Puppet users - Apr 2007 - pelementserver/XML-RPC interface question

One particular use of Puppet would be to serve as a machine fact/configuration
retrieval tool. So in order to produce a list of packages with version-release
info installed on each machine something along the lines of the following code
could be run:

    require ''puppet''

    Puppet::Type.type(:package).defaultprovider.list.each do |package|
      puts "#{package[:name]}-#{package[:ensure]}"
    end

Question: is this something the pelementserver is supposed to be able to help
with or should I look into using/extending the XML-RPC interface? I''m
still
trying to wrap my head around all the classes/modules available.

Thanks for any pointers you can provide.

-- 
Jos Backus
jos at catnook.com

On Apr 28, 2007, at 2:37 PM, Jos Backus wrote:
> One particular use of Puppet would be to serve as a machine fact/ 
> configuration
> retrieval tool. So in order to produce a list of packages with  
> version-release
> info installed on each machine something along the lines of the  
> following code
> could be run:
>
>     require ''puppet''
>
>     Puppet::Type.type(:package).defaultprovider.list.each do |package|
>       puts "#{package[:name]}-#{package[:ensure]}"
>     end
>
> Question: is this something the pelementserver is supposed to be  
> able to help
> with or should I look into using/extending the XML-RPC interface?  
> I''m still
> trying to wrap my head around all the classes/modules available.
This is exactly what the pelementserver handler was developed for (it  
has since been renamed to ''resource'', for obvious reasons).

If you want to create a tool to do this, I''ll do anything I can to  
help, since it would really help to show off the flexibility of the  
framework we have.

As it stands now, the Resource handler supports three methods --  
list, describe, and apply.

List accepts a resource type and returns a TransObject for each found  
resource of that type (I just changed the code to return the whole  
resource -- 0.22.3 and before just returned the type and title).

Describe accepts a type and title and returns a TransObject  
describing the resource, if possible.

Apply accepts a TransObject or TransBucket (containing TransObjects)  
and applies it.  This was all developed before we had transaction  
reports, so the return should be a report but is not.

Like I said, I''ll do what I can to help, since I''d love to see
development in this area.

Oh, and the only security we have in this area is the  
namespaceauth.conf file -- clients will refuse to start in --listen  
mode without it.  If you have any interest in developming some kind  
of RBAC, I''m all for it, I just didn''t want to bother until
there was
some interest in using this code.

  --
  The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that
  the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.    -- Oscar Levant
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