AWS CodePipeline advanced tutorial with jenkins - amazon-web-services

I'm running through AWS CodePipeline tutorial and there is this step
saying that I have to create a jenkins job running bash script which will connect to the EC2 instance (not the one where jenkins is running, but the one where the code has been deployed earlier).
It is said that I have to connect to the EC2 instance by running this command in bash script:
TEST_IP_ADDRESS=192.168.0.4 rake test
But my gut feeling is saying that this step is completely wrong.
There is no variable with this name, and there is no option to connect to external instance just like that.
I've completed all the steps successfully, but this one is obviously wrong

The bash script will run in your jenkins instance, and it will make an HTTP request to the instance you configured in TEST_IP_ADDRESS.
When you add the "build step", and choose "Execute shell", you'll enter this:
TEST_IP_ADDRESS=192.168.0.4 rake test
You are defining the TEST_IP_ADDRESS variable, so it's up to you to give it an appropriate value.

First I had the same confusion, then I saw the source code and it is pretty self-explained:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'net/http'
require 'minitest/autorun'
require 'socket'
class JenkinsSampleTest < MiniTest::Unit::TestCase
def setup
uri_params = {
:host => ENV['TEST_IP_ADDRESS'] || 'localhost',
:port => (ENV['TEST_PORT'] || '80').to_i,
:path => '/index.html'
}
#webpage = Net::HTTP.get(URI::HTTP.build(uri_params))
end
def test_congratulations
assert(#webpage =~ /Congratulations/)
end
end

Related

AWS CDK - post deployment actions

is anyone aware of a method to execute post-deploy functionality. Follwing is a sample of a casual CDK app.
app = core.App()
Stack(app, ...)
app.synth()
What I am looking for is a way to apply some logic after template is deployed. The thing is the app completes before cdk tool starts deploying template.
thanks
Edit: CDK now has https://github.com/cdklabs/cdk-triggers, which allows calling Lambda functions before/after resource/stack creation
You can't do that from CDK at the moment. See https://github.com/awslabs/aws-cdk/issues/2849. Maybe add your +1 there, let them know you'd like to see this feature.
What you can do is wrap cdk deploy in a shell script that will run whatever you need after the CDK is done. Something like:
#!/bin/sh
cdk deploy "$#"
success=$?
if [ $success != 0 ]; then
exit $success
fi
run_post_deploy_with_arguments.sh "$#"
will run deploy with the given arguments, then call a shell scripts passing it the same arguments if deployment was successful. This is a very crude example.
Instead of wrapping the cdk deploy command in a bash script I find it more convenient to add a pre and post deployment script under a cdk_hooks.sh file and call it before and after the CDK deployment command via the cdk.json file. In this way you can keep using the cdk deploy command without calling custom scripts manually.
cdk.json
{
"app": "sh cdk_hooks.sh pre && npx ts-node bin/stacks.ts && sh cdk_hooks.sh post"
,
"context": {
"#aws-cdk/core:enableStackNameDuplicates": "true",
"aws-cdk:enableDiffNoFail": "true"
}
}
and cdk_hooks.sh
#!/bin/bash
PHASE=$1
case "$PHASE" in
pre)
# Do something
;;
post)
# Do something
;;
*)
echo "Please provide a valid cdk_hooks phase"
exit 64
esac
You can use CustomResource to run some code in a lambda (which you will also need to deploy unfortunately). The lambda will get the event of the custom resource (create, update delete), so you will be able to handle different scenarios (let's say you want to seed some table after deploy, this way you will be able to clean the data at a destroy for instance).
Here is a pretty good post about it.
Personally I couldn't find a more elegant way to do this.
Short answer: you can't. I've been waiting for this feature as well.
What you can do is wrap your deployment in a custom script that performs all your other logic, which also makes sense given that what you want to do is probably not strictly a "deploy thing" but more like "configure this and that now that the deploy is finished".
Another solution would be to rely on codebuild to perform your deploys and define there all your steps and which custom scripts to run after a deploy (I personally use this solution, with a specific stack to deploy this particular codedeploy project).

Is it possible to run an Ansible playbook from a Chef AWS/Opworks cookbook?

