OCluster manages a pool of build workers. A build scheduler service accepts build jobs from clients and distributes them to worker machines using Cap'n Proto. Workers register themselves by connecting to the scheduler (and workers do not need to be able to accept incoming network connections).

The scheduler can manage multiple pools (e.g. linux-x86_64 and linux-arm32). Clients say which pool should handle their requests. At the moment, two build types are provided: building a Dockerfile, or building an OBuilder spec. In either case, the build may done in the context of some Git commit. The scheduler tries to schedule similar builds on the same machine, to benefit from caching.

• Installation
• The scheduler service
• Workers
• Clients
  • Docker jobs
  • OBuilder jobs
• Admin
  • Fair queuing
• API
• Security model
• Prometheus metrics
• Testing

To install the Git version:

git clone https://github.com/ocurrent/ocluster.git
cd ocluster
opam pin add -yn .
opam depext -i ocluster

To run the scheduler:

mkdir capnp-secrets
ocluster-scheduler \
  --capnp-secret-key-file=./capnp-secrets/key.pem \
  --capnp-listen-address=tcp:0.0.0.0:9000 \
  --capnp-public-address=tcp:127.0.0.1:9000 \
  --state-dir=/var/lib/ocluster-scheduler \
  --pools=linux-arm32,linux-x86_64 \
  --verbose

Replace the last line with whatever build pools you want. The names can be anything you like.

Change capnp-public-address to an address at which remote machines can reach the port given in the listen address. e.g. change 127.0.0.1 to a public IP address.

--state-dir can be anywhere you like. The scheduler keeps a database here remembering which workers have cached which builds, as well as the list of clients permitted to use the service.

You should see output something like this:

2020-11-05 16:28.30      capnp-rpc [INFO] Generating new secret key to store in "./capnp-secrets/key.pem"
2020-11-05 16:28.30      capnp-rpc [INFO] Generating new private key…
2020-11-05 16:28.30      capnp-rpc [INFO] Generated key with hash sha-256@0_tVPHQ3gz5vKNVwc_t0llFS7YkVuKmqfG7fO9S-gEg
2020-11-05 16:28.30      capnp-rpc [INFO] Waiting for (encrypted) connections on tcp:0.0.0.0:9000
2020-11-05 16:28.30    application  Wrote capability reference to "./capnp-secrets/admin.cap"
2020-11-05 16:28.30    application  Wrote capability reference to "./capnp-secrets/pool-linux-arm32.cap"
2020-11-05 16:28.30    application  Wrote capability reference to "./capnp-secrets/pool-linux-x86_64.cap"

The service creates .cap files in ./capnp-secrets/ that can be used to connect to the service. There is one for each named pool (that workers use to register themselves), plus admin.cap for managing the service.

The provided Dockerfile can be used to build the scheduler service as a Docker image.

Each worker needs access to the .cap file for its pool. This tells it how to connect, and contains a secret token granting it access.

To run the build service locally:

ocluster-worker \
  --connect=./capnp-secrets/pool-linux-x86_64.cap \
  --state-dir=/var/lib/ocluster-worker \
  --name=my-host --capacity=1 --prune-threshold=20 \
  --verbose

Each builder must be given a unique name. capacity controls how many jobs this worker will build at once. prune-threshold says how much free space must be available in the cache partition (e.g. /var/lib/docker for Docker builds) before the worker will prune things (e.g. with docker system prune -af). If not given, then the worker will not monitor free space.

The builder connects to the scheduler and waits for jobs. You should see worker [INFO] Requesting a new job… in the worker log, and Registered new worker "my-host" in the scheduler log.

The service builds Docker jobs using docker build and so needs access to the local Docker. Dockerfile.worker can be used to run the worker service itself in a Docker container, provided that you share this socket with the container.

However, if you intend to support OBuilder jobs, you will probably want to run it directly on the host instead, as root.

To submit a job, you need:

• a submission.cap file (granting you permission to submit jobs),
• the name of the pool to use, and
• a description of the job (depending on the job type; see below).

The service administrator can generate a submission.cap from the admin.cap like this:

ocluster-admin --connect ./capnp-secrets/admin.cap add-client test-user > submission.cap

There is a command-line client, and a plugin for use in OCurrent pipelines. See obuilder_pipeline.ml for an example pipeline using the plugin.

You might want to create an alias for the admin and submission clients, e.g.

alias mycluster-admin='ocluster-admin --connect /path/to/admin.cap'
alias mycluster-client='ocluster-client --connect /path/to/submission.cap'

To submit a Docker job, you also need a Dockerfile describing what to build.

