- name: create a device in NetBox
  netbox_device:
    netbox_url: http://netbox.local
    netbox_token: s3cret
    data:
      name: to3-p14.sfo1.example.com
      device_type: QFX5110-48S
      device_role: Compute Switch
      site: SFO1

Code The module has the following signature and it syncs NetBox with the content of the provided YAML file:

netbox_sync:
  source: netbox.yaml
  api: https://netbox.example.com
  token: s3cret

The synchronized objects are:

• sites,
• manufacturers,
• device types,
• device roles,
• devices, and
• IP addresses.

In our environment, the YAML file is generated from our configuration management database and contains a set of devices and a list of IP addresses:

devices:
  ad2-p6.sfo1.example.com:
     datacenter: sfo1
     manufacturer: Cisco
     model: Catalyst 2960G-48TC-L
     role: net_tor_oob_switch
  to1-p6.sfo1.example.com:
     datacenter: sfo1
     manufacturer: Juniper
     model: QFX5110-48S
     role: net_tor_gpu_switch
# [ ]
ips:
  - device: ad2-p6.example.com
    ip: 172.31.115.18/21
    interface: oob
  - device: to1-p6.example.com
    ip: 172.31.115.33/21
    interface: oob
  - device: to1-p6.example.com
    ip: 172.31.254.33/32
    interface: lo0.0
# [ ]

The network team is not the sole tenant in NetBox. While adding new objects or modifying existing ones should be relatively safe, deleting unwanted objects can be risky. The module only deletes objects it did create or modify. To identify them, it marks them with a specific tag, cmdb. Most objects in NetBox accept tags.

Module definition Starting from the skeleton described in the previous article, we define the module:

module_args = dict(
    source=dict(type='path', required=True),
    api=dict(type='str', required=True),
    token=dict(type='str', required=True, no_log=True),
    max_workers=dict(type='int', required=False, default=10)
)
result = dict(
    changed=False
)
module = AnsibleModule(
    argument_spec=module_args,
    supports_check_mode=True
)

It contains an additional optional arguments defining the number of workers to talk to NetBox and query the existing objects in parallel to speedup the execution.

Abstracting synchronization We need to synchronize different object types, but once we have a list of objects we want in NetBox, the grunt work is always the same:

• check if the objects already exist,
• retrieve them and put them in a form suitable for comparison,
• retrieve the extra objects we don t want anymore,
• compare the two sets, and
• add missing objects, update existing ones, delete extra ones.

We code these behaviours into a Synchronizer abstract class. For each kind of object, a concrete class is built with the appropriate class attributes to tune its behaviour and a wanted() method to provide the objects we want. I am not explaining the abstract class code here. Have a look at the source if you want.

Synchronizing tags and tenants As a starter, here is how we define the class synchronizing the tags:

class SyncTags(Synchronizer):
    app = "extras"
    table = "tags"
    key = "name"
    def wanted(self):
        return  "cmdb": dict(
            slug="cmdb",
            color="8bc34a",
            description="synced by network CMDB") 

The app and table attributes defines the NetBox objects we want to manipulate. The key attribute is used to determine how to lookup for existing objects. In this example, we want to lookup tags using their names. The wanted() method is expected to return a dictionary mapping object keys to the list of wanted attributes. Here, the keys are tag names and we create only one tag, cmdb, with the provided slug, color and description. This is the tag we will use to mark the objects we create or modify. If the tag does not exist, it is created. If it exists, the provided attributes are updated. Other attributes are left untouched. We also want to create a specific tenant for objects accepting such an attribute (devices and IP addresses):

class SyncTenants(Synchronizer):
    app = "tenancy"
    table = "tenants"
    key = "name"
    def wanted(self):
        return  "Network": dict(slug="network",
                                description="Network team") 

Synchronizing sites We also need to synchronize the list of sites. This time, the wanted() method uses the information provided in the YAML file: it walks the devices and builds a set of datacenter names.

class SyncSites(Synchronizer):
    app = "dcim"
    table = "sites"
    key = "name"
    only_on_create = ("status", "slug")
    def wanted(self):
        result = set(details["datacenter"]
                     for details in self.source['devices'].values()
                     if "datacenter" in details)
        return  k: dict(slug=k,
                        status="planned")
                for k in result 

Thanks to the use of the only_on_create attribute, the specified attributes are not updated if they are different. The goal of this synchronizer is mostly to collect the references to the different sites for other objects.