I try to figure out if it's possible to create a Chef cookbook that ssh into an Ansible server and run some Ansible cookbook from AWS Opworks on the current node
I think of a script that I can put in a execute like this :
define :foobar_magento2_deploy do
release_path = node[:app_release_path]
execute 'Ansible playbook' do
command "ssh -i key ansible-server 'ansible-playbook arg1 arg2'"
end
end
Do you think it's possible ? Is there some caveats ? Hints ?
Edit from #coderanger answer:
define :foobar_magento2_deploy do
release_path = node[:app_release_path]
execute 'Ansible playbook' do
command "git clone ansible-playbook"
command "cd ansible-playbook"
command "ansible-playbook -l localhost playbook.yml"
end
end
So a couple of things:
OpsWorks Stacks is dangerously out of date and using it should be considered highly suspect.
I don't actually recognize that define block thing in there, maybe that's an older OpsWorks syntax?
You can definitely run an Ansible playbook from Chef code, but I would probably go a little simpler than you have there. Probably just run ansible-playbook locally and aim it at localhost.

chef - restart a service on another machine after connecting to it

I'm new to chef and struggling with this concept - I'm not sure if it's possible and if it is, how to achieve it. Thus far Google Fu has failed me.
I have a chef client and chef server, i'm uploading cookbooks to run on my client. I trigger the code by running chef-client on the chef client machine.
What I'm then trying to do is connect to several other boxes via ssh and then stop a service, clear out a directory and restart the service.
When working I'll be targeting Solr service
My basic test code is as follows:
ruby_block 'do something' do
block do
Chef::Log.info('Do Something')
Chef::Resource::Notification.new('stop', :run, self)
end
end
#define the service - does nothing
service 'atd' do
action :nothing
end
#do something that triggers
execute 'start' do
command 'pwd'
Chef::Log.info('triggers start')
action :nothing
notifies :start, run_context.resource_collection.find(:service => 'atd')
end
execute 'stop' do
# some stuff
# on success...
command 'pwd'
Chef::Log.info('triggers restart')
notifies :stop, run_context.resource_collection.find(:service => 'atd'), :immediately
notifies :run, 'execute[start]'
end
in the ruby block I plan on iterating through a list of machines that I have and ssh'ing to them. Is it then possible to run the remainder of the code on those machines?
Thanks for any help / advice.

Elastic Beanstalk and Cron tasks not sure if its working with Yii

I am having a problem with getting a simple cron task set up on Elastic Beanstalk. I have found some of the other questions on here useful, but i still can't seem to get the cron to execute. I am unsure if it is an AWS issue, or if the script itself is not executing. The script is set up inside YII as a Console Command. I am not finding any PHP errors, and the ec2 instance is loaded without errors. Here is what i have done so far:
I have created a folder on the root of my application called .ebextensions.
Within that folder i have created a configuration file with the contents
# Installing dos2unix in case files are edited on windows PC
packages:
yum:
dos2unix: []
container_commands:
01-command:
command: dos2unix -k cron_setup.sh
02-command:
command: chmod 700 cron_setup.sh
03-command:
command: "cat .ebextensions/cron_task.txt > /etc/cron.d/cron_task && chmod 644 /etc/cron.d/cron_task"
# leader_only prevents problems when EB auto-scales
leader_only: true
the file cron_task.txt exists inside the .ebextensions folder with the contents
# The newline at the end of this file is extremely important. Cron won't run without it.
* * * * * /bin/php /var/www/html/crons.php test > /dev/null
Crons.php is a file at the root of the application that includes the Yii framework
defined('YII_DEBUG') or define('YII_DEBUG',true);
// including Yii
require_once(dirname(__FILE__).$yii.'/yii.php');
// we'll use a separate config file
$configFile=dirname(__FILE__).'/protected/config/cron.php';
// creating and running console application
Yii::createConsoleApplication($configFile)->run();
the config/cron.php file is a setup file for the framework, includes database connection and model inclusions, etc
and the cron script being referenced in the cron_task.txt file is a console command that looks like this
class TestCommand extends CConsoleCommand {
public function run($args) {
$message = new Crontasks();
$message->timestamp = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
$message->message = "test";
$message->insert();
}
}
here i am just trying to get a record into the database to prove the cron was executed successfully. And i can't seem to get a record added.
