detecting version of syslog-ng

[Randy Bush]

have a playbook bit to distribute syslog-ng.conf to a bunch of servers,
some running syslog-ng 3.3 and some running 3.5. so there are two
different configuration files.

is there a way to detect which version a host is running so i can
distribute the appropriate one? for the moment i have an embarrassing
hack based on host entries :(

randy

---
- hosts: syslog35
roles:
- common
tasks:
- name: push syslog-ng.conf35
copy: src=files/linux/syslog-ng.conf35
dest=/etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf
mode=644
owner=root
group={{root_group}}
notify: restart syslogng

- hosts: syslog33
roles:
- common
tasks:
- name: push syslog-ng.conf33
copy: src=files/linux/syslog-ng.conf33
dest=/etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf
mode=644
owner=root
group={{root_group}}
notify: restart syslogng

[Yassen Damyanov]

On Wednesday, May 6, 2015 at 4:33:43 PM UTC+3, Randy Bush wrote:

have a playbook bit to distribute syslog-ng.conf to a bunch of servers,
some running syslog-ng 3.3 and some running 3.5.  so there are two
different configuration files.

is there a way to detect which version a host is running so i can
distribute the appropriate one?  for the moment i have an embarrassing
hack based on host entries :(

I would recommend adding the syslog-ng version to facts using a custom module -- see http://docs.ansible.com/developing_modules.html#module-provided-facts

Your "custom facts module" can be a simple shell script like:

----cut here---
#! /bin/sh
 rsyslogd -v | awk '/^rsyslogd/ {printf("{ \"changed\": false, \"rc\": 0, \"ansible_facts\": { \"rsyslog_ver\": \"%s\" } }\n", $2)}'
----cut here---

(the awk stuff might appear a bit cryptic but what it does is to output valid Json on stdout).

This is for rsyslogd on my machine; you need to have something different for syslog-ng.on yours. (And maybe anticipate that there might not be syslog-ng at all?)
Let know if this helps.
-Yassen

[Yassen Damyanov]

Randy, FYI: the output of that script (after beautifying it a bit):

{

    "changed": false,
    "rc": 0,
    "ansible_facts": {

        "rsyslog_ver": "5.8.6,"
    }
}

(The trailing comma in the rsyslog_ver value is redundant but you should get the idea.)

[Randy Bush]

ok, for the record, here is what i ended up with

---
- hosts: ubuntu:debian

tasks:

- name: run syslog-ng --version
command: syslog-ng --version
register: ver_out
changed_when: false

- name: set ver
set_fact: ver="{{ ver_out.stdout.splitlines()[0]|regex_replace('[^\d.]+', '') }}"

- name: push syslog-ng.conf
copy: src=files/linux/syslog-ng.conf-{{ ver }}

dest=/etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf
mode=644
owner=root
group={{root_group}}
notify: restart syslogng

randy

[Yassen Damyanov]

Very elegant!
-Y.