>>> pprint(SyncSites(**sync_args).wanted())
 'sfo1':  'slug': 'sfo1', 'status': 'planned' ,
 'chi1':  'slug': 'chi1', 'status': 'planned' ,
 'nyc1':  'slug': 'nyc1', 'status': 'planned' 

Synchronizing manufacturers, device types and device roles The synchronization of manufacturers is pretty similar, except we do not use the only_on_create attribute:

class SyncManufacturers(Synchronizer):
    app = "dcim"
    table = "manufacturers"
    key = "name"
    def wanted(self):
        result = set(details["manufacturer"]
                     for details in self.source['devices'].values()
                     if "manufacturer" in details)
        return  k:  "slug": slugify(k) 
                for k in result 

Regarding the device types, we use the foreign attribute linking a NetBox attribute to the synchronizer handling it.

class SyncDeviceTypes(Synchronizer):
    app = "dcim"
    table = "device_types"
    key = "model"
    foreign =  "manufacturer": SyncManufacturers 
    def wanted(self):
        result = set((details["manufacturer"], details["model"])
                     for details in self.source['devices'].values()
                     if "model" in details)
        return  k[1]: dict(manufacturer=k[0],
                           slug=slugify(k[1]))
                for k in result 

The wanted() method refers to the manufacturer using its key attribute. In this case, this is the manufacturer name.

>>> pprint(SyncManufacturers(**sync_args).wanted())
 'Cisco':  'slug': 'cisco' ,
 'Dell':  'slug': 'dell' ,
 'Juniper':  'slug': 'juniper' 
>>> pprint(SyncDeviceTypes(**sync_args).wanted())
 'ASR 9001':  'manufacturer': 'Cisco', 'slug': 'asr-9001' ,
 'Catalyst 2960G-48TC-L':  'manufacturer': 'Cisco',
                           'slug': 'catalyst-2960g-48tc-l' ,
 'MX10003':  'manufacturer': 'Juniper', 'slug': 'mx10003' ,
 'QFX10002-36Q':  'manufacturer': 'Juniper', 'slug': 'qfx10002-36q' ,
 'QFX10002-72Q':  'manufacturer': 'Juniper', 'slug': 'qfx10002-72q' ,
 'QFX5110-32Q':  'manufacturer': 'Juniper', 'slug': 'qfx5110-32q' ,
 'QFX5110-48S':  'manufacturer': 'Juniper', 'slug': 'qfx5110-48s' ,
 'QFX5200-32C':  'manufacturer': 'Juniper', 'slug': 'qfx5200-32c' ,
 'S4048-ON':  'manufacturer': 'Dell', 'slug': 's4048-on' ,
 'S6010-ON':  'manufacturer': 'Dell', 'slug': 's6010-on' 

The device roles are defined like this:

class SyncDeviceRoles(Synchronizer):
    app = "dcim"
    table = "device_roles"
    key = "name"
    def wanted(self):
        result = set(details["role"]
                     for details in self.source['devices'].values()
                     if "role" in details)
        return  k: dict(slug=slugify(k),
                        color="8bc34a")
                for k in result 

Synchronizing devices A device is mostly a name with references to a role, a model, a datacenter and a tenant. These references are declared as foreign keys using the synchronizers defined previously.

class SyncDevices(Synchronizer):
    app = "dcim"
    table = "devices"
    key = "name"
    foreign =  "device_role": SyncDeviceRoles,
               "device_type": SyncDeviceTypes,
               "site": SyncSites,
               "tenant": SyncTenants 
    remove_unused = 10
    def wanted(self):
        return  name: dict(device_role=details["role"],
                           device_type=details["model"],
                           site=details["datacenter"],
                           tenant="Network")
                for name, details in self.source['devices'].items()
                if  "datacenter", "model", "role"  <= set(details.keys()) 

The remove_unused attribute is a safety implemented to fail if we have to delete more than 10 devices: this may be the indication there is a bug somewhere, unless one of your datacenter suddenly caught fire.

>>> pprint(SyncDevices(**sync_args).wanted())
 'ad2-p6.sfo1.example.com':  'device_role': 'net_tor_oob_switch',
                             'device_type': 'Catalyst 2960G-48TC-L',
                             'site': 'sfo1',
                             'tenant': 'Network' ,
 'to1-p6.sfo1.example.com':  'device_role': 'net_tor_gpu_switch',
                             'device_type': 'QFX5110-48S',
                             'site': 'sfo1',
                             'tenant': 'Network' ,
[ ]