The problem is, i don't know where this is failing. I am not getting any instance errors. And i took a snapshot log and cant seem to find any relevant errors in there either. Should php errors be logged here? OR do i have to set it up myself to log errors? The problem, i am also having trouble getting into ec2 via SSH. I am getting a permission denied (public key) error!! Even though i have set up the security group/key pair and using the correct public DNS for the instance!
If anyone can see anything obvious is what im doing wrong here, please let me know! Otherwise could you give any advice on where to look for any errors that might be preventing this cron task to execute? Many thanks!!

AWS Elastic Beanstalk, running a cronjob

I would like to know if there is a way to setup a cronjob/task to execute every minute. Currently any of my instances should be able to run this task.
This is what I have tried to do in the config files without success:
container_commands:
01cronjobs:
command: echo "*/1 * * * * root php /etc/httpd/myscript.php"
I'm not really sure if this is the correct way to do it
Any ideas?
This is how I added a cron job to Elastic Beanstalk:
Create a folder at the root of your application called .ebextensions if it doesn't exist already. Then create a config file inside the .ebextensions folder. I'll use example.config for illustration purposes. Then add this to example.config
container_commands:
01_some_cron_job:
command: "cat .ebextensions/some_cron_job.txt > /etc/cron.d/some_cron_job && chmod 644 /etc/cron.d/some_cron_job"
leader_only: true
This is a YAML configuration file for Elastic Beanstalk. Make sure when you copy this into your text editor that your text editor uses spaces instead of tabs. Otherwise you'll get a YAML error when you push this to EB.
So what this does is create a command called 01_some_cron_job. Commands are run in alphabetical order so the 01 makes sure it's run as the first command.
The command then takes the contents of a file called some_cron_job.txt and adds it to a file called some_cron_job in /etc/cron.d.
The command then changes the permissions on the /etc/cron.d/some_cron_job file.
The leader_only key ensures the command is only run on the ec2 instance that is considered the leader. Rather than running on every ec2 instance you may have running.
Then create a file called some_cron_job.txt inside the .ebextensions folder. You will place your cron jobs in this file.
So for example:
# The newline at the end of this file is extremely important. Cron won't run without it.
* * * * * root /usr/bin/php some-php-script-here > /dev/null
So this cron job will run every minute of every hour of every day as the root user and discard the output to /dev/null. /usr/bin/php is the path to php. Then replace some-php-script-here with the path to your php file. This is obviously assuming your cron job needs to run a PHP file.
Also, make sure the some_cron_job.txt file has a newline at the end of the file just like the comment says. Otherwise cron won't run.
Update:
There is an issue with this solution when Elastic Beanstalk scales up your instances. For example, lets say you have one instance with the cron job running. You get an increase in traffic so Elastic Beanstalk scales you up to two instances. The leader_only will ensure you only have one cron job running between the two instances. Your traffic decreases and Elastic Beanstalk scales you down to one instance. But instead of terminating the second instance, Elastic Beanstalk terminates the first instance that was the leader. You now don't have any cron jobs running since they were only running on the first instance that was terminated. See the comments below.
Update 2:
Just making this clear from the comments below:
AWS has now protection against automatic instance termination. Just enable it on your leader instance and you're good to go. – Nicolás Arévalo Oct 28 '16 at 9:23
This is the official way to do it now (2015+). Please try this first, it's by far easiest method currently available and most reliable as well.
According to current docs, one is able to run periodic tasks on their so-called worker tier.
Citing the documentation:
AWS Elastic Beanstalk supports periodic tasks for worker environment tiers in environments running a predefined configuration with a solution stack that contains "v1.2.0" in the container name. You must create a new environment.
Also interesting is the part about cron.yaml:
To invoke periodic tasks, your application source bundle must include a cron.yaml file at the root level. The file must contain information about the periodic tasks you want to schedule. Specify this information using standard crontab syntax.
Update: We were able to get this work. Here are some important gotchas from our experience (Node.js platform):
When using cron.yaml file, make sure you have latest awsebcli, because older versions will not work properly.
It is also vital to create new environment (at least in our case it was), not just clone old one.
