Sillyfacter

Sillyfacter prints JSON facts related to the state of the system. The state here mean overview of the process running, their connections and open files. You can also pass mongodb url to store in database.

Current focus on:

• Portable *.nix
• Expandable using custom agents/modules
• Output to stdout as JSON or write to mongo db

To be done:

• Output to RabbitMQ

More info: sillyfacter at github

Installation

Requirements

Desgined in Python 2.7, for *nix systems. Tested on recent Mac OS X, RHEL (v5.5, v6.2), Ubuntu (v13). The Python package dependencies are:

• netaddr
• netifaces
• psutil
• pymongo (for writing to MongoDB)
• pip >= v1.5.1

Optional

• pika (?? for writing to RabbitMQ)

But these are taken care by pip during installation

Using pip

First Upgrade pip to v1.5

  # Needs pip v1.5
  # So just upgrade it anyways...
  pip install --upgrade pip

Then Pip install

The netifaces module is a bit irritating... so have to use extra options.

  pip install --allow-all-external --allow-unverified netifaces sillyfacter
  # --allow-all-external and --allow-unverified is needed for netifaces :-(

To upgrade to latest version

  pip install --upgrade --allow-all-external --allow-unverified netifaces sillyfacter
  # --upgrade ensures latest versions
  # --allow-all-external and --allow-unverified is needed for netifaces :-(

From source:

On Debian

• Ensure following things are installed
  • apt-get install python-dev build-essential
  • apt-get install libbz2-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev libreadline6-dev ncurses-dev
• Download installer bash script and run it
  • wget https://raw.github.com/hihellobolke/sillyfacter/master/installer.bash
  • bash installer.bash

Usage

Just execute sillyfacter and it should output result back in JSON. If you like to store output directly in a MongoDB, pass mongodb url using --out mongodb://mydb/. Otherwise it just dumps JSON to console.

Simple JSON output

    $ sillyfacter
    {
        "_scan_id": "gautsing-mac",
        "_scan_time": "1390293214",
        "arch": "x86_64",
        "boottime": "1390206976",
        "cpu": 8,
        "cpu_used": 10.2,
        "domainname": "",
        "fqdn": "gautsing-mac",
        "hardwareisa": "i386",
        "hardwaremodel": "i386",
        "has": {
            "filesystem": [
                {
                    "dev": "/dev/disk0s2",

Storing facts directly in MongoDB

Stores JSON facts directly in to mongodb (uses pymongo). The document _id defaults to hostname fact, collection defaults to "sillyfacter". Documents are overwritten. Timestamps are converted to Datetime so their types are preserved :-)

    $ sillyfacter --out mongodb://localhost/factdb
    {
        "_info": {
            "_id": "gautsing-mac",
            "collection": "sillyfacter",
            "db": "factdb",
            "host": "localhost",
            "port": 27017
        },
        "status": "Save success",
        "url": "mongodb://localhost/factdb"
    }

Help?

And yes there some --help too.

    $ python sillyfacter --help
    usage: sillyfacter [-h] [--modules MODULES] [--out OUT] [--log LOG]
                            [--verbose] [--strict] [--debug]
                            [--scan {auto,new,last}] [--raw] [--version]

    Sillyfacter fetches facts about the state of the system. Gathers process, open
    file, socket info and then outputs a JSON (currently). Designed for dependency
    mappings.

    optional arguments:
      -h, --help            show this help message and exit
      --modules MODULES     comma seperated list of modules to be executed.
                            Default list is "all" which is expanded to include
                            "process,network,user,os,filesystem"
      --out OUT             URL for the backend Mongo database (E.g.
                            mongodb://localhost:27017/). If nothing is supplied it
                            dumps JSON to stdout
      --log LOG             file to write logs to, otherwise logs are written to
                            console
      --verbose, -v         Use multiple "-v" options
      --strict              If selected will error out on every exeption Note:
                            Useful when debugging only [False]
      --debug               If selected will emit very debugging logs if exception
                            are encountered. Note: Useful when debugging only
                            [False]
      --scan {auto,new,last}
                            [NOT IMPLEMENTED] choose the scan type, usually "auto"
                            is the best. [auto]
      --raw                 [NOT IMPLEMENTED] Use raw output, default is false
      --version             show program's version number and exit

Motivation

Why no facter in pure Python that outputs in JSON?

Contributors

• More info: https://github.com/hihellobolke/sillyfacter

License

This is Apache Licenced.