Director CLI

Large parts of the Director's functionality are also available on your CLI.

Manage Objects

Use icingacli director <type> <action> show, create modify or delete Icinga objects of a specific type:

Action	Description
`create`	Create a new object
`delete`	Delete a specific object
`exists`	Whether a specific object exists
`set`	Modify an existing objects properties
`show`	Show a specific object

Currently the following object types are available on CLI:

command
endpoint
host
hostgroup
notification
service
timeperiod
user
usergroup
zone

Create a new object

Use this command to create a new Icinga object

Usage

icingacli director <type> create [<name>] [options]

Options

Option	Description
`--<key> <value>`	Provide all properties as single command line options
`--json`	Otherwise provide all options as a JSON string

Examples

To create a new host you can provide all of its properties as command line parameters:

icingacli director host create localhost \
    --imports generic-host \
    --address 127.0.0.1 \
    --vars.location 'My datacenter'

It would say:

Host 'localhost' has been created

Providing structured data could become tricky that way. Therefore you are also allowed to provide JSON formatted properties:

icingacli director host create localhost \
    --json '{ "address": "127.0.0.1", "vars": { "test": [ "one", "two" ] } }'

Passing JSON via STDIN is also possible:

icingacli director host create localhost --json < my-host.json

Delete a specific object

Use this command to delete a single Icinga object. Just run

icingacli director <type> delete <name>

That's it. To delete the host created before, this would read

icingacli director host delete localhost

It will tell you whether your command succeeded:

Host 'localhost' has been deleted

Whether a specific object exists

Use this command to find out whether a single Icinga object exists. Just run:

icingacli director <type> exists <name>

So if you run...

icingacli director host exists localhost

...it will either tell you ...

Host 'localhost' exists

...or:

Host 'localhost' does not exist

When executed from custom scripts you could also just check the exit code, 0 means that the object exists, 1 that it doesn't.

Modify an existing objects properties

Use this command to modify specific properties of an existing Icinga object.

Usage

icingacli director <type> set <name> [options]

Options

Option	Description
`--<key> <value>`	Provide all properties as single command line options
`--append-<key> <value>`	Appends to array values, like `imports`,
	`groups` or `vars.system_owners`
`--remove-<key> [<value>]`	Remove a specific property, eventually only
	when matching `value`. In case the property is an
	array it will remove just `value` when given
`--json`	Otherwise provide all options as a JSON string
`--replace`	Replace all object properties with the given ones
`--auto-create`	Create the object in case it does not exist
`--allow-overrides`	Set variable overrides for virtual Services

Examples

icingacli director host set localhost \
    --address 127.0.0.2 \
    --vars.location 'Somewhere else'

It will either tell you

Host 'localhost' has been modified

or, when for example issued immediately a second time:

Host 'localhost' has not been modified

Like create, this also allows you to provide JSON-formatted properties:

icingacli director host set localhost --json '{ "address": "127.0.0.2" }'

This command will fail in case the specified object does not exist. This is when the --auto-create parameter comes in handy. Command output will tell you whether an object has either been created or (not) modified.

With set you only set the specified properties and do not touch the other ones. You could also want to completely override an object, purging all other eventually existing and unspecified parameters. Please use --replace if this is the desired behaviour.

Show a specific object

Use this command to show single objects rendered as Icinga 2 config or in JSON format.

Usage

icingacli director <type> show <name> [options]

Options

Option	Description
`--resolved`	Resolve all inherited properties and show a flat
	object
`--json`	Use JSON format
`--no-pretty`	JSON is pretty-printed per default (for PHP >= 5.4)
	Use this flag to enforce unformatted JSON
`--no-defaults`	Per default JSON output skips null or default values
	With this flag you will get all properties
`--with-services`	For hosts only, also shows attached services

Clone an existing object

Use this command to clone a specific object.

