# vmdb
# grep inspectme log/automation.log | awk 'FS="INFO -- :" {print $2}'
Root:<$evm.root> Attributes - Begin
Attribute - ae_provider_category: infrastructure
Attribute - miq_server: #<MiqAeMethodService::MiqAeServiceMiqServer:0x000000...
Attribute - miq_server_id: 1000000000001
Attribute - object_name: Request
Attribute - request: InspectMe
Attribute - user: #<MiqAeMethodService::MiqAeServiceUser:0x0000000b86b540>
Attribute - user_id: 1000000000001
Attribute - vm: rhel7srv001
Attribute - vm_id: 1000000000025
Attribute - vmdb_object_type: vm
Root:<$evm.root> Attributes - End
...
Investigative Debugging
As we saw in Peeping Under the Hood, there is a lot of useful information in the form of service model object attributes and virtual columns, links to other objects via associations, and service model methods that we can call. The challenge is sometimes knowing which objects are available to us at any particular point in our workflow, and how to access their properties and traverse associations to find the information that we need.
Fortunately there are several ways of exploring the object structure in the Automation Engine, both to investigate what might be available to use, and to debug and troubleshoot our own automation code. This chapter will discuss the various tools that we can use to reveal the service model object structure available during any Automate operation.
InspectMe
InspectMe is an instance/method combination supplied out-of-the-box that we can call to dump some attributes of $evm.root and its associated objects. As an example we can call InspectMe from a button on a VM and Instance object as we did when running our AddCustomAttribute instance in Working with Virtual Machines. As both the instance and method are in the ManageIQ/System/Request namespace, we can call InspectMe directly rather than calling Call_Instance as an intermediary.
We can view the InspectMe output in automation.log:
This log snippet shows the section of a typical InspectMe output that dumps the attributes of $evm.root.
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Tip
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Kevin Morey from Red Hat has written an improved version of InspectMe, available from https://github.com/ramrexx/CloudForms_Essentials. His InspectMe provides a very clear output of the attributes, virtual columns, associations and tags that are available for the object on which it was launched. For example if called from a button on a virtual machine, InspectMe will list all of that VM’s properties including hardware, operating system, and also the provisioning request and task details. |
object_walker
object_walker [1]is a slightly more exploratory tool that walks and dumps the objects, attributes and virtual columns of $evm.root and its immediate objects. It also recursively traverses associations to walk and dump any objects that it finds, much like a web crawler would explore a web site. It prints the output in a Ruby-like syntax that can be copied and pasted directly into an Automation script to access or walk the same path.
Black or Whitelisting Associations
One of the features of object_walker is the ability to selectively choose which associations to "walk" to limit the output. We do so by setting a walk_association_policy to "whitelist" or "blacklist", and then defining a walk_association_whitelist or walk_association_blacklist JSON hash in the instance schema to list the associations to be walked (whitelist), or not walked (blacklist).
In practice a walk_association_policy of "blacklist" produces so much output that it’s rarely used, and so a "whitelist" is more often defined, like so:
{ 'MiqAeServiceManageIQ_Providers_Redhat_InfraManager_Vm': ['hardware', 'host', 'storage'],
'MiqAeServiceManageIQ_Providers_Vmware_InfraManager_Vm': ['hardware', 'host', 'storage'],
'MiqAeServiceHardware': ['nics', 'guest_devices', 'ports', 'storage_adapters' ],
'MiqAeServiceGuestDevice': ['hardware', 'lan', 'network'] }object_walker_reader
There is a companion script, object_walker_reader, that can be copied to the CloudForms or ManageIQ appliance to extract the object_walker outputs from automation.log. The reader can also list all outputs by timestamp, dump a particular output by timestamp, and even diff two outputs - useful when running object_walker before and after a built-in method (for example in a State Machine) to see what the method has changed.
Object Walker 1.8 Starting
--- walk_association_policy details ---
walk_association_policy = whitelist
walk_association_whitelist = { 'MiqAeServiceMiqProvisionRequest': ['miq_request',...
--- $evm.current_* details ---
$evm.current_namespace = Bit63/Stuff (type: String)
$evm.current_class = ObjectWalker (type: String)
$evm.current_instance = object_walker (type: String)
$evm.current_method = object_walker (type: String)
$evm.current_message = create (type: String)
$evm.current_object = /Bit63/Stuff/ObjectWalker/object_walker (type: DRb::DRbObject ...
$evm.current_object.current_field_name = execute (type: String)
$evm.current_object.current_field_type = method (type: String)
--- automation instance hierarchy ---
/ManageIQ/System/Process/AUTOMATION ($evm.root)
| /ManageIQ/infrastructure/VM/Lifecycle/Provisioning
| | /ManageIQ/Infrastructure/VM/Provisioning/Profile/EvmGroup-super_administrator
| | /Bit63/Infrastructure/VM/Provisioning/StateMachines/VMProvision_vm/template ($evm.parent)
| | | /ManageIQ/Infrastructure/VM/Provisioning/StateMachines/Methods/CustomizeRequest
| | | /ManageIQ/Infrastructure/VM/Provisioning/Placement/default
| | | /Bit63/Stuff/ObjectWalker/object_walker ($evm.object)
--- walking $evm.root ---
$evm.root = /ManageIQ/System/Process/AUTOMATION
| --- attributes follow ---
| $evm.root['ae_next_state'] = (type: String)
| $evm.root['ae_provider_category'] = infrastructure (type: String)
| $evm.root['ae_result'] = ok (type: String)
| $evm.root['ae_state'] = WalkObjects (type: String)
| $evm.root['ae_state_retries'] = 0 (type: Fixnum)
| $evm.root['ae_state_started'] = 2016-08-01 09:55:59 UTC (type: String)
| $evm.root['ae_state_step'] = main (type: String)
| $evm.root['ae_status_state'] = on_exit (type: String)
| $evm.root['miq_group'] => #<MiqAeMethodService::MiqAeServiceMiqGroup:0x00...
