Preconfigure or automate installations of ctfd

[jonakarl]

I am not sure if it is possible (at least I have not seen it documented) to automate installations of ctfd.

My goal is to automatically deploy ctfd as docker services that is ready to run and to achieve this I need to automate:

1. Disabling of the setup wizard
2. Configuration of a admin user and set or acquire a admin token (via api calls or environment variables to the docker container)

Alternatively:

1. Be able to pre-configure the values of the setup wizard and "admin token".
   • Either via environment variables or by hard coding them in the build phase of the docker image.

Is this in anyway possible ?

[pve]

Kind of. We made some progress, though it is not entirely finished. Have a look at https://gitlab.com/jointcyberrange.nl/ctfd-docker-with-plugins/-/tree/main/initial_setup?ref_type=heads and the files around it. It is a plugin.

[jonakarl]

@pve Thanks this looks like what I want to do.

If I can ask a question, I am not very familiar with ctfd design but I saw a Tokens model, so I guess I need to create a separate token and then link it with the user?
somethineg like :

token  = Tokens(
            user_id=user.id,
            type='admin',
            value=os.getenv("SETUP_EVENT_ADMIN_TOKEN")
        )
db.session.add(token)
db.session.commit()
``

[pve]

I think if you look in our code (link above) for SETUP_EVENT_ADMIN you will find what you need.
There is still work to do on this, so let's work together.

[jonakarl]

I will not have that much time to look into this in the short term (1-2 weeks) but I did find this :

CTFd/tests/helpers.py

Line 160 in ef6752c

def setup_ctfd(

Looks like in the main integrations tests they do a post to /setup to initiate the instance. Should do more or less what you do in your code afaik but maybe a alternative to look into. Not sure how to call this at docker start but maybe worth looking into.

[pve]

The general idea is to do this through environment variables and/or the config.ini file. In our Kubernetes setup we feed the environment variables through a configmap.

[pve]

In our repo there is a Docker file that integrates the plugins. You can build and run https://gitlab.com/jointcyberrange.nl/ctfd-docker-with-plugins/-/blob/main/Dockerfile?ref_type=heads for an immediate local demo.