RE: [hobbit] How to run an arbitary script on the client end?

["Kern, Thomas" <Thomas.Kern (at) hq.doe.gov>]

Would this new ADDON feature be configured at the server side or on each
client? 

I have a gut reaction against some other server being able to
arbitrarily execute commands on my systems, but I know who runs our
hobbit server. I am also against having to modify each hobbit client
that I run if I come up with a new nifty ADDON. I have not looked into
the update/upgrade mechanism since I know the hobbit-server admin, but
is there some authentication of the updates/upgrades/new_ADDONs that can
be done so that they only come from a trusted source?

/Thomas Kern
/301-903-2211  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: henrik (at) hswn.dk [mailto:henrik (at) hswn.dk] 
> Subject: Re: [hobbit] How to run an arbitary script on the client end?
> 
> You're obviously doing your best to get that award. If you persist,
> I might even make it official :-)
> 
> 
> The problem you're having is that Hobbit's log monitoring tries very
> hard to send only the new log entries across to the Hobbit 
> server. So it
> stores the size that the logfile has from one client cycle to 
> the next,
> and only the data that is appended is actually transferred.
> 
> So if you were continuously appending data to the logfile, it would 
> probably work the way you wanted it to. I.e. you should have
> 
>    log:`date >>/tmp/dirMon.out; ...
> 
> where you append data instead of truncating the dirMon.out file with
> each run of the client. 
> 
> It's OK to truncate the file once in a while, as long as 
> Hobbit can see 
> that the new file is smaller than the old one it should work. 
> My guess is 
> that the file doesn't change in size from one cycle to the next, and
> then Hobbit considers it to be unchanged and doesn't send any data.
> 
> 
> I suppose it might be an idea to have the possibility of 
> having "add-on"
> modules to the Hobbit client, which you can control through the
> client-local.cfg file. So a new feature for the Hobbit client would be
> to support something like
>    addon:/usr/local/bin/myHobbitAddon.sh:foo
> which would run the myHobbitAddon.sh script and put the output into a 
> [foo] section in the client data. Does that sound ok ?
>