Fabric
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7 min readMar 13, 2017
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As per official documentation “Fabric is a Python library and command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks”
Installing Fabric
Installation is pretty straightforward in case of Linux System(pip install fabric)
NOTE: pip is not a part of standard package library,so in case of RedHat/Centos system you first need to install epel package
rpm -ivh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-release-7-9.noarch.rpm
yum -y install python-pippip install fabric
Collecting fabric
Installing collected packages: fabric
Successfully installed fabric-1.13.1
Once Fabric is installed it provide bunch of useful command and features.Let’s explore few command
[root@fabric-server ~]# fab -hUsage: fab [options] <command>[:arg1,arg2=val2,host=foo,hosts=’h1;h2',…] …
- Now let say I want to check disk-space utilization of Client(192.168.0.16)
[root@fabric-server ~]# fab -H 192.168.0.16 -I — df -THInitial value for env.password:[192.168.0.16] Executing task ‘<remainder>’[192.168.0.16] run: df -TH[192.168.0.16] out: Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on[192.168.0.16] out: /dev/mapper/cl-root xfs 20G 1.4G 19G 7% /[192.168.0.16] out: devtmpfs devtmpfs 510M 0 510M 0% /dev[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /dev/shm[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 7.0M 514M 2% /run[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup[192.168.0.16] out: /dev/sda1 xfs 102M 98M 3.7M 97% /boot[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 105M 0 105M 0% /run/user/0[192.168.0.16] out:Done.Disconnecting from 192.168.0.16… done.
where
-I, — initial-password-promptForce password prompt up-front-H HOSTS, — hosts=HOSTScomma-separated list of hosts to operate on
- In case of multiple hosts, we can pass hostname/IP via comma separated value
[root@fabric-server ~]# fab -H 192.168.0.15,192.168.0.16 -I — df -THInitial value for env.password:[192.168.0.15] Executing task ‘<remainder>’[192.168.0.15] run: df -TH[192.168.0.15] out: Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on[192.168.0.15] out: /dev/mapper/cl-root xfs 20G 1.4G 19G 7% /[192.168.0.15] out: devtmpfs devtmpfs 510M 0 510M 0% /dev[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /dev/shm[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 7.0M 514M 2% /run[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup[192.168.0.15] out: /dev/sda1 xfs 102M 98M 3.7M 97% /boot[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 105M 0 105M 0% /run/user/0[192.168.0.15] out:[192.168.0.16] Executing task ‘<remainder>’[192.168.0.16] run: df -TH[192.168.0.16] out: Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on[192.168.0.16] out: /dev/mapper/cl-root xfs 20G 1.4G 19G 7% /[192.168.0.16] out: devtmpfs devtmpfs 510M 0 510M 0% /dev[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /dev/shm[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 7.0M 514M 2% /run[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup[192.168.0.16] out: /dev/sda1 xfs 102M 98M 3.7M 97% /boot[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 105M 0 105M 0% /run/user/0[192.168.0.16] out:Done.Disconnecting from 192.168.0.16… done.Disconnecting from 192.168.0.15… done.
- In both the above cases I need to pass password at the prompt,but in case of automation we need some way so that we don’t need to pass password each time
So the way to do it, is to set password variable at shell prompt
export password=”test12"Now we can run the same command without prompting for password,instead of passing -I we can pass(-p $password)
[root@fabric-server ~]# fab -H 192.168.0.15,192.168.0.16 -p $password — df -TH[192.168.0.15] Executing task ‘<remainder>’[192.168.0.15] run: df -TH[192.168.0.15] out: Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on[192.168.0.15] out: /dev/mapper/cl-root xfs 20G 1.4G 19G 7% /[192.168.0.15] out: devtmpfs devtmpfs 510M 0 510M 0% /dev[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /dev/shm[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 7.0M 514M 2% /run[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup[192.168.0.15] out: /dev/sda1 xfs 102M 98M 3.7M 97% /boot[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 105M 0 105M 0% /run/user/0[192.168.0.15] out:[192.168.0.16] Executing task ‘<remainder>’[192.168.0.16] run: df -TH[192.168.0.16] out: Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on[192.168.0.16] out: /dev/mapper/cl-root xfs 20G 1.4G 19G 7% /[192.168.0.16] out: devtmpfs devtmpfs 510M 0 510M 0% /dev[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /dev/shm[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 7.0M 514M 2% /run[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup[192.168.0.16] out: /dev/sda1 xfs 102M 98M 3.7M 97% /boot[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 105M 0 105M 0% /run/user/0[192.168.0.16] out:Done.Disconnecting from 192.168.0.16… done.Disconnecting from 192.168.0.15… done.
- All these command executed linearly i.e one after the other, in case we need make these threads run in parallel use (-P)
[root@fabric-server ~]# fab -H 192.168.0.15,192.168.0.16 -p $password -P — df -TH[192.168.0.15] Executing task ‘<remainder>’[192.168.0.16] Executing task ‘<remainder>’[192.168.0.16] run: df -TH[192.168.0.15] run: df -TH[192.168.0.16] out: Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on[192.168.0.16] out: /dev/mapper/cl-root xfs 20G 1.4G 19G 7% /[192.168.0.16] out: devtmpfs devtmpfs 510M 0 510M 0% /dev[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /dev/shm[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 7.0M 514M 2% /run[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup[192.168.0.16] out: /dev/sda1 xfs 102M 98M 3.7M 97% /boot[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 105M 0 105M 0% /run/user/0[192.168.0.16] out:[192.168.0.15] out: Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on[192.168.0.15] out: /dev/mapper/cl-root xfs 20G 1.4G 19G 7% /[192.168.0.15] out: devtmpfs devtmpfs 510M 0 510M 0% /dev[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 13k 521M 1% /dev/shm[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 7.0M 514M 2% /run[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup[192.168.0.15] out: /dev/sda1 xfs 102M 98M 3.7M 97% /boot[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 105M 0 105M 0% /run/user/0[192.168.0.15] out:Done.