If you want to make sure CRON is supported on your EC2 Worker Tier instance, ssh into it (eb ssh), and run cat /var/log/aws-sqsd/default.log. It should report as aws-sqsd 2.0 (2015-02-18). If you don't have 2.0 version, something gone wrong when creating your environment and you need to create new one as stated above.
Regarding jamieb's response, and as alrdinleal mentions, you can use the 'leader_only' property to ensure that only one EC2 instance runs the cron job.
Quote taken from http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/customize-containers-ec2.html:
you can use leader_only. One instance is chosen to be the leader in an Auto Scaling group. If the leader_only value is set to true, the command runs only on the instance that is marked as the leader.
Im trying to achieve a similar thing on my eb, so will update my post if I solve it.
UPDATE:
Ok, I now have working cronjobs using the following eb config:
files:
"/tmp/cronjob" :
mode: "000777"
owner: ec2-user
group: ec2-user
content: |
# clear expired baskets
*/10 * * * * /usr/bin/wget -o /dev/null http://blah.elasticbeanstalk.com/basket/purge > $HOME/basket_purge.log 2>&1
# clean up files created by above cronjob
30 23 * * * rm $HOME/purge*
encoding: plain
container_commands:
purge_basket:
command: crontab /tmp/cronjob
leader_only: true
commands:
delete_cronjob_file:
command: rm /tmp/cronjob
Essentially, I create a temp file with the cronjobs and then set the crontab to read from the temp file, then delete the temp file afterwards. Hope this helps.
I spoke to an AWS support agent and this is how we got this to work for me. 2015 solution:
Create a file in your .ebextensions directory with your_file_name.config.
In the config file input:
files:
"/etc/cron.d/cron_example":
mode: "000644"
owner: root
group: root
content: |
* * * * * root /usr/local/bin/cron_example.sh
"/usr/local/bin/cron_example.sh":
mode: "000755"
owner: root
group: root
content: |
#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/test_cron.sh || exit
echo "Cron running at " `date` >> /tmp/cron_example.log
# Now do tasks that should only run on 1 instance ...
"/usr/local/bin/test_cron.sh":
mode: "000755"
owner: root
group: root
content: |
#!/bin/bash
METADATA=/opt/aws/bin/ec2-metadata
INSTANCE_ID=`$METADATA -i | awk '{print $2}'`
REGION=`$METADATA -z | awk '{print substr($2, 0, length($2)-1)}'`
# Find our Auto Scaling Group name.
ASG=`aws ec2 describe-tags --filters "Name=resource-id,Values=$INSTANCE_ID" \
--region $REGION --output text | awk '/aws:autoscaling:groupName/ {print $5}'`
# Find the first instance in the Group
FIRST=`aws autoscaling describe-auto-scaling-groups --auto-scaling-group-names $ASG \
--region $REGION --output text | awk '/InService$/ {print $4}' | sort | head -1`
# Test if they're the same.
[ "$FIRST" = "$INSTANCE_ID" ]
commands:
rm_old_cron:
command: "rm *.bak"
cwd: "/etc/cron.d"
ignoreErrors: true
This solution has 2 drawbacks:
On subsequent deployments, Beanstalk renames the existing cron script as .bak, but cron will still run it. Your Cron now executes twice on the same machine.
If your environment scales up, you get several instances, all running your cron script. This means your mail shots are repeated, or your database archives duplicated
Workaround:
Ensure any .ebextensions script which creates a cron also removes the .bak files on subsequent deployments.
Have a helper script which does the following: -- Gets the current Instance ID from the Metadata -- Gets the current Auto
Scaling Group name from the EC2 Tags -- Gets the list of EC2
Instances in that Group, sorted alphabetically. -- Takes the first
instance from that list. -- Compares the Instance ID from step 1
with the first Instance ID from step 4.
Your cron scripts can then use this helper script to determine if they should execute.
Caveat:
The IAM Role used for the Beanstalk instances needs ec2:DescribeTags and autoscaling:DescribeAutoScalingGroups permissions
The instances chosen from are those shown as InService by Auto Scaling. This does not necessarily mean they are fully booted up and ready to run your cron.
You would not have to set the IAM Roles if you are using the default beanstalk role.
As mentioned above, the fundamental flaw with establishing any crontab configuration is that it only happens at deployment. As the cluster gets auto-scaled up, and then back down, it is favored to also be the first server turned off. In addition there would be no fail-over, which for me was critical.
