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TGenshi

This page documents the TGenshi plugin. This plugin works with version 0.4 and newer of the genshi library.

The TGenshi plugin allows you to use the Genshi templating system to create files, instead of the various diff-based methods offered by the Cfg plugin. It also allows you to include the results of probes executed on the client in the created files.

To begin, you will need to download and install the Genshi templating engine.

To install on CentOS or RHEL 5, run:

sudo yum install python-genshi

Once it is installed, you can enable it by adding TGenshi to the generators line in /etc/bcfg2.conf on your Bcfg server. For example:

plugins = Base,Bundler,Cfg,...,TGenshi

The TGenshi plugin makes use of a Cfg-like directory structure located in in a TGenshi subdirectory of your repository, usually /var/lib/bcfg2/TGenshi. Each file has a directory containing two file types, template and info. Templates are named according to the genshi format used; template.txt uses the genshi text format, and template.xml uses the XML format.

If used with Genshi 0.5 or later the plugin also supports the new style text template format for files named template.newtxt. One of the advantages of the new format is that it does not use # as a command delimiter, making it easier to utilize for configuration files that use # as a comment character.

Only one template format may be used per file served. Info files are identical to those used in Cfg, and info.xml files are supported.

Inside of templates

  • metadata is the client’s metadata

  • metadata.Properties is an xml document of unstructured data (only available when used in conjunction with the Properties plugin)

  • name is the path name specified in bcfg

  • path is the path to the TGenshi template. It starts with a

    leading slash, and is relative to the Bcfg2 specification root. E.g., /Cfg/etc/foo.conf/foo.conf.genshi or /TGenshi/etc/foo.conf/template.newtxt.H_foo.example.com

See the genshi documentation for examples of Genshi syntax.

Examples: Old Genshi Syntax

Genshi’s web pages recommend against using this syntax, as it may disappear from future releases.

Group Negation

Templates are also useful for cases where more sophisticated boolean operations than those supported by Cfg are needed. For example, the template:

#if "ypbound" in metadata.groups and "workstation" in metadata.groups
client is ypbound workstation
#end
#if "ubuntu" not in metadata.groups and "desktop" in metadata.groups
client is a desktop, but not an ubuntu desktop
#end

Produces:

<Path type="file" name="/bar.conf" owner="root" perms="0644" group="root">client is ypbound workstation
client is a desktop, but not an ubuntu desktop
</Path>

This flexibility provides the ability to build much more compact and succinct definitions of configuration contents than Cfg can.

Troubleshooting

When developing a template, you can see what the template would generate on a client with bcfg2-info:

bcfg2-info buildfile <path> <hostname>

E.g.:

bcfg2-info buildfile /etc/foo.conf foo.example.com

To generate a file with an altsrc attribute, you can run:

bcfg2-info buildfile /etc/foo/foo.conf --altsrc=/etc/foo.conf \
    foo.example.com

Sometimes, it’s useful to be able to do more in-depth troubleshooting by running the template manually. To do this, run bcfg2-info debug, and, once in the Python interpreter, run:

metadata = self.build_metadata("<hostname>")
path = "<relative path to template (see note below)>"

path should be set to the path to the template file with a leading slash, relative to the Bcfg2 specification root. See Inside of Templates for examples.

Then, run:

import os, Bcfg2.Options
from genshi.template import TemplateLoader, NewTextTemplate
name = os.path.dirname(path[path.find('/', 1):])
setup = Bcfg2.Options.OptionParser({'repo':
                                    Bcfg2.Options.SERVER_REPOSITORY})
setup.parse('--')
template = TemplateLoader().load(setup['repo'] + path, cls=NewTextTemplate)
print template.generate(metadata=metadata, path=path, name=name).render()

This gives you more fine-grained control over how your template is rendered.

You can also use this approach to render templates that depend on altsrc tags by setting path to the path to the template, and setting name to the path to the file to be generated, e.g.:

metadata = self.build_metadata("foo.example.com")
path = "/Cfg/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-template/ifcfg-template.genshi"
name = "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-bond0"

File permissions

File permissions for entries handled by TGenshi are controlled via the use of Info files. Note that you cannot use both a Permissions entry and a Path entry to handle the same file.

Error handling

Situations may arise where a templated file cannot be generated due to missing or incomplete information. A TemplateError can be raised to force a bind failure and prevent sending an incomplete file to the client. For example, this template:

{% python
    from genshi.template import TemplateError
    grp = None
    for g in metadata.groups:
        if g.startswith('ganglia-gmond-'):
            grp = g
            break
    else:
        raise TemplateError, "Missing group"
%}\

will fail to bind if the client is not a member of a group starting with “ganglia-gmond-”. The syslogs on the server will contain this message:

bcfg2-server[5957]: Genshi template error: Missing group
bcfg2-server[5957]: Failed to bind entry: Path /etc/ganglia/gmond.conf

indicating the bind failure and message raised with the TemplateError.

FAQs

Question

How do I escape the $ (dollar sign) in a TGenshi text template? For example, if I want to include SVN (subversion) keywords like $Id$ or $HeadURL$ in TGenshi-generated files, or am templating a bourne shell (sh/bash) script or Makefile (make).

Answer

Use $$ (double dollar sign) to output a literal $ (dollarsign) in a TGenshi text template. So instead of $Id$, you’d use $$Id$$. See also Genshi tickets #282: Document $$ escape convention and #283: Allow for redefinition of template syntax per-file.

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