How-to: Distribute, execute and delete a module from an agent

Overview

This example illustrates how the agent plugin can be used to distribute to remote a Pineapple agent, execute the module and the delete the module after execution.

Define the module

Pineapple's unit of work is modules. A module is a self contained unit which can contain models, scripts and binaries. Models serves to specify test cases, deployment of applications, configuration of devices or execution of scripts.

The default directory for modules is ${user.home}/.pineapple/modules so we will create a module named agent-distribute-and-execute-module there. The module for this example will end up with the structure:

agent-distribute-and-execute-module
 |
 +--- models     
       +--- local.xml

Define the module model

The model file for deletion of the model planet-violet-001:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<mmd:models xmlns:mmd="http://pineapple.dev.java.net/ns/module_model_1_0"       
    xmlns:pap="http://pineapple.dev.java.net/ns/plugin/agent_1_0" >
    <mmd:model target-resource="agent-node1">
        <mmd:content>
            <pap:agent>
                <pap:distribute-and-execute-operation module="planet-violet-001" operation"deploy-configuration" environment="linux-vagrant" />
            </pap:agent>                        
        </mmd:content>
    </mmd:model>
</mmd:models>

The configuration details

Two schema are used in the model file. The http://pineapple.dev.java.net/ns/module_model_1_0 is used to define the namespace mmd which defines the general infrastructure for models. The http://pineapple.dev.java.net/ns/plugin/agent_1_0 schema is used to define the namespace pap which is used to define the model for the agent plugin. Since multiple schemas are used to define the model file, the elements are qualified.

The target-resource attribute defines a reference to the resource which is targeted when the model executed. In this case, the value agent-node1 is a reference to a resource which defines a Pineapple agent.

The pap:agent element defines the root of model for the agent plugin. The pap:distribute-and-execute-operation element defines the three steps:

  • Distribute the module to a remote Pineapple agent.
  • Execute the module at the remote Pineapple agent.
  • Delete the module at at the remote Pineapple agent..

The pap:distribute-and-execute-operation defines these attributes::

  • module defines the name of the module, which must already be present at the agent.
  • environment defines the name of the target environment, e.g. the model which is used for the operation.
  • operation defines the name of the operation to invoke.

Invoke Pineapple to execute model

Start your Pineapple client of choice:

  • Select the module named agent-distribute-and-execute-module
  • Select the local model.
  • Invoke any operation to distribute, execute and delete.