I did some research, then talked with our AWS account specialist to bounce ideas and valid the solution I came up with. You can accomplish this with OpsWorks, although it's bit like using a house to kill a fly. It is also possible to use Data Pipeline with Task Runner, but this has limited ability in the scripts that it can execute, and I needed to be able to run PHP scripts, with access to the whole code base. You could also dedicate an EC2 instance outside of the ElasticBeanstalk cluster, but then you have no fail-over again.
So here is what I came up with, which apparently is unconventional (as the AWS rep commented) and may be considered a hack, but it works and is solid with fail-over. I chose a coding solution using the SDK, which I'll show in PHP, although you could do the same method in any language you prefer.
// contains the values for variables used (key, secret, env)
require_once('cron_config.inc');
// Load the AWS PHP SDK to connection to ElasticBeanstalk
use Aws\ElasticBeanstalk\ElasticBeanstalkClient;
$client = ElasticBeanstalkClient::factory(array(
'key' => AWS_KEY,
'secret' => AWS_SECRET,
'profile' => 'your_profile',
'region' => 'us-east-1'
));
$result = $client->describeEnvironmentResources(array(
'EnvironmentName' => AWS_ENV
));
if (php_uname('n') != $result['EnvironmentResources']['Instances'][0]['Id']) {
die("Not the primary EC2 instance\n");
}
So walking through this and how it operates... You call scripts from crontab as you normally would on every EC2 instance. Each script includes this at the beginning (or includes a single file for each, as I use it), which establishes an ElasticBeanstalk object and retrieves a list of all instances. It uses only the first server in the list, and checks if it matches itself, which if it does it continues, otherwise it dies and closes out. I've checked and the list returned seems to be consistent, which technically it only needs to be consistent for a minute or so, as each instance executes the scheduled cron. If it does change, it wouldn't matter, since again it only is relevant for that small window.
This isn't elegant by any means, but suited our specific needs - which was not to increase cost with an additional service or have to have a dedicated EC2 instance, and would have fail-over in case of any failure. Our cron scripts run maintenance scripts which get placed into SQS and each server in the cluster helps execute. At least this may give you an alternate option if it fits your needs.
-Davey
If you're using Rails, you can use the whenever-elasticbeanstalk gem. It allows you to run cron jobs on either all instances or just one. It checks every minute to ensure that there is only one "leader" instance, and will automatically promote one server to "leader" if there are none. This is needed since Elastic Beanstalk only has the concept of leader during deployment and may shut down any instance at any time while scaling.
UPDATE
I switched to using AWS OpsWorks and am no longer maintaining this gem. If you need more functionality than is available in the basics of Elastic Beanstalk, I highly recommend switching to OpsWorks.
You really don't want to be running cron jobs on Elastic Beanstalk. Since you'll have multiple application instances, this can cause race conditions and other odd problems. I actually recently blogged about this (4th or 5th tip down the page). The short version: Depending on the application, use a job queue like SQS or a third-party solution like iron.io.
2017: If you are using Laravel5+
You just need 2 minutes to configure it:
create a Worker Tier
install laravel-aws-worker
composer require dusterio/laravel-aws-worker
add a cron.yaml to the root folder:
Add cron.yaml to the root folder of your application (this can be a
part of your repo or you could add this file right before deploying to
EB - the important thing is that this file is present at the time of
deployment):
version: 1
cron:
- name: "schedule"
url: "/worker/schedule"
schedule: "* * * * *"
That's it!
All your task in App\Console\Kernel will now be executed
Detailed instructions and explainations: https://github.com/dusterio/laravel-aws-worker
How to write tasks inside of Laravel: https://laravel.com/docs/5.4/scheduling
A more readable solution using files instead of container_commands:
files:
"/etc/cron.d/my_cron":
mode: "000644"
owner: root
group: root
content: |
# override default email address
MAILTO="example#gmail.com"
# run a Symfony command every five minutes (as ec2-user)
*/10 * * * * ec2-user /usr/bin/php /var/app/current/app/console do:something
encoding: plain
commands:
# delete backup file created by Elastic Beanstalk
clear_cron_backup:
command: rm -f /etc/cron.d/watson.bak
Note the format differs from the usual crontab format in that it specifies the user to run the command as.
