The following template automatically generates a MOTD (message of the day) file that describes the system in terms of its Bcfg2 metadata and probe responses. It conditionally displays groups, categories, and probe responses, if there exists any data for them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GOALS FOR SERVER MANGED BY BCFG2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hostname is ${metadata.hostname}
Groups:
{% for group in metadata.groups %}\
* ${group}
{% end %}\
{% if metadata.categories %}\
Categories:
{% for category in metadata.categories %}\
* ${category}
{% end %}\
{% end %}\
{% if metadata.Probes %}\
Probes:
{% for probe, value in metadata.Probes.iteritems() %}\
* ${probe} \
${value}
{% end %}\
{% end %}\
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ITOPS MOTD
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please create a Ticket for any system level changes you need from IT.
This template gets the hostname, groups membership of the host, categories of the host (if any), and result of probes on the host (if any). The template formats this in with a header and footer that makes it visually more appealing.
One possible output of this template would be the following:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GOALS FOR SERVER MANGED BY BCFG2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hostname is cobra.example.com
Groups:
* oracle-server
* centos5-5.2
* centos5
* redhat
* x86_64
* sys-vmware
Categories:
* os-variant
* os
* database-server
* os-version
Probes:
* arch x86_64
* network intranet_network
* diskspace Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
18G 2.1G 15G 13% /
/dev/sda1 99M 13M 82M 13% /boot
tmpfs 3.8G 0 3.8G 0% /dev/shm
/dev/mapper/mhcdbo-clear
1.5T 198M 1.5T 1% /mnt/san-oracle
* virtual vmware
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
IT MOTD
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please create a Ticket for any system level changes you need from IT.
One way to make this even more useful, is to only include the result of certain probes. It would also be a nice feature to be able to include customer messages on a host or group level.