Usage

icingacli director <type> clone <name> --from <original> [options]

Options

Option	Description
`--from <original>`	The name of the object you want to clone
`--<key> <value>`	Override specific properties while cloning
`--replace`	In case an object already exists replace it
	with the clone
`--flat`	Do no keep inherited properties but create a flat
	object with all resolved/inherited properties

Examples

icingacli director host clone localhost2 --from localhost

icingacli director host clone localhost3 --from localhost --address 127.0.0.3

Other interesting tasks

Rename objects

There is no rename command, but a simple set can easily accomplish this task:

icingacli director host set localhost --object_name localhost2

Please note that it is usually absolutely no problem to rename objects with the Director. Even renaming something essential as a template like the famous generic-host will not cause any trouble. At least not unless you have other components outside your Director depending on that template.

Disable an object

Objects can be disabled. That way they will still exist in your Director DB, but they will not be part of your next deployment. Toggling the disabled property is all you need:

icingacli director host set localhost --disabled

Valid values for booleans are y, n, 1 and 0. So to re-enable an object you could use:

icingacli director host set localhost --disabled n

Working with booleans

As we learned before, y, n, 1 and 0 are valid values for booleans. But custom variables have no data type. And even if there is such, you could always want to change or override this from CLI. So you usually need to provide booleans in JSON format in case you need them in a custom variable.

There is however one exception from this rule. CLI parameters without a given value are handled as boolean flags by the Icinga Web 2 CLI. That explains why the example disabling an object worked without passing y or 1. You could use this also to set a custom variable to boolean true:

icingacli director host set localhost --vars.some_boolean

Want to change it to false? No chance this way, you need to pass JSON:

icingacli director host set localhost --json '{ "vars.some_boolean": false }'

This example shows the dot-notation to set a specific custom variable. If we have had used { "vars": { "some_boolean": false } }, all other custom vars on this object would have been removed.

Change object types

The Icinga Director distincts between the following object types:

Type	Description
`object`	The default object type. A host, a command and similar
`template`	An Icinga template
`apply`	An apply rule. This allows for assign rules
`external_object`	An external object. Can be referenced and used, will not be
	deployed

Example for creating a host template:

icingacli director host create 'Some template' \
    --object_type template \
    --check_command hostalive

Please take a lot of care when modifying object types, you should not do so for a good reason. The CLI allows you to issue operations that are not allowed in the web frontend. Do not use this unless you really understand its implications. And remember, with great power comes great responsibility.

Import/Export Director Objects

Some objects are not directly related to Icinga Objects but used by the Director to manage them. To make it easier for administrators to for example pre-fill an empty Director Instance with Import Sources and Sync Rules, related import/export commands come in handy.

Use icingacli director export <type> [options] to export objects of a specific type:

Type	Description
`datafields`	Export all DataField definitions
`datalists`	Export all DataList definitions
`hosttemplatechoices`	Export all IcingaTemplateChoiceHost definitions
`importsources`	Export all ImportSource definitions
`jobs`	Export all Job definitions
`syncrules`	Export all SyncRule definitions

Options

Option	Description
`--no-pretty`	JSON is pretty-printed per default. Use this flag to
	enforce unformatted JSON

Use icingacli director import <type> < exported.json to import objects of a specific type:

Type	Description
`importsources`	Import ImportSource definitions from STDIN
`syncrules`	Import SyncRule definitions from STDIN

This feature is available since v1.5.0.

Director Configuration Basket

A basket contains a set of Director Configuration objects (like Templates, Commands, Import/Sync definitions - but not single Hosts or Services). This CLI command allows you to integrate them into your very own workflows

Available Actions

Action	Description
`dump`	JSON-dump for objects related to the given Basket
`list`	List configured Baskets
`restore`	Restore a Basket from JSON dump provided on STDIN
`snapshot`	Take a snapshot for the given Basket

Options

Option	Description
`--name`	`dump` and `snapshot` require a specific object name

Use icingacli director basket restore < exported-basket.json to restore objects from a specific basket. Take a snapshot or a backup first to be on the safe side.

This feature is available since v1.6.0.

