## Software Lifecycle Management

### _Netbox Plugin for lifecycle management of software components, including versions and installations_

---

### Developer Guide (local installation)

_Follow the steps below on your local system to run netbox and the netbox_slm plugin in developer mode_

### Setup

The goal below is to run all Netbox components in Docker and run a local Netbox Django copy with auto-reload to develop the plugin pointing to the Dockerized postgres and redis instances, basically ignoring the netbox docker runtime server.

### Gotcha's

_Netbox's exception handler seems to supress initial Exceptions, obfuscating missing imports or other Django related issues by re-raising an opague error, e.g. netbox_slm plugin namespace doesnotexist. It's recommended to often check the runtime server or patch Netbox's global exception handler._

```
from your projects directory clone the netbox repository

$ git clone https://github.com/netbox-community/netbox
$ cd netbox

install the virtual environment

$ pipenv shell
$ pipenv install

create and edit netbox/configuration.py (based on the template file) add these lines at the end of the file;

DEBUG = True
SECRET_KEY = 'dummy'
DEVELOPER = True
PLUGINS = [
    'netbox_slm',
]
````

The Netbox installation above will be used to run Django management commands like runserver, makemigrations and migrate, which will be explained in the next steps below;

```
from your projects directory clone the netbox-slm repository

$ git clone https://github.com/ICTU/netbox_slm
$ cd netbox_slm
$ ./start-netbox.sh
````

This will start Netbox locally (requires Docker) and forward the redis and postgres ports to the localhost (make sure there's no processes using these ports or change the dockerfiles accordingly)

```
go back to the netbox configuration.py file and update the postgres and redis connection strings (username, password) to the ones the netbox docker backend is using, for example:

<<collapsed>>

# PostgreSQL database configuration. See the Django documentation for a complete list of available parameters:
#   https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/ref/settings/#databases
DATABASE = {
    'NAME': 'netbox',               # Database name
    'USER': 'netbox',               # PostgreSQL username
    'PASSWORD': 'J5brHrAXFLQSif0K', # PostgreSQL password
    'HOST': 'localhost',            # Database server
    'PORT': '',                     # Database port (leave blank for default)
    'CONN_MAX_AGE': 300,            # Max database connection age
}

# Redis database settings. Redis is used for caching and for queuing background tasks such as webhook events. A separate
# configuration exists for each. Full connection details are required in both sections, and it is strongly recommended
# to use two separate database IDs.
REDIS = {
    'tasks': {
        'HOST': 'localhost',
        'PORT': 6379,
        # Comment out `HOST` and `PORT` lines and uncomment the following if using Redis Sentinel
        # 'SENTINELS': [('mysentinel.redis.example.com', 6379)],
        # 'SENTINEL_SERVICE': 'netbox',
        'PASSWORD': 'H733Kdjndks81',
        'DATABASE': 0,
        'SSL': False,
        # Set this to True to skip TLS certificate verification
        # This can expose the connection to attacks, be careful
        # 'INSECURE_SKIP_TLS_VERIFY': False,
    },
    'caching': {
        'HOST': 'localhost',
        'PORT': 6379,
        # Comment out `HOST` and `PORT` lines and uncomment the following if using Redis Sentinel
        # 'SENTINELS': [('mysentinel.redis.example.com', 6379)],
        # 'SENTINEL_SERVICE': 'netbox',
        'PASSWORD': 'H733Kdjndks81',
        'DATABASE': 1,
        'SSL': False,
        # Set this to True to skip TLS certificate verification
        # This can expose the connection to attacks, be careful
        # 'INSECURE_SKIP_TLS_VERIFY': False,
    }
}

<<collapsed>>
```

Now you can run commands from the netbox_slm repository like this;

```
$ cd netbox/netbox
$ export PYTHONPATH=../../netbox-slm/src/
$ python3 manage.py migrate netbox_slm
$ python3 manage.py runserver 8001
```

and visit 127.0.0.1:8001 in the browesr to see the auto reloading version of the netbox UI. Port 8000 is taken by the docker ran variant.