My 1 cent of contribution for 2018
Here is the right way to do it (using django/python and django_crontab app):
inside .ebextensions folder create a file like this 98_cron.config:
files:
"/tmp/98_create_cron.sh":
mode: "000755"
owner: root
group: root
content: |
#!/bin/sh
cd /
sudo /opt/python/run/venv/bin/python /opt/python/current/app/manage.py crontab remove > /home/ec2-user/remove11.txt
sudo /opt/python/run/venv/bin/python /opt/python/current/app/manage.py crontab add > /home/ec2-user/add11.txt
container_commands:
98crontab:
command: "mv /tmp/98_create_cron.sh /opt/elasticbeanstalk/hooks/appdeploy/post && chmod 774 /opt/elasticbeanstalk/hooks/appdeploy/post/98_create_cron.sh"
leader_only: true
It needs to be container_commands instead of commands
The latest example from Amazon is the easiest and most efficient (periodic tasks):
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/using-features-managing-env-tiers.html
where you create a separate worker tier to execute any of your cron jobs. Create the cron.yaml file and place it in your root folder. One issue I had (after cron did not seem to be executing) was finding that my CodePipeline did not have authority to perform a dynamodb modification. Based on that after adding FullDynamoDB access under IAM -> roles -> yourpipeline and redeploying (elastic beanstalk) it worked perfectly.
Someone was wondering about the leader_only auto scaling problems when new leaders arise. I can't seem to figure out how to reply to their comments, but see this link: http://blog.paulopoiati.com/2013/08/25/running-cron-in-elastic-beanstalk-auto-scaling-environment/
So we've been struggling with this for a while and after some discussion with an AWS rep I've finally come up with what I think is the best solution.
Using a worker tier with cron.yaml is definitely the easiest fix. However, what the documentation doesn't make clear is that this will put the job at the end of the SQS queue you're using to actually run your jobs. If your cron jobs are time sensitive (as many are), this isn't acceptable, since it would depend on the size of the queue. One option is to use a completely separate environment just to run cron jobs, but I think that's overkill.
Some of the other options, like checking to see if you're the first instance in the list, aren't ideal either. What if the current first instance is in the process of shutting down?
Instance protection can also come with issues - what if that instance gets locked up / frozen?
What's important to understand is how AWS itself manages the cron.yaml functionality. There is an SQS daemon which uses a Dynamo table to handle "leader election". It writes to this table frequently, and if the current leader hasn't written in a short while, the next instance will take over as leader. This is how the daemon decides which instance to fire the job into the SQS queue.
We can repurpose the existing functionality rather than trying to rewrite our own. You can see the full solution here: https://gist.github.com/dorner/4517fe2b8c79ccb3971084ec28267f27
That's in Ruby, but you can easily adapt it to any other language that has the AWS SDK. Essentially, it checks the current leader, then checks the state to make sure it's in a good state. It'll loop until there is a current leader in a good state, and if the current instance is the leader, execute the job.
The best way to do this is to use an Elastic Beanstalk Worker Environment (see "Option 1" below). However, this will add to your server costs. If you don't want to do this, see "Option 2" below for how to configure cron itself.
Option 1: Use Elastic Beanstalk Worker environments
Amazon has support for Elastic Beanstalk Worker Environments. They are Elastic Beanstalk managed environments that come with an SQS queue which you can enqueue tasks onto. You can also give them a cron config that will automatically enqueue the task on a recurring schedule. Then, rather than receiving requests from a load balancer, the servers in a worker environment each have a daemon (managed by Elastic Beanstalk) that polls the queue for tasks and calls the appropriate web endpoint when they get a message on the queue. Worker environments have several benefits over running cron yourself:
Performance. Your tasks are now running on dedicated servers instead of competing for CPU and memory with web requests. You can also have different specs for the worker servers (ex. you can have more memory on just the worker servers).
Scalability. You can also scale up your number of worker servers to more than 1 in order to handle large task loads.
Ad-hoc Tasks. Your code can enqueue ad-hoc tasks as well as scheduled ones.
Standardization. You write tasks as web endpoints rather than needing to configure your own task framework, which lets your standardize your code and tooling.
