Actions

This page describes use of the Action configuration entry. Action entries are commands that are executed either before bundle installation, after bundle installation or both. If exit status is observed, a failing pre-action will cause no modification of the enclosing bundle to be performed; all entries in included in that bundle will not be modified. Failing actions are reported through Bcfg2’s reporting system, so they can be centrally observed. Actions look like:

<Action timing='pre|post|both'
        name='name'
        command='cmd text'
        when='always|modified'
        status='ignore|check'
        build='true|false'/>

Attribute	Values	Meaning
timing	pre, post, both	When the action is run
name	freeform	action name
command	freeform	command text
when	always, modified	If the action is always run, or only when a bundle should be or has been modified
status	ignore, check	If the return code of the action should be reported or not
build	true, false	Also execute the action in build mode (default: true)

Note that the status attribute tells the bcfg2 client to ignore return status, causing failures to still not be centrally reported. If central reporting of action failure is desired, set this attribute to ‘check’. Also note that Action entries included in Base will not be executed.

Actions cannot be completely defined inside of a bundle; they are a bound entry, much like Packages, Services or Paths. The Rules plugin can bind these entries. For example to include the above action in a bundle, first the Action entry must be included in the bundle:

<Bundle name='bundle_name'>
  ...
  <Action name='action_name'/>
</Bundle>

Then a corresponding entry must be included in the Rules directory, like:

<Rules priority='0'>
<Action timing='post' when='modified' name='action_name' command='/path/to/command arg1 arg2' status='ignore'/>
</Rules>

This allows different clients to get different actions as a part of the same bundle based on group membership.

Example Action (add APT keys)

This example will add the ‘0C5A2783’ for aptitude. It is useful to run this during the client bootstrap process so that the proper keys are installed prior to the bcfg2 client trying to install a package which requires this key.

<Rules priority='0'>
  <Group name='ubuntu'>
    <Action timing='post' name='apt-key-update' command='apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://pgp.mit.edu 0C5A2783' when='modified' status='check'/>
  </Group>
</Rules>