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mcollective_agent_shell

Run commands with the local shell

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Version information

  • 1.0.6 (latest)
  • 1.0.5
  • 1.0.4
  • 1.0.3
  • 1.0.2
  • 1.0.1
  • 1.0.0
released Oct 6th 2023
This version is compatible with:
  • Puppet Enterprise 2023.5.x, 2023.4.x, 2023.3.x, 2023.2.x, 2023.1.x, 2023.0.x, 2021.7.x, 2021.6.x, 2021.5.x, 2021.4.x, 2021.3.x, 2021.2.x, 2021.1.x, 2021.0.x, 2019.8.x, 2019.7.x, 2019.5.x, 2019.4.x, 2019.3.x, 2019.2.x, 2019.1.x, 2019.0.x
  • Puppet >= 6.0.0

Start using this module

  • r10k or Code Manager
  • Bolt
  • Manual installation
  • Direct download

Add this module to your Puppetfile:

mod 'choria-mcollective_agent_shell', '1.0.6'
Learn more about managing modules with a Puppetfile

Add this module to your Bolt project:

bolt module add choria-mcollective_agent_shell
Learn more about using this module with an existing project

Manually install this module globally with Puppet module tool:

puppet module install choria-mcollective_agent_shell --version 1.0.6

Direct download is not typically how you would use a Puppet module to manage your infrastructure, but you may want to download the module in order to inspect the code.

Download

Documentation

choria/mcollective_agent_shell — version 1.0.6 Oct 6th 2023

Shell agent

The shell agent allows you to start and manage shell commands via mcollective.

It allows the running of long-running processes with a mechanism to check in on the output from these long-running processes, which is independent of the mcollective daemon process (the daemon can be restarted without interrupting the processes)

Please note: we do not recommend this agent as a way of building out your automation, for that you're still better off writing your own tailored agents that fit your use case. This agent is targeted at the ad-hoc needs that people occasionally have.

Actions

This agent provides the following actions, for details about each please run mco plugin doc agent/shell

  • kill - Kill a command by handle
  • list - Get a list of all running commands
  • run - Run a command
  • start - Spawn a command
  • status - Get status of managed command

Installation

Add the agent and client:

mcollective::plugin_classes:
  - mcollective_agent_shell

Configuring the agent

The agent should work without any additional configuration, though there are some options you can tune via Hiera.

.state_directory

This is where the state used to track processes will live. By default this will be /var/run/mcollective-shell on Unix systems.

mcollective_agent_shell::config:
  state_directory: /opt/run/mcollective-shell

Application usage

The mco shell application has several subcommands to start and manage processes.

mco shell run

Runs a command and reports back. Use this for discrete short-living commands.

For long-running commands look at start or run --tail.

$ mco shell run dir

 * [ ============================================================> ] 2 / 2

master:
bin   dev  home  lib64       media  opt   root  selinux  srv  tmp  vagrant
boot  etc  lib   lost+found  mnt    proc  sbin  src      sys  usr  var

server2008r2a:
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is DADF-75F9

 Directory of C:\

09/22/2012  11:45 AM    <SYMLINKD>     manifests [\\vboxsrv\manifests]
09/22/2012  11:45 AM    <SYMLINKD>     modules [\\vboxsrv\modules]
07/13/2009  08:20 PM    <DIR>          PerfLogs
09/22/2012  11:42 AM    <DIR>          Program Files
03/27/2014  06:52 AM    <DIR>          Program Files (x86)
07/03/2014  07:42 AM    <SYMLINKD>     src [\\vboxsrv\C:_src]
03/27/2014  06:39 AM    <DIR>          Users
07/03/2014  07:42 AM    <SYMLINKD>     vagrant [\\vboxsrv\vagrant]
03/27/2014  06:41 AM    <DIR>          Windows
               0 File(s)              0 bytes
               9 Dir(s)  34,565,091,328 bytes free


Finished processing 2 / 2 hosts in 221.28 ms

mco shell run --tail

Starts a command, shows you the output from it, kills the command when you interrupt with control-c, exits normally when the command exits.

$ mco shell -I /master/ run --tail vmstat 1

 * [ ============================================================> ] 1 / 1

master stdout: procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----cpu-----
master stdout:  r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa st
master stdout:  0  1 445812 120584   5808  37348   34   29    52    48   39   47  6  1 93  0  0
master stdout:  1  0 445112 122692   5824  37332 2692    0  2692    84  911 2089 47  9 40  4  0
master stdout:  1  0 444848 122576   5824  37344  288    0   288     0  773 1914 48  5 47  0  0
master stdout:  0  0 444012 121320   5824  37348 1212    0  1212     0  823 1917 47  6 45  1  0
master stdout:  0  0 443984 121204   5824  37372    0    0     0     0  797 1796 52  5 43  0  0
master stdout:  0  0 438800 117244   5824  37360 3896    0  3896     0  910 2123 49  6 45  0  0
master stdout:  1  0 438768 117136   5840  37368    0    0     0   136  811 1926 48  6 45  0  0
^CAttempting to stopping cleanly, interrupt again to kill
Sending kill to master 6dad5cb9-57f7-46e0-bad7-07ab117369a5

mco shell start

Starts a command in the background and tells you the id that has been assigned to it. You can then use mco shell watch, mco shell kill, mco shell list to monitor this process and observe its output

$ mco shell -I /master/ start vmstat 1

 * [ ============================================================> ] 1 / 1

master: 0dd67fac-734f-4824-8b4d-03100d4f9d07

Finished processing 1 / 1 hosts in 76.37 ms

mco shell watch

Shows you the output of a command you previously started with mco shell start

$ mco shell watch 0dd67fac-734f-4824-8b4d-03100d4f9d07

 * [ ============================================================> ] 2 / 2

master stdout: procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----cpu-----
master stdout:  r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa st
master stdout:  2  0 431448 110704   8484  40644   34   29    52    48   40   47  6  1 93  0  0

mco shell list

Show a list of running jobs.

$ mco shell list -v

 * [ ============================================================> ] 2 / 2

master:
    0dd67fac-734f-4824-8b4d-03100d4f9d07
    1fd3961a-f48d-4119-b988-146b490a5ca3
    d174e20b-9cdb-4c14-9f34-fd29995f30cb
    ea809b20-3123-46b4-bf59-10ff7251ca9b

Finished processing 2 / 2 hosts in 142.34 ms

mco shell kill

Kill a running job.

$ mco shell kill 0dd67fac-734f-4824-8b4d-03100d4f9d07

 * [ ============================================================> ] 2 / 2


Finished processing 2 / 2 hosts in 170.17 ms

Known Issues

Encoding Concerns

Sometimes when running certain commands, you may encounter UTF-8 characters in the reply. This can result in an error, "Cannot decode output from Shim", coming back from mcollective. In order to work around this, you can choose to set LC_ALL=en for the choria-server service. Under systemd, for example, create the following file at

/etc/systemd/system/choria-server.service.d/environment.conf

[Service]
Environment="LC_ALL=en"

And then restart choria-server

root@myhost:~$ systemctl restart choria-server

Note that this change will apply to all choria interactions, so could have untested and unintended consequences.