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Version: v1

Pygmy

The Pygmy project describes the tool as follows:

pygmy is the single tool needed to get the local amazee.io Docker Drupal Development Environment running on your Linux based system. It is built to work with Docker for Mac! (quite a lot for such a small whale 🐳)

This page is for developers who set up a machine for a Vortex project or need to get an SSH key back into the CLI container. It explains what Pygmy provides, how to install and run it, and how to reconnect the CLI container to its SSH agent.

Pygmy provides the shared services the Vortex container stack relies on:

  • An HTTP reverse proxy for readable URLs. With a certificate you pass to pygmy up --tls-cert, it also handles HTTPS.
  • A DNS resolver for *.docker.amazee.io, so each project's local URL resolves to your machine.
  • An SSH agent, so your SSH key is available inside the CLI container.
  • A local mail catcher that receives and displays outgoing mail at http://mailhog.docker.amazee.io/.

They're shared because a single Pygmy instance serves every project on your machine: start it once after each boot, and every local stack routes through it.

The docker-compose.yml that ships with Vortex depends on Pygmy twice. The nginx service joins the external amazeeio-network that Pygmy creates, and the cli service takes its SSH agent volume from Pygmy's amazeeio-ssh-agent container. Both have to exist before Docker Compose can create those containers, so start Pygmy before ahoy up.

If the network is missing, ahoy up fails, because Docker Compose returns an error instead of creating a missing external network. If Pygmy's containers exist but aren't running, the stack starts, but your SSH key isn't available in the CLI container.

ahoy doctor checks that the 4 Pygmy containers are running: the SSH agent, the mail catcher, the proxy, and the DNS resolver. It looks for their names in the output of pygmy status:

amazeeio-ssh-agent
amazeeio-mailhog
amazeeio-haproxy
amazeeio-dnsmasq

Installation​

Follow the Pygmy installation instructions. For how Pygmy sets up DNS resolution on each operating system, see the Pygmy documentation.

Usage​

The following commands manage the Pygmy services:

pygmy up       # Start the services. Required to run only once per system boot.
pygmy down     # Stop the services.
pygmy restart  # Restart the services.
pygmy status   # Show the status of the services.
pygmy clean    # Stop and remove all services. Useful if you have issues with pygmy.

SSH key in the CLI container​

The CLI container uses the SSH agent from Pygmy's amazeeio-ssh-agent container. It mounts the agent's volume through volumes_from and links to the agent's socket only when the CLI container starts.

Pygmy adds your default key, ~/.ssh/id_rsa, to the agent. To use a different key, add it yourself:

pygmy addkey --key ~/.ssh/path/to/key

A key you add that way lasts only until the agent container is replaced, for example by pygmy restart. To load a different key every time Pygmy starts, pass it with --key, as in pygmy up --key ~/.ssh/path/to/key; it then replaces the default key. pygmy restart takes the same --key option.

Whichever way you load a different key, set VORTEX_SSH_FILE to its path in .env.local, so that Doctor checks for the key you use.

pygmy restart removes the agent container and creates a new one. If the stack is running at the time, the CLI container stays attached to the previous agent, so the SSH key is no longer available inside it. The same happens when the stack starts before Pygmy.

A plain pygmy restart loads only the default key. If you use a different key, load it again first with the command shown earlier, or restart with pygmy restart --key ~/.ssh/path/to/key. Then recreate the CLI container to attach it to the current agent:

ahoy up --no-deps --force-recreate cli

Running ahoy up on its own isn't enough: Docker Compose leaves a running container alone when its configuration hasn't changed. ahoy doctor checks that the SSH key is available in the CLI container and prints this command when it isn't.

Confirm that the key is back: ahoy doctor prints [ OK ] SSH key is available within the CLI container.