We end our series of blog posts about what is essential to know about Facter with some notes about the often forgotten Facter’s configuration file /etc/puppetlabs/facter/facter.conf (on Windows systems: C:\ProgramData\PuppetLabs\facter\etc\facter.conf).

If you missed the previous posts, you can read them here:

• Part 1 - Facter and core facts
• Part 2 - Custom facts
• Part 3 - External facts
• Part 4 - Trusted facts

The forgotten (and useful) configuration file

Do not worry if you didn’t even know that Facter has a configuration file which permits the configuration of rather interesting and useful features.

It has been introduced from Version 3, and by default it’s not even created when Facter is installed, so it’s up to us to create and configure it (typically via Puppet).

facter.conf is written in Hocon format, and has 3 main sections:

• facts where we configure facts groups and policies on how to cache or distribute them
• global where we defines the paths where facter looks for and if to include some kind of core_facts
• cli where are managed facter cli command outputs

A sample output may look as follows:

facts : {
    blocklist : [ "file system", "EC2" ],
    ttls : [
        { "operating system" : 2 days },
    ]
}

global : {
    external-dir     : [ "path1", "path2" ],
    custom-dir       : [ "custom/path" ],
    no-exernal-facts : false,
    no-custom-facts  : false,
    no-ruby          : false
}

cli : {
    debug     : false,
    trace     : true,
    verbose   : false,
    log-level : "warn"
}

Configuring caching and exclusions

The most useful and interesting settings can be set under the facts section, here we can configure, with the ttls key, a caching Time To Live for each listed fact group, so that Facter doesn’t have to resolve all the facts of that group every time is executed (that is, at least at every Puppet run).

Here we can also completely exclude from execution, with the blocklist key, whole groups of facts.

We can see the list of all the cacheable groups, with the ttls key, (with the relevant facts) with:

facter --list-block-groups

EC2
  - ec2_metadata
  - ec2_userdata
GCE
  - gce
Xen
  - xen
  - xendomains
augeas
  - augeas
  - augeasversion
desktop management interface
  - dmi
  - bios_vendor
  - bios_version
  - bios_release_date
  - boardassettag
  - boardmanufacturer
  - boardproductname
  - boardserialnumber
  - chassisassettag
  - manufacturer
  - productname
  - serialnumber
  - uuid
  - chassistype
disk
  - blockdevices
  - disks
file system
  - mountpoints
  - filesystems
  - partitions
fips
  - fips_enabled
hypervisors
  - hypervisors
id
  - id
  - gid
  - identity
kernel
  - kernel
  - kernelversion
  - kernelrelease
  - kernelmajversion
load_average
  - load_averages
memory
  - memory
  - memoryfree
  - memoryfree_mb
  - memorysize
  - memorysize_mb
  - swapfree
  - swapfree_mb
  - swapsize
  - swapsize_mb
  - swapencrypted
networking
  - networking
  - hostname
  - ipaddress
  - ipaddress6
  - netmask
  - netmask6
  - network
  - network6
  - macaddress
  - interfaces
  - domain
  - fqdn
  - dhcp_servers
operating system
  - os
  - operatingsystem
  - osfamily
  - operatingsystemrelease
  - operatingsystemmajrelease
  - hardwaremodel
  - architecture
  - lsbdistid
  - lsbdistrelease
  - lsbdistcodename
  - lsbdistdescription
  - lsbmajdistrelease
  - lsbminordistrelease
  - lsbrelease
  - macosx_buildversion
  - macosx_productname
  - macosx_productversion
  - macosx_productversion_major
  - macosx_productversion_minor
  - system32
  - selinux
  - selinux_enforced
  - selinux_policyversion
  - selinux_current_mode
  - selinux_config_mode
  - selinux_config_policy
path
  - path
processor
  - processors
  - processorcount
  - physicalprocessorcount
  - hardwareisa
ssh
  - ssh
  - sshdsakey
  - sshrsakey
  - sshecdsakey
  - sshed25519key
  - sshfp_dsa
  - sshfp_rsa
  - sshfp_ecdsa
  - sshfp_ed25519
timezone
  - timezone
uptime
  - system_uptime
  - uptime
  - uptime_days
  - uptime_hours
  - uptime_seconds
virtualization
  - virtual
  - is_virtual
  - cloud

The list of the blockable groups, via the blocklist key is shorter:

facter --list-block-groups

EC2
  - ec2_metadata
  - ec2_userdata
file system
  - mountpoints
  - filesystems
  - partitions
hypervisors
  - hypervisors

The configuration of caching or blocking of groups of facts can save a lot of time during Facter execution but we can still disable caching or blocking with, respectively, the following command line arguments:

facter --no-cache
facter --no-block

Global and cli settings

The other keys we can configure on facter.conf can be used to manage the general behaviour of the facter command, all of them can be set or overridden via arguments specified in the command line.

The global settings are the following:

• external-dir A list of directories to search for external facts (equivalent to the cli argument --external-dir)
• custom-dir A list of directories to search for custom facts (equivalent to --custom-dir)
• no-external-facts If true, prevents Facter from searching for external facts. (Default false, when set to true is equivalent to argument --no-external-facts)
• no-custom-facts If true, prevents Facter from searching for custom facts. (Default false, when set to true is equivalent to argument --no-custom-facts)
• no-ruby If true, prevents Facter from loading facts written in Ruby. (Default false, when set to true is equivalent to argument --no-ruby)

The cli settings are the following:

• debug If true, Facter outputs debug messages. (Default false, when set to true is equivalent to cli argument --debug)
• trace If true, Facter prints stack traces from errors arising in your custom facts. (Default false, when set to true is equivalent to cli argument --trace)
• verbose If true, Facter outputs its most detailed messages. (Default false, when set to true is equivalent to cli argument --verbose)
• log-level Sets the minimum level of message severity that gets logged. Valid options: “none”, “fatal”, “error”, “warn”, “info”, “debug”, “trace”. Equivalent to cli argument --log-level

Conclusions

We have reached the last post of our series about “What you need to know about Facter”.

We have reviewed the most important things to know about Facter and also some more or less known features or capabilities.

Facter has seen continuous improvements in the last years, both in terms of performance (facts written in C++ and caching/blocking from version 3) and flexibility (structured and external facts from version 2) and we hope to have helped you in understanding how to make the best use out of them.

Alessandro Franceschi