Health Check Plugin

You can use the Director CLI as an Icinga CheckPlugin and monitor your Director Health. This will run all or just one of the following test suites:

Name	Description
`config`	Configuration, Schema, Migrations
`sync`	All configured Sync Rules (pending changes are not a problem)
`import`	All configured Import Sources (pending changes are not a problem)
`jobs`	All configured Jobs (ignores disabled ones)
`deployment`	Deployment Endpoint, last deployment outcome

Usage

icingacli director health check [options]

Options

Option	Description
`--check <name>`	Run only a specific test suite
`--<db> <name>`	Use a specific Icinga Web DB resource

Examples

icingacli director health check

Example for running a check only for the configuration:

icingacli director health check --check config

Sample output:

Director configuration: 5 tests OK
[OK] Database resource 'Director DB' has been specified'
[OK] Make sure the DB schema exists
[OK] There are no pending schema migrations
[OK] Deployment endpoint is 'icinga.example.com'
[OK] There is a single un-deployed change

Kickstart and schema handling

The kickstart and the migration command are handled in the automation section, so they are skipped here.

Configuration handling

Render your configuration

The Director distincts between rendering and deploying your configuration. Rendering means that Icinga 2 config will be pre-rendered and stored to the Director DB. Nothing bad happens if you decide to render the current config thousands of times in a loop. In case a config with the same checksum already exists, it will store - nothing.

You can trigger config rendering by running

icingacli director config render

In case a new config has been created, it will tell you so:

New config with checksum b330febd0820493fb12921ad8f5ea42102a5c871 has been generated

Run it once again, and you'll see that the output changes:

Config with checksum b330febd0820493fb12921ad8f5ea42102a5c871 already exists

Config deployment

Usage

icingacli director config deploy [options]

Options

Option	Description
`--checksum <checksum>`	Optionally deploy a specific configuration
`--force`	Force a deployment, even when the configuration hasn't changed
`--wait <seconds>`	Optionally wait until Icinga completed it's restart
`--grace-period <seconds>`	Do not deploy if a deployment took place less than ago

Examples

You do not need to explicitly render your config before deploying it to your Icinga 2 master node. Just trigger a deployment, it will re-render the current config:

icingacli director config deploy

The output tells you which config has been shipped:

Config 'b330febd0820493fb12921ad8f5ea42102a5c871' has been deployed

Director tries to avoid needless deployments, so in case you immediately deploy again, the output changes:

Config matches active stage, nothing to do

You can override this by adding the --force parameter. It will then tell you:

Config matches active stage, deploying anyway

In case you want to do not want deploy to waste time to re-render your config or in case you decide to re-deploy a specific, eventually older config version the deploy command allows you to provide a specific checksum:

icingacli director config deploy --checksum b330febd0820493fb12921ad8f5ea42102a5c871

When using icingacli deployments in an automated way, and want to avoid fast consecutive deployments, you can provide a grace period:

icingacli director config deploy --grace-period 300

Deployments status

In case you want to fetch the information about the deployments status, you can call the following CLI command:

icingacli director config deploymentstatus

{
    "active_configuration": {
        "stage_name": "5c65cae0-4f1b-47b4-a890-766c82681622",
        "config": "617b9cbad9e141cfc3f4cb636ec684bd60073be1",
        "activity": "4f7bc6600dd50a989f22f82d3513e561ef333363"
    }
}

In case there is no active stage name related to the Director, active_configuration is set to null.

Another possibility is to pass a list of checksums to fetch the status of specific deployments and (activity log) activities. Following, you can see an example of how to do it:

icingacli director config deploymentstatus \
    --configs 617b9cbad9e141cfc3f4cb636ec684bd60073be1 \
    --activities 4f7bc6600dd50a989f22f82d3513e561ef333363

{
    "active_configuration": {
        "stage_name": "5c65cae0-4f1b-47b4-a890-766c82681622",
        "config": "617b9cbad9e141cfc3f4cb636ec684bd60073be1",
        "activity": "4f7bc6600dd50a989f22f82d3513e561ef333363"
    },
    "configs": {
        "617b9cbad9e141cfc3f4cb636ec684bd60073be1": "active"
    },
    "activities": {
        "4f7bc6600dd50a989f22f82d3513e561ef333363": "active"
    }
}

You can also decide to access directly to a value inside the result JSON by using the --key param:

icingacli director config deploymentstatus \
    --configs 617b9cbad9e141cfc3f4cb636ec684bd60073be1 \
    --activities 4f7bc6600dd50a989f22f82d3513e561ef333363 \
    --key active_configuration.config

