Error when running bigip_command Playbook against LTM : Syntax Error: unexpected argument /bin/sh\n
I am running a Playbook to test bigip_command using ansible [core 2.15.3] against LTM running 15.1.6.1. When I run the playbook I get the following message: UNREACHABLE! => { “changed”: false, “msg”: “Failed to create temporary directory. In some cases, you may have been able to authenticate and did not have permissions on the target directory. Consider changing the remote tmp path in ansible.cfg to a path rooted in "/tmp", for more error information use -vvv. Failed command was: ( umask 77 && mkdir -p "echo $HOME/tmp"&& mkdir "echo $HOME/tmp/ansible-tmp-1709037153.0021555-3167181-73985055078518" && echo ansible-tmp-1709037153.0021555-3167181-73985055078518="echo $HOME/tmp/ansible-tmp-1709037153.0021555-3167181-73985055078518" ), exited with result 1”, “unreachable”: true } When I run the Playbook with -vvv flags I see the following line just before the error message pasted above: Failed to connect to the host via ssh: Syntax Error: unexpected argument “/bin/sh” Similarly, if I test the ssh I also see this same unexpected argument message: ansible all -m shell -a id -vvv Syntax Error: unexpected argument “/bin/sh”\n’ I have tried editing various things in hosts file and ansible.cfg but nothing I have tried seems to have made a difference. Is anyone familiar with this and what is needed to resolve this. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Import PKCS 12 SSL to Device Certificate via API/Script or CLI on BIG-IP
We have more than 160 BIG-IP Virtual Edition with version 15.1.10.3 build 0.0.12. We need to import, in each one, an SSL Certificate in PFX/PKCS 12 format in the path System ›› Certificate Management: Device Certificate Management: Device Certificate. We looked in the documentation and the KB but we couldn't find a way to do it. Has anyone dealt with this and have a solution to do it via Script, CLI or API? Thank you.
Need help in automating BigIQ session summary reports
I have been asked to work out a way of automating the CSV report from BigIQ Monitoring Access Dashboard. Under Access > Sessions > Session Summary I have been filtering Network_Access as the AP result and then manually exporting the CSV there. Our security who does not have a Splunk server is asking for this every 24 hours. Therefore I am looking to see if there is a way I can have a scheduled job run for this. Only things I am finding are configuration automation or automation dealing with ASM. Any help would be greatly appreciated.Controlling a Pool Members Ratio and Priority Group with iControl
A Little Background A question came in through the iControl forums about controlling a pool members ratio and priority programmatically. The issue really involves how the API’s use multi-dimensional arrays but I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about ratio and priority groups for those that don’t understand how they work. In the first part of this article, I’ll talk a little about what pool members are and how their ratio and priorities apply to how traffic is assigned to them in a load balancing setup. The details in this article were based on BIG-IP version 11.1, but the concepts can apply to other previous versions as well. Load Balancing In it’s very basic form, a load balancing setup involves a virtual ip address (referred to as a VIP) that virtualized a set of backend servers. The idea is that if your application gets very popular, you don’t want to have to rely on a single server to handle the traffic. A VIP contains an object called a “pool” which is essentially a collection of servers that it can distribute traffic to. The method of distributing traffic is referred to as a “Load Balancing Method”. You may have heard the term “Round Robin” before. In this method, connections are passed one at a time from server to server. In most cases though, this is not the best method due to characteristics of the application you are serving. Here are a list of the available load balancing methods in BIG-IP version 11.1. Load Balancing Methods in BIG-IP version 11.1 Round Robin: Specifies that the system passes each new connection request to the next server in line, eventually distributing connections evenly across the array of machines being load balanced. This method works well in most configurations, especially if the equipment that you are load balancing is roughly equal in processing speed and memory. Ratio (member): Specifies that the number of connections that each machine receives over time is proportionate to a ratio weight you define for each machine within the pool. Least Connections (member): Specifies that the system passes a new connection to the node that has the least number of current connections in the pool. This method works best in environments where the servers or other equipment you are load balancing have similar capabilities. This is a dynamic load balancing method, distributing connections based on various aspects of real-time server performance analysis, such as the current number of connections per node or the fastest node response time. Observed (member): Specifies that the system ranks nodes based on the number of connections. Nodes that have a better balance of fewest connections receive a greater proportion of the connections. This method differs from Least Connections (member), in that the Least Connections method measures connections only at the moment of load balancing, while the Observed method tracks the number of Layer 4 connections to each node over time and creates a ratio for load balancing. This dynamic load balancing method works well in any environment, but may be particularly useful in environments where node performance varies significantly. Predictive (member): Uses the ranking method used by the Observed (member) methods, except that the system analyzes the trend of the ranking over time, determining whether a node's performance is improving or declining. The nodes in the pool with better performance rankings that are currently improving, rather than declining, receive a higher proportion of the connections. This dynamic load balancing method works well in any environment. Ratio (node): Specifies that the number of connections that each machine receives over time is proportionate to a ratio weight you define for each machine across all pools of which the server is a member. Least Connections (node): Specifies that the system passes a new connection to the node that has the least number of current connections out of all pools of which a node is a member. This method works best in environments where the servers or other equipment you are load balancing have similar capabilities. This is a dynamic load balancing method, distributing connections based on various aspects of real-time server performance analysis, such as the number of current connections per node, or the fastest node response