Open edX release demo platform CD

This repo holds the continuous deployment (CD) scripts to deploy the Open edX release demo platforms. As of April 24, 2025, it is used to deploy and configure a test instance of the Ulmo release.

⚠ THIS REPO IS NOT FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION ⚠ It is only used to deploy and configure a test instance for the Build/Test/Release working group. Detected issues should be reported to the working group.

URLs:

• LMS: https://ulmo.demo.edly.io
• Studio: https://studio.ulmo.demo.edly.io

You may log in with the following credentials:

• Student user:
  • username: student
  • email: [email protected]
  • password: student
• Administrator user:
  • username: admin
  • email: [email protected]
  • password: admin

The platform is reset weekly, every Monday at 2 am UTC.

The deployment script is included in this repository. If you are working on testing the latest release and you would like to modify this script, please open a pull request.

The following plugins are enabled on the demo platform:

• ✅ tutor-mfe
• ✅ tutor-discovery
• ✅ tutor-credentials
• ✅ tutor-minio
• ✅ tutor-forum
• ✅ tutor-notes
• ✅ tutor-xqueue
• ✅ tutor-android
• ✅ tutor-jupyter
• ✅ tutor-contrib-codejail
• ✅ tutor-contrib-aspects
• ✅ tutor-contrib-notifications

If you are interested in upgrading these plugins to Ulmo, please submit a PR by following the regular plugin upgrade instructions and mention it in the sandbox tracking ticket.

Testing

The deployment script can be tested with act. Define your secrets::

# edit the resulting .secrets file
cp .secrets.sample .secrets

Note that multi-line strings are not supported in secrets files, so you should replace carriage returns with "\n".

Then run::

act workflow_dispatch

Server provisioning

We need to be careful not to exceed the disk space and the server memory to avoid filled disks, excessive build times and crashes.

Prerequisites

Install the utilities required to run the platform:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -e

# DOCKER CONFIG
# Add Docker's official GPG key:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ca-certificates curl python3.12-venv -y
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

# Add the repository to Apt sources:
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.sources <<EOF
Types: deb
URIs: https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu
Suites: $(. /etc/os-release && echo "${UBUNTU_CODENAME:-$VERSION_CODENAME}")
Components: stable
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
EOF

sudo apt update

sudo apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

sudo systemctl status docker

docker compose version

sudo usermod -aG docker "$USER"

Docker builder

We must configure the docker builder not to use more than 4 CPU and always leave some free space on disk. Edit buildkit.toml and add the following content:

# https://docs.docker.com/build/buildkit/toml-configuration/
# Apply configuration by stopping and removing build container:
#
#    docker stop buildx_buildkit_max4cpu0
#    docker rm buildx_buildkit_max4cpu0
#    docker buildx create --use --name=max4cpu --node=max4cpu0 --config=./buildkitd.toml
#    docker buildx inspect --bootstrap
#    docker exec buildx_buildkit_max4cpu0 cat /etc/buildkit/buildkitd.toml

# Enable debug mode, such that we can log gc events and detect them with:
#
#    docker logs -f buildx_buildkit_max4cpu0 2>&1 | grep garbage
debug = true
[worker.oci]
  max-parallelism = 4
  gc = true
  # Keep some space for cache
  reservedSpace = "25GB"
  # Always leave some free space
  minFreeSpace = "10GB"

Then create the builder with:

docker buildx create --use --name=max4cpu --config=./buildkit.toml

In case we are updating an existing builder, we need to stop and delete the container to apply the changes:

docker buildx create --use --name=max4cpu --node=max4cpu0 --config=./buildkitd.toml
docker stop buildx_buildkit_max4cpu0
docker container rm buildx_buildkit_max4cpu0

Image cache

First, we need to limit the amount of space used by Docker images. This can be achieved with the help of docuum:

mkdir -p ~/apps/docuum
cd ~/apps/docuum
vim docker-compose.yml

Add the following services:

services:
    # auto-clean least-recently used docker images
    docuum:
        image: stephanmisc/docuum:latest
        init: true
        volumes:
          - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
          - ./data/docuum:/root/.local/share/docuum
        command: "--threshold=50GB"
        restart: unless-stopped

And start it with:

docker compose up -d

Troubleshooting

Connection timout

If you get a connection timeout error while applying migrations:

botocore.exceptions.ConnectTimeoutError: Connect timeout on endpoint URL:

Then disable ufw:

sudo ufw disable

Verify with:

sudo ufw status

License

This work is licensed under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL).