Google App Engine with ManagedVMs and Boot2Docker on a Linux machine

I have be trying to configure Google App Engine with ManagedVMs on Linux for a few days.

We will perform these steps on Ubuntu ( can also be done on Fedora ):

Install Google App Engine SDK
Install Latest Docker
Install VirtualBox
Install Boot2Docker CLI

Install Google App Engine SDK

Download Google App Engine SDK ( you may want to keep the defaults as is )

$ curl https://sdk.cloud.google.com | bash

Now in a new terminal

$ gcloud auth login
$ gcloud components update gae-python
$ gcloud components update app

Install latest Docker on local machine

Install the latest Docker

$ curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ubuntu/ | sudo sh

Install VirtualBox

$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox

Install Boot2Docker CLI

Download a prebuild binary of Boot2Docker CLI ( version 1.3.2 )

$ wget -c https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker-cli/releases/download/v1.3.2/boot2docker-v1.3.2-linux-amd64
$ chmod +x boot2docker-v1.3.2-linux-amd64

Setup the Boot2Docker Image

$ ./boot2docker-v1.3.2-linux-amd64 init
Latest release for boot2docker/boot2docker is v1.4.0
Downloading boot2docker ISO image...

Add port forwarding in the range {49000, 49900} to VirtualBox VM

$ wget -c https://gist.githubusercontent.com/tuxdna/4d0dbc6ccd4786595c43/raw/a080232fc8adce19a389ff190ada4068ed574f19/boot2docker-portforward.sh

$ chmod +x boot2docker-portforward.sh
$ bash -x boot2docker-portforward.sh

Obtain the DOCKER environment variables. These are used for accessing the Docker daemon inside Boot2Docker VM, from localhost

$ ./boot2docker-v1.3.2-linux-amd64 up
$ ./boot2docker-v1.3.2-linux-amd64 shellinit
Writing /home/tuxdna/.boot2docker/certs/boot2docker-vm/ca.pem
Writing /home/tuxdna/.boot2docker/certs/boot2docker-vm/cert.pem
Writing /home/tuxdna/.boot2docker/certs/boot2docker-vm/key.pem
export DOCKER_HOST=tcp://192.168.59.103:2376
export DOCKER_CERT_PATH=/home/tuxdna/.boot2docker/certs/boot2docker-vm
export DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY=1

You must note down the three export commands, and use them to set these environment variables.

Setup GAE ManagedVM environment

Use the Boot2Docker environment variables obtained earlier

$ export DOCKER_HOST=tcp://192.168.59.103:2376
$ export DOCKER_CERT_PATH=/home/tuxdna/.boot2docker/certs/boot2docker-vm
$ export DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY=1

Now begin setup

$ gcloud preview app setup-managed-vms

Ideally this should just work, but if not, then read on.

When there are problems

This will not work right away as you may not have access to different Google registries such as google/docker-registry.

Get a SSH shell inside Boot2Docker VM, and pull the registry

$ ./boot2docker-v1.3.2-linux-amd64 ssh
$ docker pull google/docker-registry

You need to perform the following steps inside your local machine

Find your refresh token

$ gcloud auth print-refresh-token

Cretae a registry-params.env file

$ cat > registry-params.env 
GCP_OAUTH2_REFRESH_TOKEN=<YOUR_REFRESH_TOKEN_HERE>
GCS_BUCKET=containers-prod

Now use this file to run `google/docker-registry'

$ docker run -d --env-file=registry-params.env -p 5000:5000 google/docker-registry

And again try to run the setup

$ gcloud preview app setup-managed-vms

While these are the steps I have followed, I am still trying to make it work. Hopefully it will work very soon.

References:

Open questions: