Lab 4.3 - Create a New iControl LX Extension RPM

Here, our curl commands will return a fair amount of output. To make it more readable we will need jq. jq is not available on BIG-IP.

To run the following curl commands, do it from the Xubuntu Server (10.1.1.252). It’s already defined in PuTTY. Login: external_user, Password: P@ssw0rd!

Task 1 - Create a new RPM for the Updated iControl LX Extension

The minimum requirement to build an iControl LX package is the appName, which must match the directory name you use in /var/config/rest/iapps to store your extension. In our lab, the folder’s name is HelloWorld.

Here is the REST command to start the package creation:

POST /mgmt/shared/iapp/build-package
{
  "appName": "HelloWorld",
  "packageVersion": "0.1",
  "packageRelease": "001"
}

Perform the following steps to complete this task:

1. Execute the following command to start package creation:

   curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -k -u admin:admin -X POST -d '{"appName": "HelloWorld", "packageVersion": "0.1", "packageRelease": "001"}' https://10.1.1.245/mgmt/shared/iapp/build-package | jq .

   Note

   The | jq . will format the response in something more readable

2. You’ll get back a response that looks something like this:

   {
     "step": "GET_LATEST_BLOCK_STATES_AND_PERSIST_TO_DISK",
     "packageDirectory": "/var/config/rest/iapps/HelloWorld",
     "appName": "HelloWorld",
     "force": true,
     "rpmDescription": "Default exported iApp description.",
     "rpmSummary": "Default exported iApp summary.",
     "id": "3ae60863-9d92-40a0-a69a-1acc337100b9",
      "status": "CREATED",
     "userReference": {
       "link": "https://localhost/mgmt/shared/authz/users/admin"
     },
     "identityReferences": [
       {
         "link": "https://localhost/mgmt/shared/authz/users/admin"
       }
     ],
     "ownerMachineId": "2865e578-0460-44f4-910a-8dc7f220fce1",
     "generation": 1,
     "lastUpdateMicros": 1508321173979420,
     "kind": "shared:iapp:build-package:buildrpmtaskstate",
     "selfLink": "https://localhost/mgmt/shared/iapp/build-package/3ae60863-9d92-40a0-a69a-1acc337100b9"
   }
   

   

3. To view the status of the package creation, take the id and append that to the end of the build-package URI like so (this is a GET request):

   curl -k -u admin:admin https://10.1.1.245/mgmt/shared/iapp/build-package/3ae60863-9d92-40a0-a69a-1acc337100b9 | jq .

4. You will receive the following when it is successfully created: (“status”: “FINISHED”):

   {
     "step": "COMPLETE_TASK",
     "packageDirectory": "/var/config/rest/iapps/HelloWorld",
     "appName": "HelloWorld",
     "specFilePath": "/var/config/rest/node/tmp/0b4c612e-6cfc-4ee7-b188-81fd6e1abb7d.spec",
     "buildCommand": "rpmbuild -bb --define '_tmppath /shared/tmp' --define 'main /var/config/rest/iapps/HelloWorld' --define '_topdir /var/config/rest/node/tmp'    '/var/config/rest/node/tmp/0b4c612e-6cfc-4ee7-b188-81fd6e1abb7d.spec'",
     "packageVersion": "0.1",
     "packageRelease": "001",
     "force": true,
     "rpmDescription": "Default exported iApp description.",
     "rpmSummary": "Default exported iApp summary.",
     "isSpecFileToCleanUp": true,
     "builtRpmPackageFilePath": "/var/config/rest/iapps/RPMS/HelloWorld-0.1-001.noarch.rpm",
     "id": "3ae60863-9d92-40a0-a69a-1acc337100b9",
     "status": "FINISHED",
     "startTime": "2017-10-18T12:17:22.470+0200",
     "endTime": "2017-10-18T12:17:22.833+0200",
     "userReference": {
         "link": "https://localhost/mgmt/shared/authz/users/admin"
     },
     "identityReferences": [
         {
             "link": "https://localhost/mgmt/shared/authz/users/admin"
         }
     ],
     "ownerMachineId": "2865e578-0460-44f4-910a-8dc7f220fce1",
     "generation": 10,
     "lastUpdateMicros": 1508321842833090,
     "kind": "shared:iapp:build-package:buildrpmtaskstate",
     "selfLink": "https://localhost/mgmt/shared/iapp/build-package/b7dec0ba-c9cb-40c4-833f-77c51f853c88"
   }
   

