Build a Snap package from source

[ralphm]

No description provided.

[ralphm]

For testing this out:

Initial install

1. Find the latest successful build and scroll down to artifacts to download a zip file with the snap package inside.

   

2. Extract the snap package from the zipfile.

3. Install the snap package on the target machine:

   sudo snap install --dangerous ./netdata_0.1_amd64.snap

Note

This uses --dangerous because the Snap is unsigned.

Installing the Snap package automatically runs the Agent as a systemd service snap.netdata.agent. The dashboard should be accessible at http://localhost:19999/.

Granting additional permissions

As Snap packages run in a tightly controlled confinement environment, the agent needs to be granted additional permissions in order to access certain system resources. This is done through so-called connections. The below script enables all currently available connections. There are some comments in the snap/snapcraft.yaml file as to which resources are unlocked:

#!/bin/sh
sudo snap connect netdata:hardware-observe
sudo snap connect netdata:docker-support
sudo snap connect netdata:kubernetes-support
sudo snap connect netdata:log-observe
sudo snap connect netdata:login-session-observe
sudo snap connect netdata:mount-observe
sudo snap connect netdata:network-bind
sudo snap connect netdata:network-observe
sudo snap connect netdata:network-setup-observe
sudo snap connect netdata:system-observe
sudo snap connect netdata:time-control

After changing connections, the Agent may have to be restarted to take full effect:

sudo systemctl restart snap.netdata.agent

Configuration

Upon install, the initial configuration from the package is populated into /var/snap/netdata/common. You can make any additional modifications there, and will not be updated by future versions.

Data files

Data files are stored in /var/snap/netdata/[version]/, with a symlink from /var/snap/netdata/current. When a new version of the snap is installed, a snapshot of this data is created and carried over to the new version. When uninstalling the Snap with sudo snap remove netdata, an automatic snapshot saves the data as well. You can use --purge to skip the creation of this snapshot.

[Ferroin]

I don’t think it’s possible for a Snap package to access the required interfaces for this plugin to work, no matter what connections are made, so we should probably just disable it.

[ralphm]

You mean Xen specifically? Yeah, I haven't gotten to testing that and will indeed disable it if that is indeed the case.

Fortunately, many things do work. I'm currently trying to get eBPF working properly, but here too, some interfaces don't appear to be exposed and may require putting in a ticket with snapd.