Akom's Tech Ruminations

Various tech outbursts - code and solutions to practical problems

Linux Simple puppet update-alternatives

Posted by Admin • Thursday, June 11. 2015 • Category: DevOps, Linux
This is a quick and dirty interface to update-alternatives on Centos/Redhat/Ubuntu for puppet. Seems to work well and doesn't require any modules.
Usage example: alternatives_update { 'java': versiongrep => '1.8' }

class my_alternatives {


  # Manipulates alternatives using update-alternatives.
  # Supports RHEL, Centos and Suse.
  # Ubuntu not tested (yet).
  #
  # If multiple matches are available, picks the first one.
  #
  # There is rudimentary alternatives support in the java class,
  # but it's rather limited and doesn't support most platforms and java versions.
  define update (
    $item = $title,   # the item to manage, ie "java"
    $versiongrep,     # string to pass to grep to select an alternative, ie '1.8' (1.8.*openjdk would also work)
    $optional = true,  # if false, execution will fail if the version is not found
    $altcmd   = 'update-alternatives' # command to use
  ) {

    case $::osfamily {
      'RedHat','SuSE': {


        if ! $optional {
          # verify that we have exactly 1 matching alternatives, unless it's optional
          exec { "check alternatives for ${item}":
            path    => ['/sbin','/bin','/usr/bin','/usr/sbin'],
            command => "echo Alternative for ${item} version containing ${versiongrep} was not found, or multiple found ; false",
            unless  => "test $(${altcmd} --display ${item} | grep '^/' | grep -- '$versiongrep' | wc -l) -eq 1",
            before  => Exec["update alternatives for ${item} to ${versiongrep}"],
          }
        }

        # Runs the update alternatives command
        #  - unless it reports that it's already set to that version
        #  - unless that version is not found via grep
        exec { "update alternatives for ${item} to ${versiongrep}":
          path    => ['/sbin','/bin','/usr/bin','/usr/sbin'],
          command => "${altcmd} --set ${item} $( ${altcmd} --display ${item} | grep '^/' | grep -- '$versiongrep' | head -n 1 | sed 's/ .*$//' ) ",
          unless  => "test -x \"$(${altcmd} --display ${item} | grep 'currently points' | grep -- '$versiongrep' | awk '{print \$NF}')\"",
          onlyif  => "${altcmd} --display ${item} | grep '^/' | grep -- '$versiongrep' ", # check that there is one (if optional and not found, this won't run)
        }

      }

      # Leave Ubuntu alone, this probably won't work there anyway


    }
  }

}
 

Linux Getting a systemd unit to read your .bashrc file for its environment

Posted by Admin • Thursday, June 11. 2015 • Category: Linux
Although it'd be nice to have all of your services not rely on their shell environment, sometimes it is unavoidable. In my case, some of the systems are still on init.d (redhat <=65, centos <=65, etc), but some are on systemd (7.0's, suse 12, etc). The old init scripts rely on the .bashrc file. In order to make the service run consistently on both flavors, I had to teach systemd to read the user's bashrc file. This is what it looks like.


[Service]
Type=simple
User=some_user
# Process the normal environment files for this user by starting a login shell
# and outputting it all in a temp file.  This makes it compatible
# with the non-systemd init scripts that still rely on .bashrc
ExecStartPre=/bin/bash --login -c 'env > /tmp/.magic-environment-file'
ExecStart=SERVICE_COMMAND
EnvironmentFile=-/tmp/.magic-environment-file
 
The "-" before the filename seems to make systemd ignore the error if the file is not there (for example, on the first run of the pre command). Now, obviously, you could just set your ~some-user/.bashrc as the EnvironmentFile - but your mileage will vary. systemd will not interpolate variables and it will ignore lines starting with "export"...

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