Pulp Project Deployment

Deploy Pulp (content repository and distribution system) using Podman and podman-compose.

Prerequisites

• Podman – container runtime
• podman-compose – multi-container orchestration

Install on Fedora/CentOS/Rocky:

sudo dnf install podman podman-compose

Quick Start

Run the deployment script with a base directory for persistent data:

cd deployment && chmod +x ./deploy.sh

./deploy.sh /path/to/your/pulp-data

Example:

./deploy.sh /opt/pulp-data

The script will:

1. Create the required directories under the path you provide
2. Copy config/nginx.conf into the deployment directory
3. Generate a symmetric key for database fields under settings/certs/
4. Set permissions for Podman volume bind mounts
5. Start all services with podman-compose
6. Wait until the Pulp API is ready (checks every 20 seconds, up to ~30 minutes)
7. Reset admin password (default: pulp123)
8. Create non-admin user with username and password (default: cephuser/cephuser123)

What Gets Created

Under your base directory (e.g. /opt/pulp_data), the script creates:

Directory	Purpose
pgsql	PostgreSQL data
pulp_storage	Pulp file storage
settings	Pulp config and certs/
redis_data	Redis persistence
nginx_conf	Nginx config (copy of nginx.conf)

Ports

Service	Port	Description
Pulp API	24817	Direct API access
Pulp Content	24816	Content service
Web (Nginx)	8080	Reverse proxy (API + content)

• API (direct): http://<host>:24817/pulp/api/v3/
• API (via Nginx): http://<host>:8080/pulp/api/
• Content (via Nginx): http://<host>:8080/pulp/content/
• Documentation (via Nginx): http://<host>:8080/pulp/api/v3/docs/

The script sets PULP_API_URL using the host’s first IP for health checks.

Configuration

Defaults are set in deploy.sh; override any of these via environment variables (or, for the base directory, the first script argument) before running.

Variable	Default	Description
PULP_DB_NAME	pulpdb	PostgreSQL database name
PULP_DB_USER	pulp	PostgreSQL user
PULP_DB_PASSWORD	pulp123	PostgreSQL password
PULP_ADMIN_PASSWORD	pulp123	Pulp admin (reset after deploy)
PULP_USERNAME	cephuser	Pulp API user created by the script
PULP_PASSWORD	cephuser123	Password for PULP_USERNAME
Base directory (1st arg)	./pulp-data	Data directory; pass as first argument or leave unset to use default

Managing the Stack

From the project directory (where podman-compose.yaml lives):

# Use the same base directory as deploy.sh
export PULP_BASE_DIR=/path/to/your/pulp_data

# Stop services
podman-compose -f ./podman-compose.yaml down

# Start again (after initial deploy)
podman-compose -f ./podman-compose.yaml up -d

# View logs
podman-compose -f ./podman-compose.yaml logs -f