Machinery — A Systems Management Toolkit for Linux

SYNOPSIS

machinery SUBCOMMAND [options]
machinery help [SUBCOMMAND]

DESCRIPTION

Machinery is a systems management toolkit for Linux. It supports configuration discovery, system validation, and service migration. Machinery is based on the idea of an universal system description. Machinery has a set of commands which work with this system description. These commands can be combined to form work flows. Machinery is targeted at the system administrator of the data center.

WORK FLOW EXAMPLES

Inspect a System and Show Results

machinery inspect --extract-files --name=NAME HOSTNAME
machinery show NAME

Inspect Two Systems and Compare Them

machinery inspect HOSTNAME1
machinery inspect HOSTNAME2
machinery compare HOSTNAME1 HOSTNAME2

Fully Inspect a System and Export a Kiwi Description

machinery inspect --extract-files HOSTNAME
machinery export-kiwi --kiwi-dir=~/kiwi HOSTNAME

Fully Inspect a System and Export an AutoYaST Profile

machinery inspect --extract-files HOSTNAME
machinery export-autoyast --autoyast-dir=~/autoyast HOSTNAME

Fully Inspect a System and Deploy a Replicate to the Cloud

machinery inspect --extract-files HOSTNAME
machinery deploy --cloud-config=~/openrc.sh HOSTNAME

How to upgrade a SLES 11 SP3 system to SLES 12

Machinery can help you to upgrade without affecting the original system. For more details please read the Wiki Page:
https://github.com/SUSE/machinery/wiki/How-to-upgrade-a-SLES-11-SP3-system-to-SLES-12

CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW

Machinery's core concept is the complete representation of a system by a universal system description. System descriptions are managed independently of the described systems which allows for system state conservation and offline preparation of modifications.

Machinery's subcommands work on the system description as the connecting element. System descriptions are obtained by inspecting systems, importing from other formats, manual creation or merging other descriptions. Machinery can store and modify system descriptions to allow changes to described state of the system. System descriptions can be compared to find similarities and differences between them or analyzed to deepen the knowledge about particular aspects of the system. System descriptions may be exported to other formats and can be used to migrate or replicate systems.

Subcommands can be combined in different ways to accomodate higher-level work flows and use cases. These are some implemented and planned use cases:

Migrate a physical system to a virtual environment:

Inspect a system to obtain a system description
Export the system description to a Kiwi configuration
Build a cloud image from the configuration
Deploy the image to the cloud

Migrate a system while changing the configuration:

Inspect a system to obtain a system description
Modify the system description
Build image for deployment

Using Machinery as an extension from other formats:

Import AutoYaST profile as system description
Build image for deployment

Machinery provides an extensible set of tools which can be combined to create higher-level work flows. It is designed for environments which focus on automation, integration of diverse tools and accountable management. Machinery integrates with existing configuration management solutions to address use cases currently not covered by them.

The machinery Command

Machinery is implemented as a command line tool named machinery. The machinery command has several subcommands for specific tasks. All subcommands work with the same system description identified by an optional name which can be used by all subcommands.

Scopes

The system description is structured into "scopes". A scope covers a specific part of the configuration of the inspected system such as installed packages, repositories, or configuration files.

For example, if you are only interested in the installed packages, limit the scope to packages. This will output only the requested information.

The the scopes documentation for a list of all supported scopes.

FILES AND DEVICES

~/.machinery/machinery.config:

Configuration file.
~/.machinery/machinery.log:

Central log file, in the format date, time, process id, and log message.
eth0 (SLE11) and lan0 (SLE12):

First network device is used when DHCP in built image is enabled.

ENVIRONMENT

MACHINERY_LOG_FILE:

Location of Machinery's log file (defaults to ~/.machinery/machinery.log)