Reports reference

This page describes the concept behind the reporting in Rudder, and specifically how to write the Techniques to get proper reporting in Rudder

Concepts

Each Technique, when converted into a Directive and applied to a Node, must generate reports for Rudder to get proper compliance reports. This reports must contains specific information :

The Report type, that can be logs for information purpose or result to express a compliance
The Rule Id (autogenerated)
The Directive Id (autogenerated)
The Version Id (revision of the Rule) (autogenerated)
The name of the component the report is related to
The value of the key variable in the component (or None if not available)
The Execution Timestamp, to know in which execution of the agent the policy has been generated

These reports are sent via Syslog to the Rudder Root Server, parsed and put in a database, that is queried to generate the reporting

Report format

A report has the following format :

@@Technique@@Type@@RuleId@@DirectiveId@@VersionId@@Component@@Key@@ExecutionTimeStamp##NodeId@#HumanReadableMessage

Technique : Human readable Technique name
Type : type of report (see bellow)
RuleId : The Id of the Configuration Rule, autogenerated
DirectiveId : The Id of the Directive, autogenerated
VersionId : the revision of the ConfigurationRule, autogenerated
Component : the name of the component this Directive is related to (if no component are defined in the metadata.xml, then the Technique name is used)
Key : the value of the reference variable. If there is no reference variable, then the value None should be used
ExecutionTimeStamp : the timestamp of the current agent execution
NodeId : the id of the node
HumanReadableMessage : a message than a Human can understand

Valid report types

Table 1. Report Types
Name	Type	Mode	Max number	Details
log_trace	log	any	infinity	Should be used for advanced debugging purpose only.
log_debug	log	any	infinity	Should be used for debug purpose only.
log_info	log	any	infinity	Use for standard logging purposes.
log_warn	log	any	infinity	Used for logging only for the moment. Should be used when something unexpected happens.
log_repaired	log	enforce	infinity	Used for logging purposes, to list all that is repaired by the policies.
result_na	result	enforce	one per component/key	Defines the status of the Component to Not Applicable (if there are no result_success, result_repaired, result_error). Should be used only when the component is not applicable because it does not match the target context.
result_success	result	enforce	one per component/key	Defines the status of the Component to Success (if there are no result_repaired or result_error). Should be used only when everything is already in the correct state in this component for this key.
result_repaired	result	enforce	one per component/key	Defines the status of the Component to Repaired (if there are no result_error). Should be used only when something was not in the correct state, but could be corrected.
result_error	result	enforce	infinity per component/key	Defines the status of the Component to Error. Should be used when something was not in the correct state, and could not be corrected.
audit_na	result	audit	one per component/key	Defines the status of an Component to Not Applicable (if there are no result_success, result_repaired, result_error). Should be used only when the component is not applicable because it does not match the target context.
audit_compliant nent was not applicable to the node.	result	audit	one per component/key	Defines the status of the Component to Compliant (if there are no audit_noncompliant or audit_error). Should be used only when everything is already in the correct state in this component for this key.
audit_noncompliant	result	audit	one per component/key	Defines the status of the Component to Non Compliant (if there are no audit_error). Should be used only when something was not in the correct state.
audit_error	result	audit	infinity per component/key	Defines the status of the Component to Error. Should be used when the audit could not be done or was interrupted.

Variables used to generate the reports

Some facilities have been created to help putting the right values at the right place

&TRACKINGKEY&: this is an auto generated variable, put in the technique file, that Rudder will replace when writing the policies by

<pre>RuleId@@DirectiveId@@VersionId

$(g.execRun): this is replaced at runtime by the agent to the current execution time
$(g.uuid): this is replaced at runtime by the agent to the Node Id

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