[hobbit] Agentless clients

[Henrik Stoerner]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 01:46:36PM -0500, Scott Walters wrote:
> 
> > I agree that having similar functionality to bb-fetch could be useful
> > for a *few* remote/DMZ hosts, but it certainly doesn't scale well.
> 
> True, and I am not sold on the agentless clients idea either, but we've
> got such a great framework to try it on.
> 
> The first design decision in my mind would be if in agentless we mean
> 
> 1)  install/run/uninstall the hobbit client every 5m, i know this sounds
> horribly inefficient but I am attracted to the simplicity of agent and
> agentless machines being the 'same'.  or just automagically install the
> client if the trust exists . . . . .
> 
> 2) only running the exact OS commands necessary and capturing the output.
> This would require some new code on the server.  But if done right, it
> could perhaps replace existing clients.
> 
> abstract the collection from the delivery . . . .

You can easily combine 1) and 2). Running something like this on the 
client-polling server would do it:

CLIENT="www.foo.com"
CLIENTOS="linux"
echo "client $CLIENT.$CLIENTOS" >/tmp/msg-$CLIENT.txt
ssh $CLIENT < ~$BBHOME/bin/hobbitclient-$CLIENTOS.sh >>/tmp/msg-$CLIENT.txt
$BB $BBDISP "@" </tmp/msg-$CLIENT.txt

would run the normal client-side scripts without having them installed
on each client box, and send the output to the Hobbit server in a normal
"client" message. There is an issue with the OS'es that need special tools 
installed (usually to collect the memory statistics), but that can be worked 
around.


Regards,
Henrik