You can run a job like this:

echo -e "FROM busybox\nRUN date\n" > Dockerfile.test
ocluster-client -c submission.cap \
  submit-docker \
  --local-dockerfile Dockerfile.test \
  --pool=linux-x86_64 \
  --cache-hint tutorial

The client will display the log output from the job as it arrives.

The scheduler will remember the cache-hint. If you submit the job again with the same hint, it will try to schedule it on the same worker, which will be faster.

Unlike docker build, it does not transfer the current directory as the build context. Instead, you can give a Git repository and a commit. The worker will clone the repository and checkout the commit, using that as the Docker build context. e.g.

ocluster-client -c submission.cap \
  submit-docker \
  --local-dockerfile Dockerfile.test \
  --pool=linux-x86_64 \
  --cache-hint tutorial \
  https://github.com/ocurrent/ocluster.git ac619d2083bb15e0c408e4cd0e3ef7135670cfd5

Instead of using --local-dockerfile, you could also use --context-dockerfile=Dockerfile to tell the builder to read the Dockerfile from the source commit (this is the default if you don't specify --local-dockerfile).

If you list multiple commit hashes then the builder will merge them together. This is useful for e.g. testing a pull request merged with the master branch's head.

You can ask the builder to push the resulting image somewhere. The client provides three options for this:

ocluster-client … \
  --push-to org/staging:build-1 \
  --push-user=builder \
  --push-password ~/.builder-password

You should not give the builders access to your main password or repositories. Instead, create a new user and a "staging" repository on Docker Hub for this purpose. The builder will return the RepoId of the newly pushed image, which you can then download, or republish under its final name. You can also combine images from several builders to create a single multi-arch image using docker manifest.

For now, you must also start the builders with --allow-push org/staging. This is because the docker push command requires the builder to tag the image locally before pushing, and it would be unfortunate if a user asked it to tag an image as e.g. ocurrent/ocluster-worker:latest.

The client is responsible for deleting the image once it is no longer needed.

This is similar to submitting a Docker job, except that you provide an OBuilder spec file instead of a Dockerfile, e.g.

echo -e '((from busybox) (shell /bin/sh -c) (run (shell date)))' > OBuilder.test
ocluster-client -c submission.cap \
  submit-obuilder \
  --local-file OBuilder.test \
  --pool=linux-x86_64 \
  --cache-hint tutorial

You will need to start the worker with --obuilder-store=… to enable this.

The ocluster-admin executable can be used to manage the service using admin.cap.

To grant a user access to the cluster (the name can be any unique ID):

ocluster-admin -c ./capnp-secrets/admin.cap add-client alice > alice.cap

You can also use remove-client to deactivate the .cap file, and list-clients to show all registered users.

For automated deployment scripts, you can also start the scheduler with e.g. --default-clients=alice,bob to create alice.cap and bob.cap automatically if they don't already exist.

To get a list of the available pools:

ocluster-admin -c ./capnp-secrets/admin.cap show

To show the state of one pool:

ocluster-admin -c ./capnp-secrets/admin.cap show linux-x86_64

To pause a worker, give the pool and the worker's name, e.g.:

ocluster-admin -c ./capnp-secrets/admin.cap pause linux-x86_64 my-host

A paused worker will not be assigned any more items until it is unpaused, but it will continue with any jobs it is already running. Use unpause to resume it.

Use pause --wait if you want to wait until all running jobs have finished.

Instead of specifying a worker, you can also use --all to pause or unpause all workers in a pool.

If you want to set the state of a worker that hasn't ever connected to the scheduler, use --auto-create.

To update all workers in a pool:

ocluster-admin -c ./capnp-secrets/admin.cap update linux-x86_64

This will test the update by restarting one worker first. If that succeeds, it will restart the others in parallel. Note that restarting a worker involves letting it finish any jobs currently in progress, so this may take a while. The update command waits until the worker has reconnected before reporting success. Note that the worker just exits, assuming a service manager will restart it. If you're testing it manually, you'll need to restart the worker yourself at this point.

You can also give the name of a worker as an extra argument to update just that worker.

To forget about an old worker (so that it no longer shows up under disconnected: in the state display:

ocluster-admin -c ./capnp-secrets/admin.cap forget linux-x86_64 my-host

Some clients may submit many jobs in batches. In this case, we probably want other client's jobs to enter the queue ahead of them, even if they are submitted afterwards.

