by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 30, 2009 | Code
Sometimes it’s nice to try and figure out what resources of a machine are being managed by puppet. Puppet keeps a state file in either YAML or Marshall format called localconfig.yaml it’s full of useful information, I wrote a quick script to parse it and show you what’s being managed.
Typical output is:
Classes included on this node:
nephilim.ml.org
common::linux
<snip>
Resources managed by puppet on this node:
service{smokeping: }
defined in common/modules/smokeping/manifests/service.pp:6
file{/etc/cron.d/mrtg: }
defined in common/modules/puppet/manifests/init.pp:201
<snip>
It will show all classes and all resources including where in your manifests the resource comes from. Unfortunately for resources created by defines it shows the define as the source but I guess you can’t have it all.
You can get the code here it’s pretty simple, just pass it a path to your localconfig.yaml file, it supports both YAML and Marshal formats.
The file also has every property of the resources in it etc, so you can easily extend this to print a lot of other information, just use something like pp to dump out the contents of Puppet::TransObject objects to see what’s possible.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 15, 2009 | Front Page
I use SSH’s socks proxy feature a lot, in fact I use it all the time, most of my browsing, IM, etc all goes over it out via my hosted virtual machines,
I do this to simplify my life for things like firewall rules and also to get around things like age blocks on mobile networks. I work for a site deemed adult by most of them so I can’t even see my nagios without age verifying.
Recently they have been driving me nuts, every now and then the whole session would just lock up and sit there doing nothing, I’ve not seen this happen before and was a bit stumped.
Turns out, it chooses to speak to TCP/53 sometimes instead of UDP/53 for resolving, not sure why exactly, I’ve not tried to figure out what queries cause this – I know there are limits to response sizes which will force it to go over TCP. Why it’s only started doing this now I don’t know, maybe a update changed behavior, I’ve never had TCP/53 open on the cache.
My firewall was blocking TCP/53 on the local cache so this would lock up the whole ssh session, maybe the whole ssh process is single threaded and so waiting in SYN_SENT mode just hangs the whole thing, that’s a bit sucky, I might need a better proxy.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 14, 2009 | Front Page
You’d be thinking based on the last 2 posts that someone is trying to convince the world that I’ve gone mad and do actually like Debian.
Actually I am letting some other people guest blog here, the first is Mark Webster aka LSD, he’s a developer, systems dude and all round kewl guy working in London on all sorts of interesting stuff, most recently about optimizing Linux kernels to get insane amounts of packets per second out of them.
Look out for more great posts from Mark hopefully detailing more of his experiences tuning kernels and such.
I’d also be interested to hear from other like minded people who want to guest blog here, I’ll over the next while take out some of the links and stuff that makes this site personal and more friendly to guest bloggers.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jun 24, 2009 | Front Page
As mentioned earlier I’ll be going to South Africa for 2 weeks soon, I have a few talks lined up.
I’ll be talking at the Gauteng LUG on the 1st of July 2009 and I will give the same talk in Cape Town LUG the following Thursday – 9th of July.
The talks will be about Configuration Management and about Puppet, both subjects are pretty huge subjects so I won’t pretend to cover either in depth.
I’ll just run through some problems teams who use Linux or Unix have encountered and how CM systems can be used to help with those problems.
I’ll work through a sample of installing, configuring and starting Apache using Puppet. Finally I’ll show how company standards can be encapsulated in simple re-usable Puppet logic to easily roll out large amounts of vhosts according to company standards with minimal effort. The demonstration will be done using 2 virtual machines, one being managed by the other using Puppet.
Ideally the talks won’t be just me standing up and going on for x minutes, I’ll invite participation, answer any questions etc.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jun 16, 2009 | Front Page
I’ll be heading to South Africa for roughly 2 weeks end of June to early July. I’ll be visiting Johannesburg, Potchefstroom and Cape Town.
I’d be keen to hear from anyone interested in having some hours from me for consultation, it’s not really a lot of time to spend with people so I am not sure what would be viable time spent.
I think it might be worthwhile from companies who are considering adopting Puppet for configuration management to meet with me, I’d definitely be able to help you decide if it’s the right tool for you or even if you should consider configuration management as a whole.
I might also be open to having a short talk about Puppet if there are any LUGs or something that would be interested in hearing about CM or Puppet.
