Received: by 10.180.106.102 with SMTP id gt6mr2235570wib.0.1348508191565;
        Mon, 24 Sep 2012 10:36:31 -0700 (PDT)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Path: q11ni44244087wiw.1!nntp.google.com!feeder2.cambriumusenet.nl!feed.tweaknews.nl!194.134.4.91.MISMATCH!news2.euro.net!newsfeed.freenet.ag!ecngs!feeder2.ecngs.de!46.4.82.166.MISMATCH!weretis.net!feeder1.news.weretis.net!news.solani.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: "Stachu 'Dozzie' K." <doz...@go.eat.some.screws.spammer.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.modules
Subject: Sys::Facter -- new module
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:36:31 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: solani.org
Lines: 53
Message-ID: <slrnk616h0.1i2.dozzie@jarowit.net>
X-Trace: solani.org 1348508191 1836 eJwNwocRwDAIBLCVTHvMOKbtP0JykgkI5QqD2v6mYjZY71tUb7gTDcVI9tn108LEnk895QIfLV8RRA== (24 Sep 2012 17:36:31 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: abuse@news.solani.org
NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:36:31 +0000 (UTC)
User-Agent: slrn/pre1.0.0-18 (Linux)
X-User-ID: eJwFwQkBwDAIA0BLkPAUOdAO/xJ25wyNmxYe5ut7CpwitHspkqLASPJWcu2+Qfd3JPalj2N+BSYQug==
Cancel-Lock: sha1:hCN0WIBeDU6xgTPG5XkWqKGMeH8=
X-NNTP-Posting-Host: eJwNwoERADEEBMCWEM4rB6H/EvKzaweMdoVBbW0Rorh8XTebM2hqST+CVFNNccTIjP/i5OwDH7URxg==

Hello group,
I want to publish a new module Sys::Facter. It's a module for detecting
various information about operating system, similar to Facter utility
used by Puppet: one can define own plugins that will be used by
Sys::Facter.


ALTERNATIVES

  Sys::Info
    Fetch information about the host system.

  pfacter
    pfacter is a collection of perl scripts used to collect and display
    facts about an operating system.


RATIONALE

The target users of Sys::Facter are sysadmins. Sys::Facter is intended
to provide them an easy-to-use infrastructure for detecting various
things (so called "facts"), like number of CPUs, amount of RAM,
partitions and LVM devices, NFS exports, SSH public keys, occupied
TCP/UDP ports and so on.

Such data could be then collected in a centralized place e.g. for
keeping an inventory, used for generating configuration files or to
calculate server load for load balancers.

Some pre-defined modules would be available, but the most important
thing is that sysadmin could easily add his own "facts", as a single
developer can't think of every possible variable to be detected.

While Sys::Info does a quite goot work in detecting parameters, it can't
easily be extended by user and hence it's not usable this way. On the
other hand, it could be used as a backend for Sys::Facter plugins.

A good way would be to use Pfacter module. It provides a sensible API
for plugins that fits to above-mentioned usage. Unfortunately, Pfacter
practically doesn't have a usable documentation and its API for building
tools on top of it is horrible.

Sys::Facter utilizes Pfacter plugin API, while providing easier API for
tools and contains POD documentation for both interfaces.


Any comments would be welcome, especially those pointing already-written
Perl modules that fit to provided use case. I'd rather like to use
someone else's work.

-- 
Secunia non olet.
Stanislaw Klekot