Synchronizing IP addresses The last step is to synchronize IP addresses. We do not attach them to a device.² Instead, we specify the device names in the description of the IP address:

class SyncIPs(Synchronizer):
    app = "ipam"
    table = "ip-addresses"
    key = "address"
    foreign =  "tenant": SyncTenants 
    remove_unused = 1000
    def wanted(self):
        wanted =  
        for details in self.source['ips']:
            if details['ip'] in wanted:
                wanted[details['ip']]['description'] = \
                    f" details['device']  (and others)"
            else:
                wanted[details['ip']] = dict(
                    tenant="Network",
                    status="active",
                    dns_name="",        # information is present in DNS
                    description=f" details['device'] :  details['interface'] ",
                    role=None,
                    vrf=None)
        return wanted

There is a slight difficulty: NetBox allows duplicate IP addresses, so a simple lookup is not enough. In case of multiple matches, we choose the best by preferring those tagged with cmdb, then those already attached to an interface:

def get(self, key):
    """Grab IP address from NetBox."""
    # There may be duplicate. We need to grab the "best".
    results = super(Synchronizer, self).get(key)
    if len(results) == 0:
        return None
    if len(results) == 1:
        return results[0]
    scores = [0]*len(results)
    for idx, result in enumerate(results):
        if "cmdb" in result.tags:
            scores[idx] += 10
        if result.interface is not None:
            scores[idx] += 5
    return sorted(zip(scores, results),
                  reverse=True, key=lambda k: k[0])[0][1]

Getting the current and wanted states Each synchronizer is initialized with a reference to the Ansible module, a reference to a pynetbox s API object, the data contained in the provided YAML file and two empty dictionaries for the current and expected states:

source = yaml.safe_load(open(module.params['source']))
netbox = pynetbox.api(module.params['api'],
                      token=module.params['token'])
sync_args = dict(
    module=module,
    netbox=netbox,
    source=source,
    before= ,
    after= 
)
synchronizers = [synchronizer(**sync_args) for synchronizer in [
    SyncTags,
    SyncTenants,
    SyncSites,
    SyncManufacturers,
    SyncDeviceTypes,
    SyncDeviceRoles,
    SyncDevices,
    SyncIPs
]]

Each synchronizer has a prepare() method whose goal is to compute the current and wanted states. It returns True in case of a difference:

# Check what needs to be synchronized
try:
    for synchronizer in synchronizers:
        result['changed']  = synchronizer.prepare()
except AnsibleError as e:
    result['msg'] = e.message
    module.fail_json(**result)

Applying changes Back to the skeleton described in the previous article, the last step is to apply the changes if there is a difference between these states. Each synchronizer registers the current and wanted states in sync_args["before"][table] and sync_args["after"][table] where table is the name of the table for a given NetBox object type. The diff object is a bit elaborate as it is built table by table. This enables Ansible to display the name of each table before the diff representation:

# Compute the diff
if module._diff and result['changed']:
    result['diff'] = [
        dict(
            before_header=table,
            after_header=table,
            before=yaml.safe_dump(sync_args["before"][table]),
            after=yaml.safe_dump(sync_args["after"][table]))
        for table in sync_args["after"]
        if sync_args["before"][table] != sync_args["after"][table]
    ]
# Stop here if check mode is enabled or if no change
if module.check_mode or not result['changed']:
    module.exit_json(**result)

Each synchronizer also exposes a synchronize() method to apply changes and a cleanup() method to delete unwanted objects. Order is important due to the relation between the objects.

# Synchronize
for synchronizer in synchronizers:
    synchronizer.synchronize()
for synchronizer in synchronizers[::-1]:
    synchronizer.cleanup()
module.exit_json(**result)

---

The complete code is available on GitHub. Compared to using netbox.netbox collection, the logic is written in Python instead of trying to glue Ansible tasks together. I believe this is both more flexible and easier to read, notably when trying to delete outdated objects. While I did not test it, it should also be faster. An alternative would have been to reuse code from the netbox.netbox collection, as it contains similar primitives. Unfortunately, I didn t think of it until now.

---

1. In my opinion, a good option for a source of truth is to use YAML files in a Git repository. You get versioning for free and people can get started with a text editor.
2. This limitation is mostly due to laziness: we do not really care about this information. Our main motivation for putting IP addresses in NetBox is to keep track of the used IP addresses. However, if an IP address is already attached to an interface, we leave this association untouched.

The Debian Janitor is an automated system that commits fixes for (minor) issues in Debian packages that can be fixed by software. It gradually started proposing merges in early December. The first set of changes sent out ran lintian-brush on sid packages maintained in Git. This post is part of a series about the progress of the Janitor. As of dpkg 1.16.2 and apt 0.8.13, Debian has full support for multi-arch. To quote from the multi-arch implementation page:

Multiarch lets you install library packages from multiple architectures on the same machine. This is useful in various ways, but the most common is installing both 64 and 32- bit software on the same machine and having dependencies correctly resolved automatically. In general you can have libraries of more than one architecture installed together and applications from one architecture or another installed as alternatives.

