CDash

Prerequisites

You need an active Azure subscription, an SSH key pair, and a VNet plus subnet in the target region.

Standard_B2s (2 vCPU / 4 GiB RAM) is a good starting size. Scale up for larger teams or high submission volumes.

Configure the network security group (NSG) to allow inbound 22/tcp from your management network and 80/tcp (HTTP) from your users. Add 443/tcp if you enable HTTPS. The PostgreSQL database listens on localhost only, so no database port is exposed.

Step 1 - Deploy from the Azure Marketplace

Sign in to the Azure portal, choose Create a resource, search the Marketplace for CDash by SecureAnyCloud, and select Create.

On the Basics tab, pick your subscription, resource group, region and size. Under Administrator account, choose SSH public key and paste your key. Under Inbound port rules, allow SSH (22) and HTTP (80). Then select Review + create and Create.

Step 2 - Deploy from the Azure CLI

Accept the Marketplace terms once per subscription, then create the VM:

# Accept the Marketplace terms once per subscription (required before the first CLI deploy)
az vm image terms accept --urn sac1647283583153:cdash-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest
az vm create \
  --resource-group <your-rg> \
  --name cdash \
  --image sac1647283583153:cdash-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest \
  --size Standard_B2s \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --generate-ssh-keys \
  --public-ip-sku Standard

Open port 80 to reach the web UI:

az vm open-port --resource-group <your-rg> --name cdash --port 80 --priority 900

Step 3 - Connect to your VM

Connect over SSH as azureuser:

ssh azureuser@<vm-public-ip>

Step 4 - Retrieve the first-boot administrator credentials

On the first boot of your instance, cdash-firstboot.service generates a fresh application encryption key, rotates the PostgreSQL password and creates a unique administrator account. It writes everything to a root-only file. Read the file:

sudo cat /root/cdash-credentials.txt

The file shows the generated administrator email and password, plus the database name and user. The password is unique to this VM and is not stored anywhere else.

Step 5 - Confirm the service is healthy

The web stack and database are managed by systemd and come up on boot. Confirm that they are active:

systemctl is-active nginx php8.3-fpm postgresql

Check that the web UI answers and reports the CDash version:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "GET /login -> HTTP %{http_code}\n" http://127.0.0.1/login cat /var/www/cdash/public/VERSION

Step 6 - Sign in to the dashboard

Browse to http://<vm-public-ip>/ and sign in at /login with the generated administrator email and password from Step 4.

You arrive at the CDash dashboard, which lists the projects you are a member of. A fresh instance has no projects yet.

Step 7 - Create a project

Click Create Project on the dashboard. Give the project a name and description, and choose its visibility (Public, Protected or Private). Decide whether submissions must present a valid authentication token. Save the project, and it is ready to receive dashboards.

Step 8 - Submit dashboards from CTest

In your project's CTest script, point ctest_submit at this server by setting the CDash drop location. A minimal CTestConfig.cmake looks like this:

set(CTEST_PROJECT_NAME "MyProject") set(CTEST_SUBMIT_URL "http://<vm-public-ip>/submit.php?project=MyProject") set(CTEST_DROP_METHOD "http")

Then run a dashboard build, for example:

ctest -D Experimental

Your configure, build and test results appear on the project's dashboard in CDash within seconds. CDash parses submissions synchronously, so no separate queue worker is required.

Security model

This image ships with no default login and no data. The database is created empty at build time. The web server is held offline until first boot completes, so the dashboard is never reachable with a build-time secret.

On first boot, a one-shot service regenerates the Laravel APP_KEY, rotates the PostgreSQL password in lock-step with the application configuration, and creates a single administrator with a random password. A wrong password is rejected, and only the generated per-VM password authenticates. Verify this:

U=$(sudo grep '^cdash.admin.user=' /root/cdash-credentials.txt | cut -d= -f2-) cj=$(mktemp); tok=$(curl -s -c $cj http://127.0.0.1/login | grep -oE 'name="_token"[^>]*value="[^"]+"' | head -1 | sed -E 's/.*value="([^"]+)".*/\1/')
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "wrong password -> HTTP %{http_code}\n" -b $cj -c $cj --data-urlencode "_token=$tok" --data-urlencode "email=$U" --data-urlencode "password=WrongGuess-123" http://127.0.0.1/login rm -f $cj

A wrong password returns HTTP 401. The correct per-VM password returns HTTP 302 and lands on the dashboard.

Enable HTTPS with a custom domain

Point a DNS A record at your VM's public IP and allow 443/tcp in the NSG. Then install a certificate with Certbot, and set APP_URL to your https:// domain in /var/www/cdash/.env:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d your-domain.example.com

After changing .env, rebuild the config cache:

sudo -u www-data php /var/www/cdash/artisan config:cache

Maintenance

• Logs. Application logs are at /var/www/cdash/storage/logs/cdash.log. nginx logs are under /var/log/nginx/.
• Database backups. Back up the cdash PostgreSQL database with sudo -u postgres pg_dump cdash > cdash-backup.sql.
• OS updates. Unattended security upgrades are enabled, so the base OS keeps patching itself.
• Admin CLI. Manage users and projects with sudo -u www-data php /var/www/cdash/artisan <command>.

Support

SecureAnyCloud provides 24/7 technical support for this CDash image by email (sales@secureanycloud.com) and live chat, covering deployment, first-boot credentials, creating projects and submitting dashboards, notifications, LDAP authentication, HTTPS setup, database administration and upgrades.

For billing or subscription questions, contact sales@secureanycloud.com.

Deploy on Azure

Launch CDash on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on Azure with 24/7 support from SecureAnyCloud.

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Need Help?

Our support team is available 24/7.

sales@secureanycloud.com