About

Machine Image builder for our VSCode Liveshare sessions (https://twitch.tv/statebox).

Some more background on how we're using this, here https://hackmd.io/6jSPsTXDTcu0xxqsdfMBdA

Usage

Create a VM from this image using the google cloud console.

Then, ssh into it and forward the nomachine port, 4000.

# replace wires@instance-1 by the username and the instance name
gcloud --project=statebox-infra compute ssh wires@liveshare -- -L 4555:localhost:4000

You can add the -A flag at the end of this command to forward you ssh-agent connection, meaning that you can use your local private keys to push to github. Do not forget to run ssh-add before you you connect, to add your keys to the ssh agent.

Machine configuration

Based of debian-9 and with a wires user.

The APT repository is updated and some stuff is installed:

• LXDE desktop,
• git, tig,
• vim, less
• sakura (shell)
• nmap
• htop
• nix
• nodejs v12.3.1

Then, nomachine is installed, which provides the remote desktop functionality.

VSCode is installed.

It writes a NX server config and creates a user:

login: wires password: geheim

Then, as the wires user, some more stuff is installed:

• Some VS code extentions are installed
  • ms-vsliveshare.vsliveshare Live sharing
  • zjhmale.idris Idris support
• Elba as ~wires/bin/elba
• Some statebox code from public repos into ~wires/code

Then the /nix store is warmed up by starting a nix-env shell in the repos.

Updating the image

Configuration

Configuration in config.json

to see available values:

• source_image_family, list images ("FAMILY" column) gcloud compute images list
• machine_type, list machine types ("NAME" column) gcloud compute machine-types list

Building

# run
packer build -var-file=config.json packer.json

References

• wiki page https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FreeNX#Installation
• manual https://www.nomachine.com/DT07M00090#10.8.
• multicursor window manager http://multicursor-wm.sourceforge.net/#compiling

https://www.nomachine.com/accessing-your-remote-desktop-on-google-cloud-platform-via-nomachine

https://syslog.ravelin.com/baking-with-packer-in-google-cloud-ef20dd3a6098?gi=3edb76d8eb59

cannot use root username ref