| | --- attributes follow ---
| | $evm.root['miq_group'].created_on = 2016-05-25 08:09:35 UTC
| | $evm.root['miq_group'].description = EvmGroup-super_administrator (type: String)
| | $evm.root['miq_group'].filters = nil
| | $evm.root['miq_group'].group_type = system (type: String)
| | $evm.root['miq_group'].id = 2 (type: Fixnum)
| | $evm.root['miq_group'].sequence = 1 (type: Fixnum)
| | $evm.root['miq_group'].settings = nil
| | $evm.root['miq_group'].tenant_id = 1 (type: Fixnum)
| | $evm.root['miq_group'].updated_on = 2016-05-25 08:09:35 UTC
| | --- end of attributes ---
| | --- virtual columns follow ---
| | $evm.root['miq_group'].allocated_memory = 1073741824 (type: Fixnum)
| | $evm.root['miq_group'].allocated_storage = 42949672960 (type: Fixnum)
| | $evm.root['miq_group'].allocated_vcpu = 1 (type: Fixnum)
Here we see a partial output from object_walker_reader, showing the traversal of the associations between objects, and list of attributes, virtual columns, associations and methods for each object encountered.
Rails console
We can connect to the Rails console to have a look around.
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Caution
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When we’re working with the Rails command line, we have full read/write access to the objects and tables that we find there. We should purely use this technique for read-only investigation, and at our own risk. Making any additions or changes may render our appliance unstable. |
On the CloudForms or ManageIQ appliance itself:
# vmdb # alias vmdb='cd /var/www/miq/vmdb/' is defined on the appliance # source /etc/default/evm # bin/rails c Loading production environment (Rails 3.2.17) irb(main):001:0>
Once in the Rails console there are many things that we can do, such as use Rails object syntax to look at all Host active records:
irb(main):002:0> Host.all
(3.6ms) SELECT version()
Host Load (0.7ms) SELECT "hosts".* FROM "hosts"
Host Inst (85.2ms - 2rows)
=> [#<HostRedhat id: 1000000000002, name: "rhelh02.bit63.net", \
hostname: "192.168.12.22", ipaddress: "192.168.12.22",...
irb(main):003:0>
We can even generate our own $evm variable that matches the Automation Engine default:
$evm=MiqAeMethodService::MiqAeService.new(MiqAeEngine::MiqAeWorkspaceRuntime.new)With our $evm variable we can emulate actions that we perform from an automation script:
irb(main):002:0> $evm.log(:info, "test from the Rails console") => true
As with a "real" Automation Method, this writes our message to automation.log:
...8:45:11.223058 #2109:eb9998] INFO -- : <AEMethod > test from the Rails console
Rails db
It is occasionally useful to be able to examine some of the database tables (such as to look for column headers that we can find_by_* on) [2]. We can connect to Rails db, which puts us directly into a psql session:
[root@miq03 ~]# vmdb [root@miq03 vmdb]# source /etc/default/evm [root@miq03 vmdb]# bin/rails db psql (9.4.5) Type "help" for help. vmdb_production=#
Once in the Rails db session we can freely examine the VMDB database. For example we could look at the columns in the guest_devices table:
vmdb_production=# \d guest_devices
Table "public.guest_devices"
Column | Type | Modifiers
-------------------+------------------------+------------------------------------
id | bigint | not null default nextval('guest_...
device_name | character varying(255) |
device_type | character varying(255) |
location | character varying(255) |
filename | character varying(255) |
hardware_id | bigint |
mode | character varying(255) |
controller_type | character varying(255) |
size | bigint |
free_space | bigint |
size_on_disk | bigint |
address | character varying(255) |
switch_id | bigint |
lan_id | bigint |
...
We could list all templates on our appliance (templates are in the vms column, but have a boolean template attribute that is true):
vmdb_production=# select id,name from vms where template = 't';
id | name
---------------+----------------------------------------
1000000000014 | RedHat_CFME-5.5.0.13
1000000000015 | rhel7-generic
1000000000016 | rhel-guest-image-7.0-20140930.0.x86_64
1000000000017 | RHEL 7
1000000000029 | ManageIQ_Capablanca
1000000000053 | Fedora 23
(6 rows)
Summary
In this chapter we’ve learned four very useful ways of investigating the object model. We can use InspectMe, or object_walker to print the structure to automation.log, or we can interactively use the Rails command line.
We use these tools and techniques extensively when developing our scripts, both to find out the available objects that we might use, and also to debug our scripts when things are not working as expected.
Further Reading
1. object_walker is available from https://github.com/pemcg/object_walker, along with instructions for use
2. A diagram of the database layout is available from http://people.redhat.com/~mmorsi/cfme_db.png