Linux Configuration Collector
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00:00
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
01:05
For the next talk, we have Gracia Andares, which will talk about the Linux Configuration Collector. Hello everybody, good morning. My name is Gracia Andares. We will give a talk about config2html, which in fact is a Linux Configuration Collector of one of those.
01:22
Maybe an interesting point is the main author of the config2html project is in the room. It's Ralf. Is it better? We can start. You may wonder, why do we need config2html?
01:47
It's a plain shell script effect that collects everything from your system. System parameters, IP configuration, whatever you want, whatever we configure or put into the script effect can be collected into a big text file or a big HTML file.
02:03
That's the main purpose of config2html. You can see it as a complete system documentation set. It's very handy to have it offsite or at the central point. For a lot of customers we do it. In fact, at the central point and NFS mount point, for example, we collect all the system
02:25
information. When there is an issue, we can always go back to the config races settings and see what kind of hardware was it, what kind of memory it had, and all parameters of the clusters, etc., is in there. The nice thing is about config2html, as it is a pure shell script, it does work on Linux,
02:46
it works on HPX, AX, Solaris, and even on other Linux and other HPX or UNIX systems. I found it very useful for everybody, from system administrators to system engineers to
03:05
designers, whatever. And the nice thing is it's open source, it's a GPL version 3 license. Okay, config2html, as usual in open source, is not the only tool available.
03:23
The main, there are three main competitors in fact, it's the system configuration collector. It is a nice tool, it has web interfaces, it also collects, but the way it collects is not very easy to collect it on, for example, to put it on a CD, to put it on a central
03:41
point, because it's a different kind of collecting. It's more or less, you can compare it from the day before, but it has been changed from, you can compare two systems, for example, which can be very handy, but in case of disaster, for example, it's less useful, it's my opinion, but it's a very good tool.
04:00
Then you have also an quite old tool, it's a Linux Explorer, it was kind of what does access for Solaris, it is something similar. It is more a tool that you can use for, given there is a problem, you collect all the kind of information, you give it to your support supplier, and the same is true in fact for the OSCS inventory server, it's an open source, but it's more in the
04:24
hardware collector. So, you can see it as a proactive or a reactive kind of tool, the reactive support tools, which are highly available on the market are, Suzy has them, Rael has them,
04:42
HP Access kind of, but as I said, it's after defects, when you have a problem, you collect your information, you send it to the customer, and then they have the kind of view, so they can see what information does the system has to reveal the problem, and then you have more proactive, and that is where the
05:01
config2.html is really fitting inside, you collect it in front of having any problems, when you have a problem, you can go, always look over there. I even have a set of older snapshot effects from every week, I just keep them, and wrap them up every month in one big one, and then put it aside, so I can always
05:25
have a one year history of every system, that's going to be very handy, it's proved its value a lot to me, and to the customers. config2.html is not a new tool, it has been around since I think the end of the
05:40
last century, 99, something like that, I have been using it in the beginning of the 2000s, already in my previous projects, like MXA, the Roman recovery, already had it included, or the current project Relax and Recover for disaster recovery, I think it's one of the tools that you must have if you want to think about disaster recovery.
06:04
This is the history, it has a lot of tracks, branches, and now we are currently busy with the 6 version, at this merging effect, the Linux and the HPX in one big branch, and we are looking also for the Solaris and the AX to bring it along to the 6 brands.
06:24
So where you can get it, quite obvious, you have a main website, it's maintained by Ralph, there is also mailing list, it's maintained by Ralph, it's quite old, there is a lot of history on it, and the last 6 version is on the GitHub, you can just clone it and start working with it,
06:44
and there are also issue trackers, I do like the issue trackers of GitHub very a lot, because for me it's the main tracking of all issues that I have, because this is not the only open source project I do, otherwise I just lost myself in all the emails I get, so if you have an issue with it,
07:06
just make an issue tracker. How to use it, it's quite simple, you have to be rude, so you can use CIDU, there is a help facility with the main is H variable, and you just run it, and it will collect your information, standard, very wide and very open,
07:27
so there is a lot of information in it, so just run it and you will see where you come out, it tells you in the headers where the information is stored, so you don't have to think where is it, it just tells you where it is.
