Install OKD 3.11 with source version of openshift-ansible installer

To install OpenShift by openshift-ansible from sources, one needs to build the openshift-ansible RPMs and install them as a repo on the machine performing the installation. For 3.11 in CI this is done by the following YAML.

First clone openshift-ansible repo.

$ git clone --depth=1 --branch=release-3.11 https://github.com/openshift/openshift-ansible.git

Then build base image as described in the YAML.

$ cd openshift-ansible
$ BUILDAH_LAYERS=false sudo podman build -f images/installer/Dockerfile -t ocp-ansible --layers=false .

Run the image and prepare for RPM building

$ sudo podman run -t -a STDIN -a STDOUT -a STDERR --rm=true -u root ocp-ansible /bin/bash
# yum install tito createrepo
# git clone https://github.com/openshift/openshift-ansible.git --depth=1 --branch=release-3.11
# git config --add user.email myemail@example.com
# git config --add user.name myname

Build RPMs as pointed in the rpm building section of the YAML with slight modifications. In bold I write things that differ.

# tito tag --offline --no-auto-changelog
# tito build --output="_output/local/releases" --rpm --test --offline --quiet
# createrepo _output/local/releases/noarch

Now RPM repo is under `_output/local/releases/noarch/`.  Copy it to a web server or locally on the machine where you would run the installation. Then create a file /etc/yum.repos.d/my-ocp-ansible.conf:

[tmp-openshift-ansible]
baseurl = <file:// or http:// url of RPM repo>
enabled = 1
gpgcheck = 0
name = Custom built OpenShift Ansible repo

Finally perform the installation as described in the official docs.

$ ansible-playbook ....

Make sure that you see your RPMs in the install log under `List all openshift ansible packages`.

Building debug firefox build from source RPM on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

In short:

• Create an account on https://access.redhat.com.
• Get Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
• Download and install RHEL server on a local physical or virtual machine (it is free with developer subscription).
• Or spawn a RHEL machine in some cloud service.
• Important:  you will need a large machine. For me 4GB failed [*] and I used a 16GB one. I didn't check what is the minimum required.
• If you installed your own RHEL, then you need to subscribe the machine.
• subscription-manager register # use your access.redhat.com credentials
• subscription-manager attach
• if the above does not work automatically try the below
• subscription-manager list --available
• subscription-manager attach --pool=<whatever you find useful above>
• sudo yum install yum-utils rpm-build
• yumdownloader --source firefox
• rpm -ivh firefox-*.rpm
• sudo yum-builddep rpmbuild/SPECS/firefox.spec
• on a vanilla system you will see missing dependencies
• if you wanted to figure that out by yourself, you'd go to https://access.redhat.com and search for the packages to see what repos they come from (or maybe use some clever yum command that I don't know atm)
• yum-config-manager --enable rhel-7-server-devtools-rpms rhel-7-server-optional-rpms
• or edit /etc/yum.repos.d/redhat.repo
• sudo yum-builddep rpmbuild/SPECS/firefox.spec # this time it will succeed
• rpmbuild -ba --with=debug_build rpmbuild/SPECS/firefox.spec
• find the built rpm at
• ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/firefox-60.4.0-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
• ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/firefox-debuginfo-60.4.0-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
• ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS/firefox-60.4.0-1.el7.src.rpm

[*] it is really sad, in the past one could learn to be a developer on a budget machine. Nowadays it seems like even compiling your code takes a beefy one :/