facter ignores all executable facts with exception of ruby scripts

[Peter Krauspe]

Hi ,

I'm using facter puppet 3.8 7 with factor 2.4.6 on CentOS 7

According to puppet/facter docu it's possible to add executable custom facts using ruby/shell/python scripts and just *.txt files.

I tried the following:

<path-to-external-facts>/ruby.rb
                                    /python.py
                                    /shell.sh
                                    /file.txt

The contens is quite simple
The ruby script runs an external shell command and adds a fact asigning  the output of the shell command

The shell and python Scripts return some key=value Strings . e.g

key1=val1
key2=val2

The text file just consists of the above lines
 
I tried for example

export FACTERLIB=<path-to-external-facts>
facter key1

All methods are described in the docu, but everything fails. Only the ruby script
 leads to an output

facter --debug option gave an error message in ALL methods, even in case of the ruby facts (but here after the error message the output appears)

What's going wrong here ?

[Moses Mendoza]

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Hi Peter -

Facter only loads "custom facts" (facts in the standard facter format
in ruby *.rb files) in directories specified by FACTERLIB[1]. When
using "external facts" (facts derived from arbitrary executable files
returning key/value pairs on stdout) the files containing the facts
have to reside in a directory supplied as the value to the
`--external-dir` flag to facter, ie `facter key1 --external-dir
<path-to-external-facts` OR in one of the default external fact
directories for your platform[2]. On Linux/OSX running facter as root,
these directories are:

/opt/puppetlabs/facter/facts.d/
/etc/puppetlabs/facter/facts.d/
/etc/facter/facts.d/

and when running as a non-root user, $HOME/.facter/facts.d.

[1] https://docs.puppet.com/facter/3.4/custom_facts.html#using-the-facterlib-environment-variable
[2] https://docs.puppet.com/facter/3.4/custom_facts.html#fact-locations
--
Moses Mendoza
Puppet Labs