hooks.md

Hooks

Hooks provide a way to run arbitrary scripts when certain events occur during the operation of the Razor server. The behavior and structure of a hook are defined by a hook type.

The two primary components for hooks are:

• Configuration: This is a keystore for storing data on a hook. These have an initial value and can be updated by hook scripts.
• Event Scripts: These are scripts that run when a specified event occurs. Event scripts must be named according to the handled event.

File layout for a hook type

Similar to brokers and tasks, hook types are defined through a .hook directory and optional event scripts within that directory:

hooks/
  some.hook/
    configuration.yaml
    node-bind-policy
    node-unbind-policy
    ...

Creating hook objects

The create-hook command is used to create a hook object from a hook type:

> razor create-hook --name myhook --hook-type some_hook \
    --configuration foo=7 --configuration bar=rhubarb

The hook object created by this command will track changes to the hook's configuration over time.

The delete-hook command is used to remove a hook.

If a hook's configuration needs to change, it must be deleted then recreated with the updated configuration.

Hook Configuration

Hook scripts can use the hook object's configuration

The hook type specifies the configuration data that it accepts in configuration.yaml; that file must define a hash:

foo:
  description: "Explain what foo is for"
  default: 0
bar:
  description "Explain what bar is for"
  default: "Barbara"
...

For each event that the hook type handles, it must contain a script with the event's name; that script must be executable by the Razor server. All hook scripts for a certain event are run (in an indeterminate order) when that event occurs.

Event scripts

The general protocol is that hook event scripts receive a JSON object on their stdin, and may return a result by printing a JSON object to their stdout. The properties of the input object vary by event, but they always contain a 'hook' property:

{
  "hook": {
    "name": hook name,
    "configuration": ... operations to perform ...
  }
}

The configuration object is initialized from the Hash described in the hook's configuration.yaml and the properties set by the current values of the hook object's configuration. With the create-hook command above, the input JSON would be:

{
  "hook": {
    "name": "myhook",
    "configuration": {
      "update": {
        "foo": 7,
        "bar": "rhubarb"
      }
    }
  }
}

The script may return data by producing a JSON object on its stdout to indicate changes that should be made to the hook's configuration. The updated configuration will be used on subsequent invocations of any event for that hook. The output must indicate which properties to update, and which ones to remove:

{
  "hook": {
    "configuration": {
      "update": {
        "foo": 8
      },
      "remove": [ "frob" ]
    }
  }
}

The Razor server makes sure that invocations of hook scripts are serialized; for any hook, events are processed one-by-one to make it possible to provide transactional safety around the changes any event script might make.

Node events

Most events are directly related to a node. The JSON input to the event script will have a node property which contains the representation of the node in the same format as the API produces for node details.

The JSON output of the event script can modify the node metadata:

{
  "node": {
    "metadata": {
      "update": {
        "foo": 8
      },
      "remove": [ "frob" ]
    }
  }
}

Available events

The exact list of events can be seen from the help for the run-hook command, but here are the primary events:

• node-registered: triggered after a node has been registered, i.e. after its facts have been set for the first time by the Microkernel.
• node-bound-to-policy: triggered after a node has been bound to a policy. The script input contains a policy property with the details of the policy that has been bound to the node.
• node-unbound-from-policy: triggered after a node has been marked as uninstalled by the reinstall-node command and thus been returned to the set of nodes available for installation.
• node-deleted: triggered after a node has been deleted.
• node-booted: triggered every time a node boots via iPXE.
• node-facts-changed: triggered whenever a node changes its facts.
• node-install-finished: triggered when a policy finishes its last step.

Error handling

The hook script must exit with exit code 0 if it succeeds; any other exit code is considered a failure of the script. Whether the failure of a script has any other effects depends on the event. A failed execution can still make updates to the hook and node objects by printing to stdout in the same way as a successful execution.

To report error details, the script should produce a JSON object with an error property on its stdout in addition to exiting with a non-zero exit code. If the script exits with exit code 0 the error property will still be recorded, but the event's severity will not be an 'error'. The error property should itself contain an object whose message property is a human-readable message; additional properties can be set. Example:

{
  "error": {
    "message": "connection refused by frobnicate.example.com",
    "port": 2345,
    ...
  }
}

Development Tools

There are three commands which may help with writing custom hooks:

• The run-hook command can be used to arbitrarily execute a hook with a given node input (and policy if applicable). Note that only "node-bound-to-policy" and "node-unbound-from-policy" will include the policy when executing the hook.
• The update-hook-configuration command can be used to reset a hook's configuration. This is helpful when you are testing that the hook's output correctly updates a hook's configuration.
• The update-node-metadata command can be used to reset a node's metadata. This is helpful when you are testing that a hook's output correctly updates a node's metadata.

