Hello,
On 29.01.2009, at 22:55, James Turnbull wrote:

>
> 1.  Namespaces - add a namespace or tiered namespace to Facter, i.e.
> network -> interface -> ipaddress.
This would be a great thing to have. Additionally it would be cool to  
have automatic true/false values for such namespaces, so:

network would evaluate to "true" if there is at least one instance of  
interface.

network -> interface
I'm not so sure what the exact benefit of this would be, but somehow I  
feel this could be useful. Additionally I gues the location of this  
would rather be in puppet, i.e. how it interprets such namespaces.
>
> 3.  Additional collection mechanisms, for example the ability to
> specify a fact file, /etc/facter.conf, containing fact name=value  
> pairs.
This would be great. One could then define something like inventory  
numbers and places for nodes.

Additionally facter could issue a call to a external URL to get  
additional facts (like room, admin-email, and such)
so: http://hostname/getfacts=$fqdn or so would return a yaml file with  
additional facts. This would make integration with external inventory- 
management tools easier.


> 4.  A more Ruby DSL for facts
I'm not so sure what this means, but ruby is a great language to write  
facts in.
>
>
> If you have additional ideas/requirements/issues/comments we'd welcome
> feedback.
Maybe it would be great to add additional attributes to namespaces.
Something like public/private, where private facts would be shown only  
to certain users (maybe this access rules can be defined in facter.conf)
This feature would be very userful when one tries to write a gui for  
host's facts.
We have a very simple drupal plugin which shows the facts from our  
nodes. here we explicitly need to configure the facts that are  
accessible to all (cpu, memory, diskspace and such) and those that are  
available only to administrative users (all other, like serialnumber,  
inventorynumber, "owner"....)


Maybe have an external fact-repository that facter could query and  
synchronize with? Currently this is achieved via puppet. I guess that  
this functionality could be put into facter. This way the tool becomes  
less dependatn on puppet.

In general I think that facter should be kept as simple as possible.  
Too much complexity (namespaces could be one of those cases) could  
make it difficult to use facts in puppet.
Also, I think that it is very important that facter should be as  
stable as possible. If one relies very much on facts (in puppet) it  
would not be cool if facts change often.
We do have this in our network where we have FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Debian  
and Darwin. When the operatingsystem fact changed from debian to  
ubuntu on ubuntu whe had to go through a lot of manifests and classes  
to adapt those to the new situation. But this is not so much of a  
problem since it is a one-time change. Iff the fact does not change  
back....

Have fun,
udo.

-- 
:: udo waechter - r...@zoide.net :: N 52º16'30.5" E 8º3'10.1"
:: genuine input for your ears: http://auriculabovinari.de
::                          your eyes: http://ezag.zoide.net
::                          your brain: http://zoide.net





--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Puppet Users" group.
To post to this group, send email to puppet-users@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Reply via email to