[RFC] scanner documentation

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Nico Schottelius 2020-10-29 21:22:36 +01:00
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* The scanner, 2020-10-29, Hacking Villa Diesbach
** Motivation
- The purpose of cdist is to ensure systems are in a configured state
- If systems reboot into a clean (think: netboot) state they are
stuck in an unconfigured mode
- We can either trigger *from* those machines
- this is what cdist trigger is for
- Or we can regulary *scan* for machines
- This method does not need any modification to standard OS
** How it works
- cdist scan uses the all nodes multicast group ff02::1
- It sends a ping packet there in regular intervals
- This even works in non-IPv6 networks, as all operating systems
are IPv6 capable and usually IPv6 enabled by default
- Link local is always accessible!
- cdist scan receives an answer from all alive hosts
- These results are stored in ~/.cdist/scan/${hostip}
- We record the last_seen date ~/.cdist/scan/${hostip}/last_seen
- After a host is detected, cdist *can* try to configure it
- It saves the result (+/- logging needs to be defined) in
~/.cdist/scan/${hostip}/{config, install}_result
- If logging is saved: maybe in ~/.cdist/scan/${hostip}/{config, install}_log
- Final naming TBD
** Benefits from the scanning approach
- We know when a host is alive/dead
- We can use standard OS w/o trigger customisation
- Only requirement: we can ssh into it
- Can make use f.i. of Alpine Linux w/ ssh keys feeding in
- We can trigger regular reconfiguration
- If alive && last_config_time > 1d -> reconfigure
- Data can be exported to f.i. prometheus
- Record when configured (successfully)
- Record when seen
- Enables configurations in stateless environments