Problem this snippet solves:

Managing ifiles using iControl REST API can be challenging. When an administrator need to manage those objects without getting access to the Web UI, it can be better to have a tool able to sync files from the local repository of the computer to the BIG-IP device.

How to use this snippet:

I often use the ifile feature to provide customized web content to users targeting my web applications through a BIG-IP device. I already had a request to import 1000+ files to the F5 BIG-IP in order to build a complete web framework full of .css, .js and .html file extensions.

Uploading those files one by one is really time-consuming and boring. That's why we have developed a small piece of code that automatically watch a folder and create, modify or delete ifiles accordingly.

Managing ifiles using Curl tool

When an administrator decides to manually upload few files to the BIG-IP device using iControl REST API, he has to execute several consecutive commands.

Uploading a file to the BIG-IP

You need to calculate the size of the file you want to upload:

du -b testfile.txt

930 testfile.txt

Then, you can upload the file to the BIG-IP device:

curl -v -k -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/octet-stream" -H "Content-Range: 0-929/930" -u admin:admin --data-binary "@testfile.txt" https://bigip_host/mgmt/shared/file-transfer/uploads/testfile.txt

Creating an ifile (System level)

curl -v -k -u admin:admin -X PUT -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name": "testfile.txt", "source-path": "file:/var/config/rest/downloads/testfile.txt"}' https://bigip_host/mgmt/tm/sys/file/ifile/testfile.txt

Creating an ifile object (LTM level)

curl -v -k -u admin:admin -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name":"testfile.txt", "file-name": "testfile.txt"}' https://bigip_host/mgmt/tm/ltm/ifile

Deleting an ifile object (LTM level)

curl -v -k -u admin:admin -X DELETE https://bigip_host/mgmt/tm/ltm/ifile/testfile.txt

Deleting an ifile (System level)

curl -v -k -u admin:admin -X DELETE https://bigip_host/mgmt/tm/sys/file/ifile/testfile.txt

Automatically synchronize a local folder with your BIG-IP

If you already had the request to deal with thousand of files to upload as ifiles in a BIG-IP device, you may know that managing this kind of request using Postman or a shell script based on wget or curl commands is a nightmare. This is the reason why f5-auto-uploader tool came alive.

f5-auto-uploader creates, modify or deletes ifiles automatically based on watched directories. All changes are enclosed in a transaction.

Downloading f5-auto-uploader binary file

You can download the binary file directly from the github project :

https://github.com/e-XpertSolutions/f5-auto-uploader/releases

The binary file is available for Linux and Windows OS.

Installing f5-auto-uploader from source

Assuming, you have successfully deployed the golang framework in your environment, you can download the f5-auto-uploader project to your computer by typing the following command :

go get github.com/e-XpertSolutions/f5-auto-uploader

you should be able to find the binary file in the $GOPATH/bin folder. This is a self contained binary file, so you can put it in another Linux system and even the F5 device itself if you want to.

Writing a configuration file

You can find below an example of a toml formatted configuration file you need to provide as argument to the binary :

[f5]
auth_method = "token"
url = "https://bigip_host"
user = "admin"
password = "admin"
ssl_check = false
login_provider_name = "tmos"

[[watch]]
directory = "/tmp/test"
exclude = [".*"]

[[watch]]
directory = "/tmp/test2"
exclude = [".*"]

You can define multiple directories to watch at the same time. Every action made on a file in one of those repositories is automatically synchronized with the BIG-IP device. It is possible to exclude specific files using a wildcard path. The example above get rid of hidden files in a Linux OS.

You can define either Basic or Token based authentication. If you prefer using the Basic authentication method, you can change the configuration file as defined below :

[f5]
auth_method = "basic"
url = "https://bigip_host"
user = "admin"
password = "admin"
ssl_check = false

Watch remote repositories

You can watch remote directories as well. If you are running Linux OS, you can mount external file systems using Samba or SSH for example :

Create the mount point :

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/sshfs/ssh-folder

Mount the remote folder :

sshfs root@hostname:/home/user/ /mnt/sshfs/ssh-folder -C -p 22

Running f5-auto-uploader

You can then run the service using the following command line :

./f5-auto-uploader -config /etc/config/config.toml

You can display the help by adding the -help argument to the command line :

./f5-auto-uploader -help

usage: f5-auto-uploader
  -config string
        path to configuration file (default "config.toml")
  -verbose
        enable verbose mode
  -version
        print current version and exit

Support

This project is available on github. This project rely on the f5-rest-client library we developed to integrate easily the iControl REST API in a golang project.

Code :

https://github.com/e-XpertSolutions/f5-auto-uploader

Tested this on version:

12.0