   

Task 3 - Retrieving your iControl LX Package

Note also in the build-package completion response above, the builtRpmPackageFilePath field should look like this:

"builtRpmPackageFilePath": "/var/config/rest/iapps/RPMS/HelloWorld-0.1-001.noarch.rpm"

This is where you collect your RPM from. You can retrieve your RPM either with something like WinSCP, SCP or your favorite tool.

No need to retrieve it for this lab.

Task 4 - Remove the iControl Extension

Now that we have our RPM, we may want to remove what we create ourselves (the HelloWorld folder in /var/config/rest/iapps and also that it is loaded in restnoded). Since we started the iControl Extension from scratch, we will need to remove it manually.

Perform the following steps to complete this task:

1. On the BIG-IP run the following command:

   restcurl shared/nodejs/loader-path-config

2. You should have an output like this:

   {
     "items": [
     {
       "id": "ad130c79-59a0-49c7-a7e7-ff39efe956b5",
       "workerPath": "/var/config/rest/iapps/HelloWorld",
        "generation": 1,
       "lastUpdateMicros": 1508242306312732,
       "kind": "shared:nodejs:loader-path-config:loaderpathstate",
       "selfLink": "https://localhost/mgmt/shared/nodejs/loader-path-config/ad130c79-59a0-49c7-a7e7-ff39efe956b5"
     }
     ],
     "generation": 1,
     "kind": "shared:nodejs:loader-path-config:loaderpathcollectionstate",
     "lastUpdateMicros": 1508242306328021,
     "selfLink": "https://localhost/mgmt/shared/nodejs/loader-path-config"
   }
   

   

3. Here we can see the ID of our extension: ad130c79-59a0-49c7-a7e7-ff39efe956b5. To delete this extension, you can run the following command:

   Note

   Replace the string ad130c79-59a0-49c7-a7e7-ff39efe956b5 with your own extension id.

   restcurl -X DELETE shared/nodejs/loader-path-config/ad130c79-59a0-49c7-a7e7-ff39efe956b5

4. Your output should be like this:

   {
     "id": "ad130c79-59a0-49c7-a7e7-ff39efe956b5",
     "workerPath": "/var/config/rest/iapps/HelloWorld",
     "generation": 1,
     "lastUpdateMicros": 1508242306312732,
     "kind": "shared:nodejs:loader-path-config:loaderpathstate",
     "selfLink": "https://localhost/mgmt/shared/nodejs/loader-path-config/ad130c79-59a0-49c7-a7e7-ff39efe956b5"
   }
   Oct 18 14:33:06 bigip emerg logger: Re-starting restnoded
   

   

5. As you can see restnoded was restarted automatically to remove the extension.

6. You can validate that your extension was removed from restnoded by trying to access it again (run this command from the Xubuntu Server):

   curl -k -u admin:admin https://10.1.1.245/mgmt/ilxe_lab/hello_world | jq .

7. Here your request should fail and the output should be similar to this:

   {
     "error": {
       "code": 404,
       "message": "",
       "innererror": {
         "referer": "192.168.143.1",
          "originalRequestBody": "",
         "errorStack": []
       }
     }
   }
   

   

8. You can now delete your working directory to completely erase this extension from your BIG-IP. From the BIG-IP CLI run this command:

   rm -rf /var/config/rest/iapps/HelloWorld