Home
Tutorials
Get familiar with Kosli

Get familiar with Kosli #

The following guide is the easiest and quickest way to try Kosli out and understand it's features. It is made to run from your local machine, but the same concepts and steps apply to using Kosli in a production setup.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how Kosli allows you to follow a source code change to runtime environments. You'll set up a docker environment, use Kosli to record build and deployment events, and track what artifacts are running in your runtime environment.

This tutorial uses the docker Kosli environment type, but the same steps can be applied to other supported environment types.

As you go through the guide you can also check your progress from your browser.

In the upper left corner there is a house icon. Next to it you can select which organization you want to view. Your personal organization has the same name as your github login name, and is the organization you will be using in this guide.

Step 1: Prerequisites and Kosli account #

To follow the tutorial, you will need to:

Install both Docker and docker-compose.
Create a Kosli account if you have not got one already.
Install the Kosli CLI and set the KOSLI_API_TOKEN and KOSLI_ORG environment variables.
You can check your Kosli set up by running:
```
kosli list flows
```
which should return a list of flows or the message "No flows were found".

Clone our quickstart-docker repository:

git clone https://github.com/kosli-dev/quickstart-docker-example.git
cd quickstart-docker-example

Step 2: Create a Kosli flow #

A Kosli flow stores information about what happens in your build system. The output of the build system is called an artifact in Kosli. An artifact could be, for example, an application binary, a docker image, a directory, or a file.

Start by creating a new Kosli flow:

kosli create flow quickstart-nginx \
    --description "Flow for quickstart nginx image"

You can confirm that the Kosli flow was created by running:

kosli list flows

which should produce the following output:

NAME              DESCRIPTION                          VISIBILITY
quickstart-nginx  Flow for quickstart nginx image      private

In the web interface you can select the Flows option on the left. It will show you that you have a quickstart-nginx flow. If you select the flow it will show that no artifacts have been reported yet.

Step 3: Create a Kosli environment #

A Kosli environment stores snapshots containing information about the software artifacts you are running in your runtime environment.

Create a Kosli environment:

kosli create environment quickstart \
    --type docker \
    --description "quickstart environment for tutorial"

You can verify that the Kosli environment was created:

kosli list environments

NAME        TYPE    LAST REPORT  LAST MODIFIED
quickstart  docker               2022-11-01T15:30:56+01:00

If you refresh the Environments web page in your Kosli account, it will show you that you have a quickstart environment and that no reports have been received.

Step 4: Report artifacts to Kosli #

Typically, you would build an artifact in your CI system. The quickstart-docker repository contains a docker-compose.yml file which uses an nginx docker image which you will be using as your artifact in this tutorial instead.

Pull the docker image - the Kosli CLI needs the artifact to be locally present to generate a "fingerprint" to identify it:

docker-compose pull

You can check that this has worked by typing:

docker images nginx

The output should look like this:

REPOSITORY   TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED        SIZE
nginx        1.21      8f05d7383593   5 months ago   134MB

Now you can report the artifact to Kosli. This tutorial uses a dummy value for the --build-url flag, in a real installation this would be a defaulted link to a build service (e.g. Github Actions).

kosli report artifact nginx:1.21 \
    --flow quickstart-nginx \
    --artifact-type docker \
    --build-url https://example.com \
    --commit-url https://github.com/kosli-dev/quickstart-docker-example/commit/9f14efa0c91807da9a8b1d1d6332c5b3aa24a310 \
    --git-commit 9f14efa0c91807da9a8b1d1d6332c5b3aa24a310

You can verify that you have reported the artifact in your quickstart-nginx flow:

kosli list artifacts --flow quickstart-nginx

COMMIT   ARTIFACT                                                                       STATE      CREATED_AT
9f14efa  Name: nginx:1.21                                                               COMPLIANT  Tue, 01 Nov 2022 15:46:59 CET
         Fingerprint: 2bcabc23b45489fb0885d69a06ba1d648aeda973fae7bb981bafbb884165e514

Step 5: Report expected deployment of the artifact #

Before you run the nginx docker image (the artifact) on your docker host, you need to report to Kosli your intention of deploying that image. This allows Kosli to match what you expect to run in your environment with what is actually running, and flag any mismatches.

kosli expect deployment nginx:1.21 \
    --flow quickstart-nginx \
    --artifact-type docker \
    --build-url https://example.com \
    --environment quickstart \
    --description "quickstart-nginx artifact deployed to quickstart env"

You can verify the deployment with:

kosli list deployments --flow quickstart-nginx

ID   ARTIFACT                                                                       ENVIRONMENT  REPORTED_AT
1    Name: nginx:1.21                                                               quickstart   Tue, 01 Nov 2022 15:48:47 CET
     Fingerprint: 2bcabc23b45489fb0885d69a06ba1d648aeda973fae7bb981bafbb884165e514

Now run the artifact:

docker-compose up -d

You can confirm the container is running:

docker ps

The output should include an entry similar to this:

CONTAINER ID  IMAGE      COMMAND                 CREATED         STATUS         PORTS                  NAMES
6330e545b532  nginx:1.21 "/docker-entrypoint.…"  35 seconds ago  Up 34 seconds  0.0.0.0:8080->80/tcp   quickstart-nginx

Step 6: Report what is running in your environment #

Report all the docker containers running on your machine to Kosli:

kosli snapshot docker quickstart

You can confirm this has created an environment snapshot:

kosli list snapshots quickstart

SNAPSHOT  FROM                           TO   DURATION
1         Tue, 01 Nov 2022 15:55:49 CET  now  11 seconds

You can get a detailed view of all the docker containers included in the snapshot report:

kosli get snapshot quickstart

COMMIT  ARTIFACT                                                                       FLOW  RUNNING_SINCE  REPLICAS
N/A     Name: nginx:1.21                                                               N/A   3 minutes ago  1
        Fingerprint: 8f05d73835934b8220e1abd2f157ea4e2260b9c26f6f63a8e3975e7affa46724

The kosli snapshot docker command reports all the docker containers running in your environment, equivalent to the output from docker ps. This tutorial only shows the nginx container in the examples.

If you refresh the Environments web page in your Kosli account, you will see that there is now a timestamp for Last Change At column. Select the quickstart link on left for a detailed view of what is currently running.

Step 7: Searching Kosli #

Now that you have reported your artifact and what's running in our runtime environment, you can use the kosli search command to find everything Kosli knows about an artifact or a git commit.

For example, you can give Kosli search the git commit SHA which you used when you reported the artifact:

kosli search 9f14efa0c91807da9a8b1d1d6332c5b3aa24a310

Search result resolved to commit 9f14efa0c91807da9a8b1d1d6332c5b3aa24a310
Name:              nginx:1.21
Fingerprint:       2bcabc23b45489fb0885d69a06ba1d648aeda973fae7bb981bafbb884165e514
Has provenance:    true
Flow:              quickstart-nginx
Git commit:        9f14efa0c91807da9a8b1d1d6332c5b3aa24a310
Commit URL:        https://github.com/kosli-dev/quickstart-docker-example/commit/9f14efa0c91807da9a8b1d1d6332c5b3aa24a310
Build URL:         https://example.com
Compliance state:  COMPLIANT
History:
    Artifact created                             Tue, 01 Nov 2022 15:46:59 CET
    Deployment #1 to quickstart environment      Tue, 01 Nov 2022 15:48:47 CET
    Started running in quickstart#1 environment  Tue, 01 Nov 2022 15:55:49 CET

Visit the Kosli Querying guide to learn more about the search command.