Hi folks,
It's time to showcase another neat app written using func. It's
"func-inventory". Func-inventory is just 153 lines of Python, and I
wrote the initial version
in about half of a day. I'm not saying that to brag, I'm saying that
because this means func is *REALLY* simple to build new applications on.
What does Func-inventory do? It's an app that allows for inventorying
(and inventory tracking) of anything. Anything that has a func module
can be stored, and the inventory
is kept over time in version control, to see what items have been added
or changed.
We're going to ship func-inventory in the func RPM, so it will be part
of the standard toolset.
How about an example?
# func-inventory --verbose
Simple enough?
By default, running func-inventory updates everything that is known
about all things func (on all minions) into a tree in
/var/lib/func/inventory.
Type "tree /var/lib/func/inventory" to see what I'm talking about.
Bonus feature: Unless you specify "--no-git", this directory is
automagically managed with git version control, so you can view changes
using tools like "git log", "gitk" (a GUI app), or (if you set it up)
GitWeb. For those unfamiliar with git, git is a powerful distributed
version control system used by the Linux kernel. It supports writing
arbitrary triggers, so you could have git email you reports of when your
configuration changes. We may include some of those scripts with func,
or we may eventually come up with some more advanced (module-specific)
triggers for func to use to report on inventory changes.
The app also has lots of other shiny options, some of which are shown
below. You can read the "func-inventory" manpage for more details.
func-inventory --tree /opt/put/my/files/here --server-spec
"mailservers*.example.org" --modules hardware,packages --verbose
This would dump the inventory data of only your mailservers (and only
from two func modules, hardware and packages) to the directory specified
above.
One note ... Currently by default, we index all modules that have an
info() method. Since some modules change state too often to be part of
inventory, we'll most likely
have an inventory() method in the future, which will frequently be
aliased (but not always) to what info() returns now. You can also
override the methods and modules
being inventoried on the command line.
I've only lightly tested the option handling so far (testing/upgrades to
this are on the list for this week), though if anyone would like to play
with it, just install the latest func, install git-core on the minion,
and have at it.
Thanks!
--Michael