Sample input

The input to the hook script will be in JSON, containing a structure like below:

{ "hook": { "name": "counter", "configuration": { "value": 0 } }, "node": { "name": "node10", "hw_info": { "mac": [ "52-54-00-30-8e-45" ], "serial": "watz0815", "uuid": "ea7c46f8-615f-234f-c1a4-20f0d3edac3d" }, "dhcp_mac": "52-54-00-30-8e-45", "tags": ["compute", "anything", "any", "new"], "facts": { "memorysize_mb": "995.05", "myfact": "0815", "facterversion": "2.0.1", "architecture": "x86_64", "hardwaremodel": "x86_64", "processor0": "QEMU Virtual CPU version 1.6.2", "processorcount": "1", "ipaddress": "192.168.100.196", "hardwareisa": "x86_64", "netmask": "255.255.255.0", "uniqueid": "007f0100", "physicalprocessorcount": "1", "virtual": "kvm", "is_virtual": "true", "interfaces": "eth0,lo", "ipaddress_eth0": "192.168.100.196", "macaddress_eth0": "52:54:00:30:8e:45", "netmask_eth0": "255.255.255.0", "ipaddress_lo": "127.0.0.1", "netmask_lo": "255.0.0.0", "network_eth0": "192.168.100.0", "network_lo": "127.0.0.0", "macaddress": "52:54:00:30:8e:45", "blockdevice_vda_size": 4294967296, "blockdevice_vda_vendor": "0x1af4", "blockdevices": "vda", "bios_vendor": "Watzmann Ops", "bios_version": "08.15", "bios_release_date": "01/01/2011", "manufacturer": "Watzmann BIOS", "productname": "Bochs", "serialnumber": "WATZ0815", "uuid": "EA7C46F8-615F-234F-C1A4-20F0D3EDAC3D", "type": "Other" }, "state": { "installed": false }, "hostname": "client-l.watzmann.net", "root_password": "secret", "last_checkin": "2014-05-21T03:45:47+02:00" }, "policy": { "name": "client-l", "repo": "centos-6.4", "task": "ubuntu", "broker": "noop", "enabled": true, "hostname_pattern": "client-l.watzmann.net", "root_password": "secret", "tags": ["client-l"], "nodes": { "count": 0 } } }

Input format

The input will contain these keys, where many will disappear if their value is null:

• hook
  • id
  • name
  • type (this is the hook type)
  • configuration
  • cause (this is the event string, e.g. node-booted)
• node
  • id
  • name
  • hw_info
  • dhcp_mac
  • tags (array of hash; use name for each)
  • facts
  • metadata
  • state
    • installed
    • installed_at
    • stage
  • power
    • desired_power_state
    • last_known_power_state
    • last_power_state_update_at
  • hostname
  • root_password
  • ipmi
    • hostname
    • username
  • last_checkin
• policy (for node-bound-to-policy and node-unbound-from-policy events only)
  • id
  • name
  • repo (object; use name)
  • task (object; use name)
  • broker (object; use name)
  • enabled
  • hostname_pattern
  • root_password
  • tags => (array of objects; use name in each)
  • nodes
    • count

Sample hook

Here is an example of a basic hook that will count the number of times Razor registers a node. Let's name the hook counter and create a corresponding directory for the hook type, counter.hook, inside the hooks directory. We can store the current count as a configuration entry with the key count. Thus the configuration.yaml file might look like this:

---
count:
  description: "The current value of the counter"
  default: 0

We want to write a script that runs whenever a node gets bound to a policy, so we make a file called node-bound-to-policy and place it in the counter.hook folder. We can then write this script, which reads in the current configuration value, increments it, then returns some JSON to update the configuration on the hook object:

#! /bin/bash

json=$(< /dev/stdin)

name=$(jq '.hook.name' <<< $json)
value=$(( $(jq '.hook.config.count' <<< $json) + 1 ))

cat <<EOF
{
  "hook": {
    "configuration": {
      "update": {
        "count": $value
      }
    }
  },
  "node": {
    "metadata": {
      $name: $value
    }
  }
}
EOF

Note that this script uses jq, a bash JSON manipulation framework. This must be on the $PATH in order for execution to succeed.

That completes the hook type. Next, we'll create the hook object which will store the configuration via:

razor create-hook --name counter --hook-type counter

Since the configuration is absent from this creation call, the default value of 0 in configuration.yaml is used. Alternatively, this could be set using --configuration count=0 or --c count=0.

The hook is now ready to go. You can query the existing hooks in a system via razor hooks. To query the current value of the hook's configuration, razor hooks counter will show count initially set to 0. When a node gets bound to a policy, the node-bound-to-policy script will be triggered, yielding a new configuration value of 1.