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Notes on Python deployment using Fabric

Date: 2008-09-28  |   Modified: 2008-10-10  |   Tags: aws, django, linux, python, ssh, ubuntu   |   1 Comment

I found out about Fabric via Armin Ronacher's article Deploying Python Web Applications. Fabric is a Capistrano inspired deployment tool for the Python community. It is very simple to use. There are 4 main commands: local is almost like os.system because it runs a command on the local machine, run and sudo run a command on a remote machine as either a normal user or as root, and put transfers a file to a remote machine.

Here is a sample setup which displays information about the Apache processes on my remote EC2 instance.

  • Install Easy Install
  • Install Fabric 
    $ sudo easy_install Fabric
  • Create a file called fabfile.py located at ~/myproject 
    def ec2():
    set(fab_hosts = ['ec2-65-234-55-183.compute-1.amazonaws.com'],
        fab_user = 'sofeng',
        fab_password = 'mypassword',)

def ps_apache():
    run("ps -e -O rss,pcpu | grep apache")
    Note: for security reasons, you can remove the password from the fabfile and Fabric will prompt for it interactively. Per the documentation, Fabric also supports key-based authentication.

  • Run it 
    $ cd ~/myproject
$ fab ec2 ps_apache
    Results: 
       Fabric v. 0.0.9, Copyright (C) 2008 Christian Vest Hansen.
   Fabric comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `fab warranty'.
   This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
   under certain conditions; type `fab license' for details.

Running ec2...
Running ps_apache...
Logging into the following hosts as sofeng:
    ec2-65-234-55-183.compute-1.amazonaws.com
[ec2-65-234-55-183.compute-1.amazonaws.com] run: ps -e -O rss,pcpu | grep apache
[ec2-65-234-55-183.compute-1.amazonaws.com] out:  2163  5504  0.0 S ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
[ec2-65-234-55-183.compute-1.amazonaws.com] out:  2520 15812  0.0 S ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
[ec2-65-234-55-183.compute-1.amazonaws.com] out:  2521  3664  0.0 S ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
[ec2-65-234-55-183.compute-1.amazonaws.com] out:  2522  3664  0.0 S ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
[ec2-65-234-55-183.compute-1.amazonaws.com] out:  2523  3664  0.0 S ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
[ec2-65-234-55-183.compute-1.amazonaws.com] out:  2524  3664  0.0 S ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
[ec2-65-234-55-183.compute-1.amazonaws.com] out:  2619  3664  0.0 S ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
[ec2-65-234-55-183.compute-1.amazonaws.com] out:  2629  1204  0.0 R ?        00:00:00 /bin/bash -l -c ps -e -O rss,pcpu | grep apache
Done.

1 Comment — feed icon Comments feed for this post


#1 Basil Shubin commented on 2009-09-25:

Hmmm... Fabric.. curious.

Nice note ;-)

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