 $ debcheckout autosize.js
 declared git repository at https://salsa.debian.org/js-team/autosize.js.git
 git clone https://salsa.debian.org/js-team/autosize.js.git autosize.js ...
 Cloning into 'autosize.js'...
 [...]
 $ cd autosize.js
 $ apply-multiarch-hints
 Downloading new version of multi-arch hints.
 libjs-autosize: Add Multi-Arch: foreign.
 node-autosize: Add Multi-Arch: foreign.
 $ git log -p
 commit 3f8d1db5af4a87e6ebb08f46ddf79f6adf4e95ae (HEAD -> master)
 Author: Jelmer Vernoo  <jelmer@debian.org>
 Date:   Fri Sep 18 23:37:14 2020 +0000
     Apply multi-arch hints.
     + libjs-autosize, node-autosize: Add Multi-Arch: foreign.
     Changes-By: apply-multiarch-hints
 diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
 index e7fa120..09af4a7 100644
 --- a/debian/changelog
 +++ b/debian/changelog
 @@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
 +autosize.js (4.0.2~dfsg1-5) UNRELEASED; urgency=medium
 +
 +  * Apply multi-arch hints.
 +    + libjs-autosize, node-autosize: Add Multi-Arch: foreign.
 +
 + -- Jelmer Vernoo  <jelmer@debian.org>  Fri, 18 Sep 2020 23:37:14 -0000
 +
  autosize.js (4.0.2~dfsg1-4) unstable; urgency=medium
    * Team upload
 diff --git a/debian/control b/debian/control
 index 01ca968..fbba1ae 100644
 --- a/debian/control
 +++ b/debian/control
 @@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ Architecture: all
  Depends: $ misc:Depends 
  Recommends: javascript-common
  Breaks: ruby-rails-assets-autosize (<< 4.0)
 +Multi-Arch: foreign
  Description: script to automatically adjust textarea height to fit text - NodeJS
   Autosize is a small, stand-alone script to automatically adjust textarea
   height to fit text. The autosize function accepts a single textarea element,
 @@ -32,6 +33,7 @@ Package: node-autosize
  Architecture: all
  Depends: $ misc:Depends 
   , nodejs
 +Multi-Arch: foreign
  Description: script to automatically adjust textarea height to fit text - Javascript
   Autosize is a small, stand-alone script to automatically adjust textarea
   height to fit text. The autosize function accepts a single textarea element,

For more information about the Janitor's lintian-fixes efforts, see the landing page.

! Google - remove cookie-consent-popup and restore scroll functionality
google.*##.wwYr3.aID8W.bErdLd
google.*##.aID8W.m114nf.t7xA6
google.*##div[jsname][jsaction^="dg_close"]
google.*##html:style(overflow: visible !important;)
google.*##.widget-consent-fullscreen.widget-consent

export LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1

• [1] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2019/11/03/kmail-crashing-libgl/

// this portmanteau include also defines the r_sink we use below, and which
// diverts all logging to R via the Rcpp::Rcout replacement for std::cout
#include <RcppSpdlog>

// [[Rcpp::export]]
void exampleRsink()  

    std::string logname = "fromR";                          // fix a name for this logger
    auto sp = spdlog::get(logname);                         // retrieve existing one
    if (sp == nullptr) sp = spdlog::r_sink_mt(logname);     // or create new one if needed

    // change log pattern (changed from [%H:%M:%S %z] [%n] [%^---%L---%$] )
    sp->set_pattern("[%H:%M:%S.%f] [%n] [%^%L%$] [thread %t] %v");

    sp->info("Welcome to spdlog!");
    sp->error("Some error message with arg:  ", 1);

    sp->warn("Easy padding in numbers like  :08d ", 12);
    sp->critical("Support for int:  0:d ;  hex:  0:x ;  oct:  0:o ; bin:  0:b ", 42);
    sp->info("Support for floats  :03.2f ", 1.23456);
    sp->info("Positional args are  1   0 ..", "too", "supported");
    sp->info(" :<30 ", "left aligned");

 

Changes in RcppSpdlog version 0.0.1 (2020-09-08)

• Initial release with added R/Rcpp logging sink example

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082825

• Reverse-Polish mathematical operations.
• Comments between ( and ) are ignored, as expected.
  • Single-line comments \ to the end of the line are also supported.
• Support for floating-point numbers (anything that will fit inside a float64).
• Support for printing the top-most stack element (., or print).
• Support for outputting ASCII characters (emit).
• Support for outputting strings (." Hello, World ").
• Support for basic stack operations (drop, dup, over, swap)
• Support for loops, via do/loop.
• Support for conditional-execution, via if, else, and then.
• Load any files specified on the command-line
  • If no arguments are included run the REPL
• A standard library is loaded, from the present directory, if it is present.

