MOTD Chef Status Cookbook

Maintainer: OIT Systems Engineering (ua-oit-se@alaska.edu)

Purpose

This cookbook configures Message of the Day (MOTD) to display system information and Chef status.

• Hostname, FQDN
• Distribution, kernel, machine
• System owner (if applicable)
• Status and update information (platform dependent)
• Chef node name, run success status, last run timing

It also clears some verbose, distro-standard MOTD fragments.

MOTD is dynamic on every supported distro.
When it is available and works properly on the platform, /etc/update-motd.d/ is used. Otherwise /etc/profile.d/ is used as a fallback.

The MOTD message is reasonably standard across platforms.
This cookbook does not configure SSH, so any login message will remain.
Effort has been made to remove fragments from standard distributions and cloud-provider fragments, but is it infeasible to remove every possible fragment while respecting attributes that govern their removal.

By default, MOTD on various platforms will appear similar to below.

Ubuntu

CentOS

Run status will turn red if the last Chef converge failed.
Timing will turn red if the last run occurred longer ago than the maximum duration allowed by the Chef client.

Requirements

Chef

This cookbook requires Chef 13+

Platforms

Supported Platform Families:

• Debian
  • Ubuntu, Mint
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  • Amazon, CentOS, Oracle
• OpenSuse

Platforms validated via Test Kitchen:

• Ubuntu
• Debian
• CentOS
• Oracle
• Fedora
• Amazon
• OpenSuse

Notes:

• This cookbook should support any recent Linux variant with the caveat that it will not clear novel MOTD fragments.

Resources

This cookbook provides one resources for configuring and installing a MOTD fragment. The fragment will be placed in the appropriate directory and given the appropriate extension for the platform.

motd_fragment

A motd_fragment manages a single script fragment (file).

Actions

Two action are provided.

• create - Post condition is that the fragment exists in the appropriate directory to be executed and with the appropriate file extension.
• delete - Post condition is that the fragment exists in neither /etc/update-motd.d/ nor /etc/profile.d/.

Attributes

This resource has four attributes.

• fragment_name - Defaults to nil. The stem of the fragment file, if nil the name of the resource is used.
• template_cookbook - Required. The name of the cookbook where the fragment is located.
• template_source - Required. The name of the template to use for the fragment, inside template_cookbook/templates/.
• template_variables - Defaults to {}.

Recipes

motd_chef_status::default

This recipe installs and configures dynamic MOTD by calling all of the other recipes.

Attributes

None

motd_chef_status::install

This recipe installs update-motd on platforms that support it.

Attributes

None

motd_chef_status::remove_fragments

This recipe removes possibly all pre-existing MOTD fragments to keep the login uncluttered and the Chef warning prominent.

Attributes

• node['motd_chef_status']['remove_existing_fragments'] - Defaults to true. Determines if existing fragments are removed. If false, the attributes below have no effect.
• node['motd_chef_status']['remove_document_fragments'] - Defaults to true. Determines if documentation-related fragments are removed.
• node['motd_chef_status']['remove_status_fragments'] - Defaults to false. Determines if status-related fragments are removed.
• node['motd_chef_status']['remove_update_fragments'] - Defaults to false. Determines is update-related fragments are removed.

motd_chef_status::add_fragments

This recipe installs possibly two fragments, one a banner and the other a Chef warning and status.

Attributes

• node['motd_chef_status']['add_header_fragment'] - Defaults to true. Determines if the header fragment is installed.

• node['motd_chef_status']['header_position'] - Defaults to '00'. Determines the position of the header fragment. The default position places the header before anything else.

• node['motd_chef_status']['add_chef_fragment'] - Defaults to true. Determines if the Chef status/warning fragment is installed.

• node['motd_chef_status']['chef_status_position'] - Defaults to '99'. Determines the position of the Chef fragment. The default position is at the end of the MOTD.

• node['motd_chef_status']['server_owner'] - Defaults to ''. The owner/manager of the server. If not empty the header will include a line for the owner.

Examples

The motd_fragment resource can be used as below.

motd_fragment 'motd-header' do
  fragment_name '00-header'
  template_cookbook 'my_cookbook'
  template_source 'motd-header.sh.erb'
  template_variables {}
end