Cloudron as an app inside of Cloudron

Lonk

Thanks to the Docker add-on, I feel like it might be possible to package Cloudron for Cloudron as an app.

My only motivation for doing so would be to help with development and treating it like an app would be not only cool, but super efficient for development especially with the Cloudron Build Service installed. Super quick compilation and testing.

I think it was @mehdi and @robi who expressed the possibility of running Cloudron in Cloudron but I was curious if anyone thinks it’s feasible enough for me to try to code?

BrutalBirdie

I can understand the wish for that.

I work a lot with CI/CD, even now when developing a new app for Cloudron.
My new push will be deployed to a test instance so I can test it.

Having this for the development of Cloudron it self could be beneficial.
Thinking about a growing community and more developers having the option the just give access to a cloudron instance running on a Cloudron would make the PR review faster/easier.

But I don't know if this is necessary already.

mehdi

I would theoretically be possible, I think, but honestly it would be an infrastructure nightmare to set-up. My opinion => don't go this route, use proper VMs. In addition to being much easier to accomplish, you'll also get an environment much closer to an actual cloudron, so there will be much less weird different behaviours.

Lonk

@BrutalBirdie Not necessary, no no. But I’ve been using ssh -> nano to make all my box changes so I didn’t have to reinstall every change and it’s just really cumbersome.

I also don’t mind coding something not necessary right now if developers might find it beneficial (like I do). I was just curious if people thought I should even try to. Like, is there anything obvious that would make Cloudron just too hard to convert to an app?

BrutalBirdie

@mehdi said in Cloudron as an app inside of Cloudron:

I would theoretically be possible, I think, but honestly it would be an infrastructure nightmare to set-up. My opinion => don't go this route, use proper VMs. In addition to being much easier to accomplish, you'll also get an environment much closer to an actual cloudron, so there will be much less weird different behaviours.

Thought about the same, with the Hetzner API I can spin up a cloudron with the gitlab ci/cd to install my working changes and review my work.

Lonk

@BrutalBirdie Do you make box changes as well?

BrutalBirdie

@Lonk said in Cloudron as an app inside of Cloudron:

@BrutalBirdie Do you make box changes as well?

No, I did not yet contribute to the cloudron "base" itself.
So I don't know what pains you are going threw

pain >

But I’ve been using ssh -> nano to make all my box changes so I didn’t have to reinstall every change and it’s just really cumbersome.

Lonk

@mehdi said in Cloudron as an app inside of Cloudron:

I would theoretically be possible, I think, but honestly it would be an infrastructure nightmare to set-up. My opinion => don't go this route, use proper VMs. In addition to being much easier to accomplish, you'll also get an environment much closer to an actual cloudron, so there will be much less weird different behaviours.

You mentioned this before. Since this is just for testing new box code quickly with the same flow as a custom app. Do you still think it’s more work than it’s worth? Infrastructure nightmare is particularly what I’m confused about; I want to understand what you mean by that.

Lonk

@BrutalBirdie said in Cloudron as an app inside of Cloudron:

pain >

But I’ve been using ssh -> nano to make all my box changes so I didn’t have to reinstall every change and it’s just really cumbersome.

Not gonna lie, it feels like I’m coding in the 90s whenever I use nano. You can’t even select text. Every character has to be deleted one by one. It’s faster than constantly recompiling and re-installing on Ubuntu 18.04. But slower than just about anything else.

girish

@Lonk Are you already using the hotfix script? https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/box/#development This is what we use for development.

Lonk

@girish said in Cloudron as an app inside of Cloudron:

@Lonk Are you already using the hotfix script? https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/box/#development This is what we use for development.

This looks like a godsend. I just have to figure out how to format hot fixes and use this CLI tool to apply them to my virtual machine Cloudron. Thank you for showing me this!

Also, I saw in that description in your link: “front-end code click here” and it was 404 .

But using this hot fix tool I might be able to contribute to dashboard easier (like the drop down box to choose the vpnclient to connect to).

girish

@Lonk said in Cloudron as an app inside of Cloudron:

Also, I saw in that description in your link: “front-end code click here” and it was 404 .

Are you logged into GitLab? I feel like I have solved this permission/visibility issue in GitLab like a million times. I am not sure what GitLab is doing but that setting gets reset of something after each update

Lonk

@girish I clicked on the "click here" link which lead to this:

https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/dashboard

It asked me to log in, which I did (as Lonk), and it lead to a 404. So I tried clicking it again thinking it could have been a login redirection issue and I'm fully logged in now, and it still says 404.

robi

If you want to try and get this going, here are a few rough steps.

Install sysbox from Nestybox and validate you can spin up containers with sysbox-runc
Get a small Ubuntu 18.04 image running inside
Validate networking in and out for basic services
Install the inner Cloudron and see how to set up DNS and ports so it works for the inner and outter Cloudrons separately.
Document the kinks

Once this is running, you'll have a base container system image which is special and can run as an App.

It may be useful to set up guacamole as remote desktop access.

Feel free to chime in and add to my list.

Lonk

@robi I plan on contributing more here so I'll try both yours and @girish's hot fix dev methods and see which one works better for me.

I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to put those steps together for me. Thank you! ️

Lonk

@girish cloudron machine says it's not an available command. Though it's documented to be so in the npm main database. https://www.npmjs.com/package/cloudron

Do I need to load on top of my already existing cloudron cli tool?

girish

@Lonk It's a separate repo and a separate tool - https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/cloudron-machine . If you clone and do "npm link . ", it is available in your PATH.

Lonk

@girish said in Cloudron as an app inside of Cloudron:

@Lonk It's a separate repo and a separate tool - https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/cloudron-machine . If you clone and do "npm link . ", it is available in your PATH.

Joel$ cloudron-machine
Usage:  [options] [command]

Options:
  -V, --version            output the version number
  -h, --help               output usage information

Commands:
  hotfix [options]         Hotfix Cloudron with latest code
  ssh [options] [cmds...]  Get a remote SSH connection

Ah, I understand, you should fix that in the npm repository description cause I was so confused for a second. Thank you very much for taking the time to write out instructions in how to get the actual tool. ️

But both the commands hotfix and ssh error out instead of displaying manuals. Are there manuals to those commands? Or maybe an example of a hotfix option and ssh option (using fake data of course)?

Lonk

@girish Like your cloudron build --no-push hot fix that you've already uploaded to master, how could I apply that with this tool?

Lonk

I think I get it actually. I supply it the whole cloudron installation with all the hotfixes at once and it overwrites the appropriate files with the ssh commands I give it. Still figuring out the syntax though.

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Cloudron as an app inside of Cloudron