617b9cbad9e141cfc3f4cb636ec684bd60073be1

Cronjob usage

You could decide to pre-render your config in the background quite often. As of this writing this has one nice advantage. It allows the GUI to find out whether a bunch of changes still results into the very same config. only one

Run sync and import jobs

Import Sources

List available Import Sources

This shows a table with your defined Import Sources, their IDs and current state. As triggering Imports requires an ID, this is where you can look up the desired ID.

icingacli director importsource list

Check a given Import Source for changes

This command fetches data from the given Import Source and compares it to the most recently imported data.

icingacli director importsource check --id <id>

Options

Option	Description
`--id <id>`	An Import Source ID. Use the list command to figure out
`--benchmark`	Show timing and memory usage details

Fetch data from a given Import Source

This command fetches data from the given Import Source and outputs them as plain JSON

icingacli director importsource fetch --id <id>

Options

Option	Description
`--id <id>`	An Import Source ID. Use the list command to figure out
`--benchmark`	Show timing and memory usage details

Trigger an Import Run for a given Import Source

This command fetches data from the given Import Source and stores it to the Director DB, so that the next related Sync Rule run can work with fresh data. In case data didn't change, nothing is going to be stored.

icingacli director importsource run --id <id>

Options

Option	Description
`--id <id>`	An Import Source ID. Use the list command to figure out
`--benchmark`	Show timing and memory usage details

Sync Rules

List defined Sync Rules

This shows a table with your defined Sync Rules, their IDs and current state. As triggering a Sync requires an ID, this is where you can look up the desired ID.

icingacli director syncrule list

Check a given Sync Rule for changes

This command runs a complete Sync in memory but doesn't persist eventual changes.

icingacli director syncrule check --id <id>

Options

Option	Description
`--id <id>`	A Sync Rule ID. Use the list command to figure out
`--benchmark`	Show timing and memory usage details

Trigger a Sync Run for a given Sync Rule

This command builds new objects according your Sync Rule, compares them with existing ones and persists eventual changes.

icingacli director syncrule run --id <id>

Options

Option	Description
`--id <id>`	A Sync Rule ID. Use the list command to figure out
`--benchmark`	Show timing and memory usage details

Database housekeeping

Your database may grow over time and ask for various housekeeping tasks. You can usually store a lot of data in your Director DB before you would even notice a performance impact.

Still, we started to prepare some tasks that assist with removing useless garbage from your DB. You can show available tasks with:

icingacli director housekeeping tasks

The output might look as follows:

 Housekeeping task (name)                                  | Count
-----------------------------------------------------------|-------
 Undeployed configurations (oldUndeployedConfigs)          |     3
 Unused rendered files (unusedFiles)                       |     0
 Unlinked imported row sets (unlinkedImportedRowSets)      |     0
 Unlinked imported rows (unlinkedImportedRows)             |     0
 Unlinked imported properties (unlinkedImportedProperties) |     0

You could run a specific task with

icingacli director housekeeping run <taskName>

...like in:

icingacli director housekeeping run unlinkedImportedRows

Or you could also run all of them, that's the preferred way of doing this:

icingacli director housekeeping run ALL

Please note that some tasks once issued create work for other tasks, as lost imported rows might appear once you remove lost row sets. So ALL is usually the best choice as it runs all of them in the best order.

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Director CLI

Manage Objects

Create a new object

Usage

Options

Examples

Delete a specific object

Whether a specific object exists

Modify an existing objects properties

Usage

Options

Examples

Show a specific object

Usage

Options

Clone an existing object

Usage

Options

Examples

Other interesting tasks

Rename objects

Disable an object

Working with booleans

Change object types

Import/Export Director Objects

Options

Director Configuration Basket

Available Actions

Options

Health Check Plugin

Usage

Options

Examples

Kickstart and schema handling

Configuration handling

Render your configuration

Config deployment

Usage

Options

Examples

Deployments status

Cronjob usage

Run sync and import jobs

Import Sources

List available Import Sources

Check a given Import Source for changes

Options

Fetch data from a given Import Source

Options

Trigger an Import Run for a given Import Source

Options

Sync Rules

List defined Sync Rules

Check a given Sync Rule for changes

Options

Trigger a Sync Run for a given Sync Rule

Options

Database housekeeping