I would like to work on a couple of things in LibreNMS. The ideas I have range from working on different DeviceOS’ to poking around integrating graphviz to drawing some diagrams. (It seems an LLDP Neighbor diagram would be a good place to start)
For years, my development environment has been vi in a bash shell since I was mostly just hacking on scripts. But now I am trying to get with the times and build a properly modern dev environment. I’m learning git and VSCode on Windows 10, and am not sure how I should tie that together with a clone of the librenms repo, and figured I would ask if anyone had any pointers?
The idea in my head at the moment is to build a docker image on my windows machine and figure out how to tie that into VSCode. But I have a doubt in the back of my mind thinking I might be overcomplicating this.
This is probably a REALLY basic concept that is very general and probably open to a million opinions. But I guess you could say that since I am so green, I’m hoping to find some opinions that work really well for libreNMS that I can translate into a default dev environment.
I have stumbled across this video on YouTube that covers this in general, though his video appears to focus on a python environment. But his video does cover installing Docker on windows (which forces WSL2), as well as Ubuntu, and then he ties vscode to is dev-python container. But then he starts making files on the container, while I need to git the project on there first.
I think this a direction I want to try for my libreNMS development efforts, and I currently have a RockyLinux container connected to VSCode, and I am trying to figure out how to tie to code in a git project… So far i have used the container CLI to use the package manager to install git and a few other packages, so it feels like I am on the right path… But I am hoping to find a way to build an image/container automatically that would load dependencies and clone/pull the git repo.
Assuming I am not barking up the wrong tree, I was wondering if anyone had anything from a Dockerfile or a vscode config to advice or a link to a HOWTO that would push me in the right direction, or at least someone warning me off this idea if I am going in the wrong direction. Since I am learning docker at the same time, it feels like there should be a way to say “use this image, add these dependencies then git clone the code to this location” but I may be wising more than knowing what’s possible.
I have decided to try to run librenms in a Rocky Linux Docker environment for my development. I have gotten WSL2 and docker working on my Windows 10 PC and spun up a default Rocky Linux 8.5 container and used the Docker Desktop to connect to a shell and ran these commands:
yum -y install git wget
cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/librenms/librenms.git
Then in VScode, I press F1 and search for Remote-Containers: Attach to Running Container
I select the container I want in the list (e.g. dev-librensm)
Next, it asks for the folder to connect to and I choose /opt/librenms
Then I open a terminal in vscode (Terminal > New Terminal) to get a shell
Next step is to install the dependencies LibreNMS will require and get it running. I’m not sure if I should try to use an external DB or keep it all confined within the container. I will document more when I get it working in Apache.
Not that I’d want to discourage you from experimenting, but it’s worth noting that LibreNMS already has LLDP neighbour diagrams via vis.js: Overview > Maps > Device Groups/Network or on the Neigbours tab of a device.
Understood, but there are a couple of issues with the solution you mention version what I want to explore:
On the Device > neighbors > Map version (which is where I primarily want to have a graphviz option) it simply doesn’t look as good.
The overall map you refer to is jiggly and doesn’t really translate to something that can be shared/printed and drawn on as a network design product, especially on a network wide scale. (e.g. Mapping out the Network core, or the connectivity for a particular site/region) While, they are good to show what links are heavily utilized, which isn’t really data I want to clutter up this version.
The python project I have in mind uses NETCONF to gather LLDP data at that moment, which is a direction that could be explored for libreNMS (and compare that data to what is in the database, highlighting a failed link), I believe LibreNMS has other options to build it’s connection database. (e.g. CDP or MAC addresses) which can offer a view that Ptolemy couldn’t generate on it’s own. But I can’t look at that until I have graphviz working in LibreNMS and making drawings to begin with, and implementing it in PHP would also be a good learning experience.
But this particular post isn’t about network mapping features LibreNMS does or doesn’t do, nor the blue sky ideas I think I want and feel others might also find beneficial.
I was hoping someone already had a config for vscode specifically or docker in general or maybe just a HOWTO on how to easily build a docker image that can start a libreNMS dev environment that can be hacked, broken, thrown away and rebuilt before having a valid commit to push back upstream. This is a method of developing that is completely foreign to me, and I feel like I am asking how to add text in the vi editor, so I thought I would ask the very, very basic questions before I go off in the wrong direction. Maybe my idea of a dockerized dev environment isn’t as popular as I assumed… Which is fine, I was just hoping that to get somewhere new, I didn’t have build the road on the way… But sometimes that is when the lessons stick the most.