isle/docs/admin/adding-a-host-to-the-network.md

Adding a Host to the Network

This document guides an admin through adding a single host to the network. Keep in mind that the steps described here must be done for each host the user wishes to add.

Step 1: Choose Hostname

The user will need to provide you with a name for their host. The name should conform to the following rules:

• It should only contain lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens.

• It should begin with a letter.

• It should end with a letter or number.

Step 2: Choose IP

The admin should choose an IP for the host. The IP you choose for the new host should be one which is not yet used by any other host and is in a subnet which was configured when creating the network.

Step 3: Create a bootstrap.json File

Access to an admin.json file is required for this step.

To create a bootstrap.json file for the new host, the admin should perform the following command from their own host:

isle hosts create \
    --hostname <name> \
    --ip <ip> \
    --admin-path <path to admin.json> \
    > bootstrap.json

The resulting bootstrap.json file should be treated as a secret file and shared only with the user it was generated for. The bootstrap.json file should not be re-used between hosts.

The user can now proceed with calling isle network join, as described in the Getting Started document.

Encrypted admin.json

If admin.json is kept in an encrypted format on disk (it should be!) then the decrypted form can be piped into isle hosts create over stdin. For example, if GPG is being used to secure admin.json then the following could be used to generate a bootstrap.json:

gpg -d <path to admin.json.gpg> | isle hosts create \
    --hostname <name> \
    --ip <ip> \
    --admin-path - \
    > bootstrap.json

Note that the value of --admin-path is -, indicating that admin.json should be read from stdin.