07:44
As it is now for version 6, there is a main script, it's all bash or corn shell, whatever, and there are collector scripts, and this is only for the Linux, because it can vary a bit from HPX or Solaris for example, as for Linux,
08:00
Linux we use the user share config to HTML, where we put all the collector scripts, everything that we want to collect or we want to add, it's over there. The main script is the same for all the versions, is it for HPX, Linux, Solaris or EX, it's always the same script, it's a wrapper script.
08:21
And then the configuration, that's something new in fact, because that's something I introduced in fact, because you can collect your information, let's put it in reverse, I always mount an NFS share point, where I want to collect my information on the central point,
08:40
that I described in the local configuration file, just an NFS source. And then you have the default configuration, you don't have to modify it, if you want to modify something, just copy paste it in the local, and just modify it over there, because the local configuration file is always the last one that is read, so that is the ruling one. Alright, here you can see a very simple sample, as I said you can see it on the top,
09:08
the HTML output file and the text output file, you can see it where it is stored, for Linux by default it's under the slash far slash log directory, but you can change it, you can overrule it on the command line,
09:20
you can overrule it in the local dot config file, it's very easy. For the rest, it tells you when it starts, etc, etc, and here it tells you what it is collecting, of course this is only a small screenshot, it can be 10k long, so it's a bit too long to list it, I don't want to run it here, it's up to you, the customer,
09:42
just to try it out, and it's a very easy program, but it's a very handy one. This is a text file, you also have the HTML, very easy, oh no, this is the text file, sorry, that was the run file, this is the example text file, you can see the screen is too small,
10:01
it's only on top of the header one, of what it will show, the simple things that it will collect, and the next screen is in fact the HTML view, and that is linkable, so you can really click on it, and then it jumps to the section that it collected the output from.
10:20
Okay, it's all modifiable, you can add stuff, you can modify stuff, if you add some new stuff, it's also very handy to tell us, if you find things that are missing, make an issue for it, and then we can discuss it, that's the way that Raul and I are dealing these days,
10:40
and more and more people are getting into, or finding, I would say, the issue tracking now, and that's very good. Okay, the source tree, already said that config.to.html has a main script, that's on the top, and then you have, in fact, subdirectories, or underneath it, for each main operating system we have a separate directory,
11:05
that's the new style, everything for HPX will go under the HPX tracker, only so here the Linux tracker, you can see it, it has library, you can see documentation, packaging, so we do the packaging, RPM depth packaging is possible, and the main script, config.to.html,
11:25
calls the Linux script, in this case it's the config.to.html, that's linux.shell, and there is a starting point from everything, that is for Linux point of view, of course, and that's true for all the other operating systems.
11:42
Beneath it, you can't see it very well, but it's JIT clone, and that is how to clone the sources, and then you get this view. What is still missing is the EX and the CELOS, but these two sources will be added soon, as we are looking for new active developers,
12:01
we're getting feedback from the internet, but it's not completely on the speech yet, so we wanted to get that going very soon. I already mentioned the config.razor files, the main config.razor file, the default.conf, it's in the etc.config.to.html directory,
12:20
you shouldn't change anything there, you can look at it, and you can, if you see, okay, I want to modify something, copy it in the local.config.razor file, and listed here, in fact, the main use of the local.config file by me, personally on the customer side, is the output and the score URL, that is the way you can just mount an NFS share,
12:45
and you can collect everything on one central point. In fact, that piece of gold is coming for Relax and Recover, it's one of my other projects.
13:00
As I said, it's an ongoing project, and the main purpose of this talk is to find volunteers that are willing to assist us in any way possible, by using it is also a good way to start, by giving us feedback, by helping us writing documentation, every small piece is helpful,
13:22
by adding or helping us with the AX and Solaris support, or just improving it because it's a bit old, as you can see, the AX is from 2011, and the last one from Solaris was 2012, so it needs some updates, I believe, also the integrating in the new six track is required,
13:44
and needs some good-minded people with knowledge on AX and Solaris, so please step forward. There's still some time left, I would say, for questions and answers. Any questions from the audience?
14:02
We'll pass the microphone around if there are any. No? Okay, I guess that's it. If you come up with any questions later on, we can still change them at the front of the room. We are still here. Outside. Well, thanks for your talk. Thank you.
14:25
And the next talk will start in a couple of minutes as well.