: star 42 emit ;

> star
*>

> : stars dup 0 > if 0 do star loop else drop then ;
> 0 stars
> 1 stars
*> 2 stars
**> 10 stars
**********>

> : squares 0 do over stars cr loop ;
> 4 squares
****
****
****
****
> 10 squares
**********
**********
**********
**********
**********
**********
**********
**********
**********
**********

> #words 0 do dup dump loop
..
Word 'square'
 0: dup
 1: *
Word 'cube'
 0: dup
 1: square
 2: *
Word '1+'
 0: store 1.000000
 2: +
Word 'test_hot'
  0: store 0.000000
  2: >
  3: if
  4: [cond-jmp 7.000000]
  6: hot
  7: then
..

• I allow you to use conditionals in the REPL - outside a word-definition.
• I allow you to use loops in the REPL - outside a word-definition.

• https://github.com/skx/foth

• Abhijith PA did 10.0h (out of 10h assigned).
• Adrian Bunk did 31h (out of 21.75h assigned and 9.25h from July).
• Ben Hutchings did 6.25h (out of 16h assigned), thus carrying over 9.75h to September.
• Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 21.75h (out of 21.75h assigned).
• Holger Levsen did 7h coordinating/managing the LTS team.
• Markus Koschany did 20h (out of 21.75h assigned and 10.25h from July), thus carrying over 12h to September.
• Mike Gabriel did 16.0h (out of 8h assigned and 8h from July).
• Ola Lundqvist did 6.9h (out of 8h assigned and 16h from July), and gave back 5.1h, thus carrying over 12h to September.
• Roberto C. S nchez did 21.75h (out of 21.75h assigned).
• Sylvain Beucler did 21.75h (out of 21.75h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 21.75h (out of 21.75h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 32.75h (out of 21.75h assigned and anticipating 11h from September).

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 60 months)
• GitHub (for 50 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 27 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• Blablacar (for 75 months)
• Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 70 months)
• Linode (for 65 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 54 months)
• Plat Home (for 53 months)
• University of Oxford (for 9 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• The Positive Internet Company (for 76 months)
• Domeneshop AS (for 75 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 69 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 61 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 61 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 54 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 44 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 38 months)
• CINECA (for 28 months)
• Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 22 months)
• Cloudways Ltd (for 11 months)
• Dinahosting SL (for 9 months)
• Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 3 months)
• Platform.sh (for 3 months)
• Bronze sponsors:
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 76 months)
• Evolix (for 75 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 73 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 72 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 71 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 70 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 70 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 69 months)
• NUMLOG (for 69 months)
• WinGo AG (for 68 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 64 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 59 months)
• Adfinis AG (for 57 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 51 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 51 months)
• Tesorion (for 51 months)
• Bearstech (for 43 months)
• LiHAS (for 43 months)
• People Doc (for 39 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 37 months)
• Supagro (for 33 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 31 months)
• Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 17 months)
• TouchWeb SAS (for 9 months)
• SPiN AG (for 6 months)
• CoreFiling

No comment Liked this article? Click here. My blog is Flattr-enabled.

• [1] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2020/09/13/dell-t710-idrac6/

• Documentation. It s all out of date, it needs a lot of work.
• FastCGI support. Presently you need to run the separate CGI binaries.
• SKS Gossip support. onak only supports the email syncing option. If you run a stand alone server this is fine, but Gossip is the right approach for a proper keyserver network.

0.6.0 - 13th September 2020

• Move to CMake over autoconf
• Add support for issuer fingerprint subpackets
• Add experimental support for v5 keys
• Add read-only OpenPGP keyring backed DB backend
• Move various bits into their own subdirectories in the source tree
• Add support for full signature verification
• Drop v3 keys by default when cleaning keys
• Various code cleanups
• Implement pieces of draft-dkg-openpgp-abuse-resistant-keystore-03
• Add support for a fingerprint blacklist (e.g. Evil32)
• Deprecate the .conf configuration file format
• Drop version info from armored output
• Add option to deny new keys and only allow updates to existing keys
• Various pieces of work removing support for 32 bit key IDs and coping with colliding 64 bit key IDs.
• Remove support for libnettle versions that lack the full SHA2 suite

0.6.1 - 13th September 2020

• Fixes for compilation without nettle + with later releases of nettle