If you just want a cron replacement, all you need to do is make a file called cron.yaml at the top level of your project, with config like the following:
cron.yaml
version: 1
cron:
- name: "hourly"
url: "/tasks/hourly"
schedule: "0 */1 * * *"
This will call the url /tasks/hourly once an hour.
If you are deploying the same codebase to web and worker environments, you should have the task URLs require an environment variable that you set on worker environments and not web environments. This way, your task endpoints are not exposed to the world (task servers by default do not accept incoming HTTP requests, as the only thing making calls to them is the on-server daemon).
The full docs are here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/using-features-managing-env-tiers.html
Option 2: Configure Cron
If you want to run cron, you need to make sure it's running on only one server. The leader_only flag in .ebextensions config isn't sufficient because servers don't reliably stay the leader. This can be fixed by deleting the cron config if present on any server as the first step of a deploy and then installing it on just one server using leader_only. Here is an example .ebextensions config file that accomplishes this:
.ebextensions/cron.config
container_commands:
01_remove_cron_jobs:
command: "rm /etc/cron.d/cronjobs || exit 0"
02_set_up_cron:
command: "cat .ebextensions/cronjobs.txt > /etc/cron.d/cronjobs && chmod 644 /etc/cron.d/cronjobs"
leader_only: true
This config file assumes the existence of a file .ebextensions/cronjobs.txt. This file contains your actual cron config. Note that in order to have environment variables loaded and your code in scope, you need to have code that does this baked into each command. The following is an example cron config that works on an Amazon Linux 2 based Python environment:
.ebextensions/cronjobs.txt
SHELL=/bin/bash
PROJECT_PATH=/var/app/current
ENV_PATH=/opt/elasticbeanstalk/deployment/env
# m h dom mon dow user command
0 * * * * ec2-user set -a; source <(sudo cat $ENV_PATH) && cd $PROJECT_PATH && python HOURLY_COMMAND > /dev/null
# Cron requires a newline at the end of the file
Here is a full explanation of the solution:
http://blog.paulopoiati.com/2013/08/25/running-cron-in-elastic-beanstalk-auto-scaling-environment/
To control whether Auto Scaling can terminate a particular instance when scaling in, use instance protection. You can enable the instance protection setting on an Auto Scaling group or an individual Auto Scaling instance. When Auto Scaling launches an instance, the instance inherits the instance protection setting of the Auto Scaling group. You can change the instance protection setting for an Auto Scaling group or an Auto Scaling instance at any time.
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/latest/userguide/as-instance-termination.html#instance-protection
I had another solution to this if a php file needs to be run through cron and if you had set any NAT instances then you can put cronjob on NAT instance and run php file through wget.
here is a fix incase you want to do this in PHP. You just need cronjob.config in your .ebextensions folder to get it to work like this.
files:
"/etc/cron.d/my_cron":
mode: "000644"
owner: root
group: root
content: |
empty stuff
encoding: plain
commands:
01_clear_cron_backup:
command: "rm -f /etc/cron.d/*.bak"
02_remove_content:
command: "sudo sed -i 's/empty stuff//g' /etc/cron.d/my_cron"
container_commands:
adding_cron:
command: "echo '* * * * * ec2-user . /opt/elasticbeanstalk/support/envvars && /usr/bin/php /var/app/current/index.php cron sendemail > /tmp/sendemail.log 2>&1' > /etc/cron.d/my_cron"
leader_only: true
the envvars gets the environment variables for the files. You can debug the output on the tmp/sendemail.log as above.
Hope this helps someone as it surely helped us!
Based on the principles of the answer from user1599237, where you let the cron jobs run on all instances but then instead in the beginning of the jobs determine if they should be allowed to run, I have made another solution.
Instead of looking at the running instances (and having to store your AWS key and secret) I'm using the MySQL database that I'm already connecting to from all instances.
It has no downsides, only positives:
no extra instance or expenses
rock solid solution - no chance of double execution
scalable - automatically works as your instances are scaled up and down
failover - automatically works in case an instance has a failure
Alternatively, you could also use a commonly shared filesystem (like AWS EFS via the NFS protocol) instead of a database.
The following solution is created within the PHP framework Yii but you can easily adapt it for another framework and language. Also the exception handler Yii::$app->system is a module of my own. Replace it with whatever you are using.