- Now to control how many thread to fork when run in parallel(-z number of concurrent processes to use in parallel mode)
[root@fabric-server ~]# fab -H 192.168.0.15,192.168.0.16 -p $password -z 1 — df -TH[192.168.0.15] Executing task ‘<remainder>’[192.168.0.15] run: df -TH[192.168.0.15] out: Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on[192.168.0.15] out: /dev/mapper/cl-root xfs 20G 1.4G 19G 7% /[192.168.0.15] out: devtmpfs devtmpfs 510M 0 510M 0% /dev[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /dev/shm[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 7.0M 514M 2% /run[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup[192.168.0.15] out: /dev/sda1 xfs 102M 98M 3.7M 97% /boot[192.168.0.15] out: tmpfs tmpfs 105M 0 105M 0% /run/user/0[192.168.0.15] out:[192.168.0.16] Executing task ‘<remainder>’[192.168.0.16] run: df -TH[192.168.0.16] out: Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on[192.168.0.16] out: /dev/mapper/cl-root xfs 20G 1.4G 19G 7% /[192.168.0.16] out: devtmpfs devtmpfs 510M 0 510M 0% /dev[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /dev/shm[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 7.0M 514M 2% /run[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup[192.168.0.16] out: /dev/sda1 xfs 102M 98M 3.7M 97% /boot[192.168.0.16] out: tmpfs tmpfs 105M 0 105M 0% /run/user/0[192.168.0.16] out:Done.Disconnecting from 192.168.0.16… done.Disconnecting from 192.168.0.15… done.
To save the output to a file
[root@fabric-server ~]# fab -H 192.168.0.15,192.168.0.16 -p $password -z 1 — df -TH >> /tmp/faboutput- Now a days most of the companies running there infrastructure in cloud,in case of AWS cloud we need to modify our command little bit
fab -H ec-<ip add>.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com -u ec2-user -i test.pem — df -TH[ec-<ip add>.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com] Executing task ‘<remainder>’[ec-<ip add>.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com] run: df -TH[ec-<ip add>.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com] out: Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on[ec-<ip add>.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com] out: /dev/xvda2 xfs 11G 1.9G 9.0G 17% /[ec-<ip add>.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com] out: devtmpfs devtmpfs 500M 0 500M 0% /dev[ec-<ip add>.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com] out: tmpfs tmpfs 520M 0 520M 0% /dev/shm[ec-<ip add>.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com] out: tmpfs tmpfs 520M 66M 455M 13% /run[ec-<ip add>.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com] out: tmpfs tmpfs 520M 0 520M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup[ec-<ip add>.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com] out: tmpfs tmpfs 104M 0 104M 0% /run/user/1000[ec-<ip add>.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com] out:Done.Disconnecting from ec-<ip add>.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com… done.
where
i PATH path to SSH private key file. May be repeated-u USER, — user=USER username to use when connecting to remote hosts
- So far all these commands we are executing on the command line,in order to automate the whole process we need to create fabfile,which is a simple python script(here you can see we combine both memory as well as disk space utilization)
#Fabfile to:# — Run the command on remote system(s)# — Check the memory and disk space#Import Fabric’s API Modulefrom fabric.api import *env.hosts = [‘192.168.0.15’,‘192.168.0.16’]# Set the usernameenv.user = “root”# Set the password[NOT RECOMMENDED]”env.password =“test12”def memory_check():“””Check Memory usage on remote system“””run(“free -m”)def disk_check():“””Check Disk space usage on remote system“””run(“df -TH”)def tesenv():memory_check()disk_check
Now to verify it
[root@fabric-server ~]# fab -lAvailable commands:disk_checkmemory_checktestenv
To run it
[root@fabric-server ~]# fab testenv[192.168.0.17] Executing task ‘testenv’[192.168.0.17] run: free -m[192.168.0.17] out: total used free shared buff/cache available[192.168.0.17] out: Mem: 992 79 701 6 211 762[192.168.0.17] out: Swap: 499 0 499[192.168.0.17] out:[192.168.0.17] run: df -TH[192.168.0.17] out: Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on[192.168.0.17] out: /dev/mapper/cl-root xfs 20G 1.4G 19G 7% /[192.168.0.17] out: devtmpfs devtmpfs 510M 0 510M 0% /dev[192.168.0.17] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /dev/shm[192.168.0.17] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 7.0M 514M 2% /run[192.168.0.17] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup[192.168.0.17] out: /dev/sda1 xfs 102M 98M 3.7M 97% /boot[192.168.0.17] out: tmpfs tmpfs 105M 0 105M 0% /run/user/0[192.168.0.17] out:[192.168.0.18] Executing task ‘testenv’[192.168.0.18] run: free -m[192.168.0.18] out: total used free shared buff/cache available[192.168.0.18] out: Mem: 992 106 477 6 409 728[192.168.0.18] out: Swap: 499 0 499[192.168.0.18] out:[192.168.0.18] run: df -TH[192.168.0.18] out: Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on[192.168.0.18] out: /dev/mapper/cl-root xfs 20G 1.4G 19G 7% /[192.168.0.18] out: devtmpfs devtmpfs 510M 0 510M 0% /dev[192.168.0.18] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /dev/shm[192.168.0.18] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 7.0M 514M 2% /run[192.168.0.18] out: tmpfs tmpfs 521M 0 521M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup[192.168.0.18] out: /dev/sda1 xfs 102M 98M 3.7M 97% /boot[192.168.0.18] out: tmpfs tmpfs 105M 0 105M 0% /run/user/0[192.168.0.18] out:
