Guignol does not delete volumes when tearing down instances.

• :domain The machine's domain name. If specified, Guignol will setup a CNAME in Route53 mapping name.domain to your EC2 instance where it starts it (and tear it down when stopping it.)

• :region The EC2 region. Defaults to eu-west-1.

• :availability_zone The EC2 availability zone. Defaults to whatever Amazon chooses.

• :image_id The AMI to use when creating this instance. Defaults to whatever Amazon defaults it to.

• :flavor_id The type of instance to start. Defaults to t1.micro (the one with a free tier).

• :key_name The keypair to deploy to this instance. Default to not deploying any for security reasons (meaning you probably won't be able to log in if unset, depending on the AMI you're using).

• :security_group_ids A list of security groups you want your instance to be a member of.

• :volumes A list of EBS volumes to be created if necessary, and attached to the instance.

• :user_data A script to run when an instance is created.

• :username Will be used for the SSH connection performed by the execute command.

• :root_ebs_size Create instance with a bigger root EBS volume

EC2 instances will run the script passed as user_data at boot time, letting you perform one-time setup.

Guignol parses this setting through ERB, and lets your access the configuration hash. Possible use case:

# ~/.guignol.yml
---
hello-world:
  :uuid: AF123799-3F55-4F0B-8E58-87C67A5977BA
  :domain: example.com
  :user_data: |
    #!/bin/sh
    echo "<%= name %>.<%= domain %>" > /etc/hostname

You can start/stop instances even if you didn't create them with Guignol.

Simply

1. declare them in your guignol.yml ;
2. go to the console and add the corresponding UUID tag to the existing intances ;
3. there is no step three.

Now you can guignol stop your instances from the command line when not using them and save money.

Guignol will log to standard output if it's a TTY, and be mostly silent otherwise. You can direct logging to a file of your choice by setting GUIGNOL_LOG.

This one just contains 1 machine, fubar.example.com.

# ~/.guignol.yml
---
fubar:
  :domain:              example.com.
  :uuid:                68C3C0C2-1BA3-465F-8626-E065E4EF9048
  :region:              eu-west-1
  :image_id:            ami-15f7c961
  :flavor_id:           m1.small
  :key_name:            john-doe
  :root_ebs_size:       30
  :security_group_ids:
    - sg-7e638abc
  :volumes:
    fubar-swap:
      :uuid: 9D5A278E-432C-41DB-9FB5-8AF5C1BD021F
      :dev:  /dev/sdf
      :size: 4
      :delete_on_termination: true
    fubar-data:
      :uuid: E180203F-9DE1-4C6A-B09B-33B2FAC8F36E
      :dev:  /dev/sdg
      :size: 20
      :delete_on_termination: false
  :user_data: |
    #!/bin/sh
    set -x
    if test -z "$LOGGING" ; then
      export LOGGING=YES
      exec "$0" > /tmp/user_data.log 2>&1
    fi

    mkswap -f /dev/xvdf > /dev/null && swapon /dev/xvdf

    mount_data() {
      mount -t ext4 /dev/xvdg /mnt
    }
    mount_data || { mkfs.ext4 /dev/xvdg && mount_data ; }
    date >> /tmp/stamp