commit bc52446eb733b9a9189f6091c235ce84b574df09
parent 03d1387a12244b8ce12c96388458156c3278652b
Author: pyratebeard <root@pyratebeard.net>
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2021 17:42:08 +0000
usefulness of drist
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1 file changed, 62 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/entry/20210305-the_usefulness_of_drist.md b/entry/20210305-the_usefulness_of_drist.md
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+In work we use Ansible for configuration management and various scheduled check (through AWX). I am a big fan of Ansible and have written plenty of {roles,playbooks} to help manage our Linux infrastructure.
+
+Occasionally though I may need to run a check on a system, or maybe gather some data. Running a single bash command or a small script can be far quicker than writing an Ansible playbook. To do this on multiple systems I use to pass commands to ssh in a for loop, but this can become cumbersome.
+
+Recently I was introduced to `drist`. Like Ansible it is a "tool to configure and synchronize configurations to servers", and uses `ssh` to access the systems. Unlike Ansible it uses simple shell scripts and `rsync`.
+
+You can download `drist` from bitreich.org
+```
+git clone git://bitreich.org/drist/
+```
+
+The repository comes with plenty of examples to get you started.
+
+If you have a file called "script" in your $PWD you can run it against a single system
+```
+drist user@hostname
+```
+
+Or add a list of hostnames to a file, called "servers" for example, then incant
+```
+drist servers
+```
+
+It is encouraged for you to have ssh keys configured on your servers, otherwise you will be prompted to enter your password multiple times for each system.
+
+An example script could be as simple as gathering some basic information
+```
+hostname
+uname -r
+cat /proc/loadavg
+who
+```
+
+We can then incant `drist <hostname>`
+```
+Running on blacksun
+Executing file "script":
+blacksun
+4.9.0-8-amd64
+0.00 0.00 0.00 1/92 21836
+pyratebeard pts/0 Sep 23 10:06 (mosh [12511])
+```
+
+You can also copy up files and then use the script to carry out any actions required. For example, lets say we want to set a new MOTD on our servers. Create a directory called "files" and then under that directory add a new MOTD file
+```
+.
+├── files/
+│ └── motd
+└── script
+```
+
+Our script now looks like this
+```
+sudo mv ./motd /etc/motd
+sudo chown root:root /etc/motd
+sudo sed -i 's/^PrintMotd\ no/PrintMotd\ yes/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
+sudo systemctl reload sshd
+```
+
+We move the MOTD file to /etc and change ownership to root. Make sure we have PrintMotd enabled in sshd_config and reload the service to pick up any changes.
+
+These are some very basic examples but hopefully you can see how quick and easy it is to use, especially for small tasks were Ansible might be considered overkill.
