Boot time incorrect for all hosts - never gets updated

Support
1

Problem:
Under “Hosts” - “All Hosts”, the column “Boot time” displays incorrect values.
It never gets updated.
Running uptime on the host reveals a discrepancy. It is incorrect for all hosts.

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Expected outcome:
With REX working correctly, “Boot time” should be correct at all times, at least after a Reboot Job has ran.

Foreman and Proxy versions:
3.5.1

Foreman and Proxy plugin versions:
foreman-tasks 7.1.1
foreman_remote_execution 8.2.0
katello 4.7.3

Distribution and version:
Foreman: Rocky Linux 8
Hosts: CentOS 7, Rocky Linux 8, Rocky Linux 9

Other relevant data:
All hosts have Tracer installed and enabled.

2

Boot time comes out of facts delivered by the client. REX runs jobs. It doesn’t handle facts. You’ll have to run puppet or ansible for information/facts about the clients.

1 Like
3

Admittedly, this server is quite new, and Foreman is new to me.
I must have missed something in the installation documentation, as the Foreman host doesn’t seem to have any facts-gathering mechanisms in place.

    1:
/var/tmp/foreman-ssh-cmd-e7f7d154-44c9-49a3-9e92-5e013f9472a7/script: line 1: puppet: command not found
   2:
Exit status: 127

Is there a way to gather facts without installing anything on remote machines?
Is there good documentation that will compare Foreman’s Puppet vs. Ansible integration, so that I can decide what’s best for me?

Thanks

1 Like
4

+1

Did you find any work-around on this?

5

The whole “gathering of hosts facts” process seems to be somewhat hidden feature of Foreman since the “facts” do seem to be updated by some service/command that runs on the hosts when you issue an update of packages for example. I assume this can also be triggered manually?

Also seen this page → Foreman :: Updating Foreman inventory with system facts

6

I sill didn’t find a solution.
The document isn’t clear how facts gathering is scheduled, when Ansible is used.

  • Is it Foreman who’s supposed to gather facts from hosts on schedule?
  • Or is it the Ansible Manager (which in my case is on the Foreman host) which is supposed to gather facts on schedule?
  • Or is it the managed hosts, which should connect to Foreman’s Ansible Component using ssh to push their facts to the Foreman server?

In the latter case, I don’t want it work, because the “inbound” SSH port from remote hosts to Foreman is blocked for security reasons.

If I select all hosts and “Run all Ansible roles” manually, facts are gathered and updated. Ideally, I’d like to have a scheduler on Foreman which does scheduled facts gathering.

If that’s impossible, I will be forced to use Puppet, which at this time is not yet installed on remote hosts.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

7

It seems to be possible to schedule a facts gathering job on Foreman, which will rely on Ansible.
Although, maybe, this may not be the best way of doing it?

Question to Foreman specialists: is there a better way of doing it?

The way I managed to do it:

  1. Under “Hosts” - “All Hosts”
  2. Click the Button “Select Action”
  3. Click “Schedule Remote Job”
  4. Click “Use legacy form” (upper right corner)
  5. Fill out the form:
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Hope this helps?