To handle this, each client (separately for each pool) can be configured with a "rate", which is the rate at which they can expect to use the cluster (the number of jobs they will have running at once). If the cluster has free capacity then this has no effect; all jobs will be run. However, when queuing the scheduler will use this information to try to schedule jobs so that they run when they would have run if the client was using the cluster at the expected rate.

For example:

1. The admin sets Alice's rate to 2 and Bob's rate the 1 (the default), using ocluster-admin set-rate.
2. Bob submits 10 jobs, each estimated to run for 1 minute.
3. Because Bob's rate is one, the cluster assigns these jobs "fair start times" of now, +1m, +2m, +3m, etc.
4. The cluster will start as many of these jobs as it has capacity for. If its capacity is 3, Bob's first three jobs will start.
5. Alice submits two jobs, also taking one minute each. The cluster assigns these jobs fair start times of now and now+30s. These will be the next two jobs to run, because their start times are before all of Bob's jobs.

You can see these values in the ocluster-admin show output. For example:

…
queue: (backlog) [bob:job9@9m bob:job8@8m bob:job7@7m bob:job6@6m bob:job5@5m
                  bob:job4@4m bob:job3@3m alice:job1@30s alice:job0@0s]
clients: alice(2)+1m bob(1)+10m

This means that:

• The backlog contains Bob's remaining 7 jobs, queued up behind Alice's 2 jobs. bob:job9@9m means that Bob's "job9" has a fair start time 9 minutes from now. Alice's jobs will go next, because they have earlier start times.
• Alice has a rate of 2 jobs (2 job-seconds per second) and her next job will have a fair start time of 1 minute from now (because she has already submitted 2 minutes of jobs and is expected to run 2 jobs at once).
• Bob has a rate of 1 and a 10 minute penalty.

To write your own clients or builders:

• api/schema.capnp is the Cap'n Proto schema file.
• The api directory contains some OCaml wrappers for this.

The worker process has access to the local machine's Docker socket, which effectively gives it root on that machine. So a compromised build agent compromises that build machine. A malicious builder can give incorrect results for build jobs and (by running jobs very quickly) could end up handling most of the jobs within its pool. Taking over one worker machine should not help in taking over any other machine. Workers cannot submit jobs to other machines.

A compromised build scheduler can give incorrect results for any job, but should not be able to compromise the workers or get root on the build machines. It does not have access to its own machine's docker socket, and should therefore not be able to compromise its host (assuming it's running in a container).

Users (with access to the submission endpoint) can only submit jobs, and should not be able to use this to compromise the scheduler or the worker services. Users should not be able to compromise the jobs of other users. However, if your job requests use of a shared cache then be aware that other jobs could write to that cache, so the contents may not be trustworthy.

All communication uses TLS. The .cap files contain both the fingerprint of scheduler's key (allowing clients and builders to verify that they are connected to the real service) and a secret granting them access to that particular object.

There is no attempt at DoS protection from malicious clients or services.

You can run the scheduler with --listen-prometheus=PORT to expose Prometheus metrics on the given port. The endpoints available are:

• https://…:PORT/metrics provides the metrics for the scheduler itself,
• https://…:PORT/pool/{pool}/worker/{worker}/metrics provides the metrics for the given worker
• https://…:PORT/pool/{pool}/worker/{worker}/host-metrics gets the worker's prometheus-node-exporter metrics

The worker agent and worker host metrics are fetched over the worker's Cap'n Proto connection, so there is no need to allow incoming network connections to the workers for this.

The stress directory contains some code for running the scheduler with some simulated workloads and monitoring it. To save building things again, stress/docker-compose.yml runs the previously-built scheduler binary directly from _build, which therefore needs to be compatible with the stress/Dockerfile environment (so edit that if it doesn't match your main dev platform).

To run the testbed:

dune build
cd stress
docker-compose up

This runs three services:

• scheduler is a scheduler instance with some dummy workers that handle jobs by just sleeping for a bit, and some dummy clients that submit jobs to the cluster.
• prometheus collects metrics from the scheduler.
• grafana displays the metrics.

Open https://localhost:3000 in a web-browser to view the grafana dashboard for the tests.

The scheduler service also writes out ./capnp-secrets/stress-admin.cap, which you can use from the host to manage the test cluster. For example:

dune exec -- ocluster-admin show -c ./capnp-secrets/stress-admin.cap linux-x86_64

You can also create your own client endpoints and submit your own jobs, in addition to those submitted by the testbed itself.