insights-magpie

What if we could use Ansible modules to collect data for Red Hat Insights?

This role contains an module and an action plugin pair that work together to collect Insights data from a system, submit that data to Red Hat Insights, and present the results as Ansible facts that can be used and displayed by later tasks in the playbook.

The module runs on the target machines collecting the data that Insights needs to do its analysis, returning that data to the control machine as Ansible facts.

The action plugin runs on the control machine. It captures the facts returned by the module, submits them to the Red Hat Insights service for analysis, and then presents that analysis back to the running playbook as another Ansible fact.

If you know what Insights is, and would like to try out this role, but need some help with Ansible: Just Enough Ansible to Use insights-magpie.

Requirements

The Ansible control machine must have the 'tar' and 'file' commands installed, as well as the Python package 'requests' installed.

The Target machines require no additional software installed.

The Target machines must already be registered with the Red Hat Insights service. Currently the easiest (perhaps only) way to do this is to install the Insights Collector (redhat-access-insights/insights-client) on the target machine(s) and register those machines. Target machines that are already registered with Red Hat Insights do not need to be re-registered. The magpie module collects up the Insights system/machine id stored on the machine when it is registered, and then the insights action plugin uses that system/machine id when submitting the collected data to the Insights service. No part of this Ansible role makes any use of the Insights Collector program itself. In theory one could uninstall the Insights Collector, but (I think) RPM renames the needed system/machine id file. This requirement will be removed as quickly as possible.

Role Variables

The magpie action plugin needs BASICAUTH (username/password) for the Red Hat Portal (Red Hat Insights uses the same credentials as Red Hat Portal). These must be defined for the magpie action plugin to work.

• redhat_portal_username
• redhat_portal_password

Once the magpie action plugin runs it will define the fact:

• insights_upload_results

Example Playbook

In insights-magpie-example.yml:

- hosts: all
  roles:
     - { role: gavin-romig-koch.insights-magpie }
  tasks:
     - debug: msg="{{ insights_upload_results.reports }}"

In redhat-portal-creds.yml: (where XXXX and YYYYY are replaced with Red Hat Portal credentials)

redhat_portal_username: XXXXXX
redhat_portal_password: YYYYYY

Then this will collect Insights data from 'myhost.example.com', submit that data to Red Hat Insights saving the results in the fact insights_upload_results, and then print out those results.

ansible-playbook --limit myhost.example.com --extra-vars @redhat-portal-creds.yml insights-magpie-example.yml

Testing during Development

If you have a copy of the source, you can test your changes in several ways.

The playbook local_module_test.yml, if run in the source tree, will pick up the module from the source tree. It can be used to test your changes before committing them. See the playbook for usage.

The file .travis.yml and the files in tests/ are used by Travis for testing after push, although they can be used locally by 'hand' executing the steps in .travis.yml

The shell script test_README_EXAMPLE.sh is a script that does exactly what the Example Playbook section above does, so it tests the role and modules from Galaxy. See the script for usage.

License

BSD

Author Information

The Ansible module and action plugin were written by Gavin Romig-Koch, based largely on the original redhat-access-insights/insights-client by Richard Brantley, Jeremy Crafts, and Dan Varga.