/**
* Obtain an exclusive lock to ensure only one instance or worker executes a job
*
* Examples:
*
* `php /var/app/current/yii process/lock 60 empty-trash php /var/app/current/yii maintenance/empty-trash`
* `php /var/app/current/yii process/lock 60 empty-trash php /var/app/current/yii maintenance/empty-trash StdOUT./test.log`
* `php /var/app/current/yii process/lock 60 "empty trash" php /var/app/current/yii maintenance/empty-trash StdOUT./test.log StdERR.ditto`
* `php /var/app/current/yii process/lock 60 "empty trash" php /var/app/current/yii maintenance/empty-trash StdOUT./output.log StdERR./error.log`
*
* Arguments are understood as follows:
* - First: Duration of the lock in minutes
* - Second: Job name (surround with quotes if it contains spaces)
* - The rest: Command to execute. Instead of writing `>` and `2>` for redirecting output you need to write `StdOUT` and `StdERR` respectively. To redirect stderr to stdout write `StdERR.ditto`.
*
* Command will be executed in the background. If determined that it should not be executed the script will terminate silently.
*/
public function actionLock() {
$argsAll = $args = func_get_args();
if (!is_numeric($args[0])) {
\Yii::$app->system->error('Duration for obtaining process lock is not numeric.', ['Args' => $argsAll]);
}
if (!$args[1]) {
\Yii::$app->system->error('Job name for obtaining process lock is missing.', ['Args' => $argsAll]);
}
$durationMins = $args[0];
$jobName = $args[1];
$instanceID = null;
unset($args[0], $args[1]);
$command = trim(implode(' ', $args));
if (!$command) {
\Yii::$app->system->error('Command to execute after obtaining process lock is missing.', ['Args' => $argsAll]);
}
// If using AWS Elastic Beanstalk retrieve the instance ID
if (file_exists('/etc/elasticbeanstalk/.aws-eb-system-initialized')) {
if ($awsEb = file_get_contents('/etc/elasticbeanstalk/.aws-eb-system-initialized')) {
$awsEb = json_decode($awsEb);
if (is_object($awsEb) && $awsEb->instance_id) {
$instanceID = $awsEb->instance_id;
}
}
}
// Obtain lock
$updateColumns = false; //do nothing if record already exists
$affectedRows = \Yii::$app->db->createCommand()->upsert('system_job_locks', [
'job_name' => $jobName,
'locked' => gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
'duration' => $durationMins,
'source' => $instanceID,
], $updateColumns)->execute();
// The SQL generated: INSERT INTO system_job_locks (job_name, locked, duration, source) VALUES ('some-name', '2019-04-22 17:24:39', 60, 'i-HmkDAZ9S5G5G') ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE job_name = job_name
if ($affectedRows == 0) {
// record already exists, check if lock has expired
$affectedRows = \Yii::$app->db->createCommand()->update('system_job_locks', [
'locked' => gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
'duration' => $durationMins,
'source' => $instanceID,
],
'job_name = :jobName AND DATE_ADD(locked, INTERVAL duration MINUTE) < NOW()', ['jobName' => $jobName]
)->execute();
// The SQL generated: UPDATE system_job_locks SET locked = '2019-04-22 17:24:39', duration = 60, source = 'i-HmkDAZ9S5G5G' WHERE job_name = 'clean-trash' AND DATE_ADD(locked, INTERVAL duration MINUTE) < NOW()
if ($affectedRows == 0) {
// We could not obtain a lock (since another process already has it) so do not execute the command
exit;
}
}
// Handle redirection of stdout and stderr
$command = str_replace('StdOUT', '>', $command);
$command = str_replace('StdERR.ditto', '2>&1', $command);
$command = str_replace('StdERR', '2>', $command);
// Execute the command as a background process so we can exit the current process
$command .= ' &';
$output = []; $exitcode = null;
exec($command, $output, $exitcode);
exit($exitcode);
}
This is the database schema I'm using:
CREATE TABLE `system_job_locks` (
`job_name` VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
`locked` DATETIME NOT NULL COMMENT 'UTC',
`duration` SMALLINT(5) UNSIGNED NOT NULL COMMENT 'Minutes',
`source` VARCHAR(255) NULL DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`job_name`)
)