time. Fastest (node): Specifies that the system passes a new connection based on the fastest response of all pools of which a server is a member. This method might be particularly useful in environments where nodes are distributed across different logical networks. Observed (node): Specifies that the system ranks nodes based on the number of connections. Nodes that have a better balance of fewest connections receive a greater proportion of the connections. This method differs from Least Connections (node), in that the Least Connections method measures connections only at the moment of load balancing, while the Observed method tracks the number of Layer 4 connections to each node over time and creates a ratio for load balancing. This dynamic load balancing method works well in any environment, but may be particularly useful in environments where node performance varies significantly. Predictive (node): Uses the ranking method used by the Observed (member) methods, except that the system analyzes the trend of the ranking over time, determining whether a node's performance is improving or declining. The nodes in the pool with better performance rankings that are currently improving, rather than declining, receive a higher proportion of the connections. This dynamic load balancing method works well in any environment. Dynamic Ratio (node) : This method is similar to Ratio (node) mode, except that weights are based on continuous monitoring of the servers and are therefore continually changing. This is a dynamic load balancing method, distributing connections based on various aspects of real-time server performance analysis, such as the number of current connections per node or the fastest node response time. Fastest (application): Passes a new connection based on the fastest response of all currently active nodes in a pool. This method might be particularly useful in environments where nodes are distributed across different logical networks. Least Sessions: Specifies that the system passes a new connection to the node that has the least number of current sessions. This method works best in environments where the servers or other equipment you are load balancing have similar capabilities. This is a dynamic load balancing method, distributing connections based on various aspects of real-time server performance analysis, such as the number of current sessions. Dynamic Ratio (member): This method is similar to Ratio (node) mode, except that weights are based on continuous monitoring of the servers and are therefore continually changing. This is a dynamic load balancing method, distributing connections based on various aspects of real-time server performance analysis, such as the number of current connections per node or the fastest node response time. L3 Address: This method functions in the same way as the Least Connections methods. We are deprecating it, so you should not use it. Weighted Least Connections (member): Specifies that the system uses the value you specify in Connection Limit to establish a proportional algorithm for each pool member. The system bases the load balancing decision on that proportion and the number of current connections to that pool member. For example,member_a has 20 connections and its connection limit is 100, so it is at 20% of capacity. Similarly, member_b has 20 connections and its connection limit is 200, so it is at 10% of capacity. In this case, the system select selects member_b. This algorithm requires all pool members to have a non-zero connection limit specified. Weighted Least Connections (node): Specifies that the system uses the value you specify in the node's Connection Limitand the number of current connections to a node to establish a proportional algorithm. This algorithm requires all nodes used by pool members to have a non-zero connection limit specified. Ratios The ratio is used by the ratio-related load balancing methods to load balance connections. The ratio specifies the ratio weight to assign to the pool member. Valid values range from 1 through 100. The default is 1, which means that each pool member has an equal ratio proportion. So, if you have server1 a with a ratio value of “10” and server2 with a ratio value of “1”, server1 will get served 10 connections for every one that server2 receives. This can be useful when you have different classes of servers with different performance capabilities. Priority Group The priority group is a number that groups pool members together. The default is 0, meaning that the member has no priority. To specify a priority, you must activate priority group usage when you create a new pool or when adding or removing pool members. When activated, the system load balances traffic according to the priority group number assigned to the pool member. The higher the number, the higher the priority, so a member with a priority of 3 has higher priority than a member with a priority of 1. The easiest way to think of priority groups is as if you are creating mini-pools of servers within a single pool. You put members A, B, and C in to priority group 5 and members D, E, and F in priority group 1. Members A, B, and C will be served traffic according to their ratios (assuming you have ratio loadbalancing configured). If all those servers have reached their thresholds, then traffic will be distributed to servers D, E, and F in priority group 1. he default setting for priority group activation is Disabled. Once you enable this setting, you can specify pool member priority when you create a new pool or on a pool member's properties screen. The system treats same-priority pool members as a group. To enable priority group activation in the admin GUI, select Less than from the list, and in the Available Member(s) box, type a number from 0 to 65535 that represents the minimum number of members that must be available in one priority group before the system directs traffic to members in a lower priority group. When a sufficient number of members become available in the higher priority group, the system again directs traffic to the higher priority group. Implementing in Code The two methods to retrieve the priority and ratio values are very similar. They both take two parameters: a list of pools to query, and a 2-D array of members (a list for each pool member passed in). long [] [] get_member_priority( in String [] pool_names, in Common__AddressPort [] [] members ); long [] [] get_member_ratio( in String [] pool_names, in Common__AddressPort [] [] members ); The following PowerShell function (utilizing the iControl PowerShell Library), takes as input a pool and a single member. It then make a call to query the ratio and priority for the specific member and writes it to the console. function Get-PoolMemberDetails() { param( $Pool = $null, $Member = $null ); $AddrPort = Parse-AddressPort $Member; $RatioAofA = (Get-F5.iControl).LocalLBPool.get_member_ratio( @($Pool), @( @($AddrPort) ) ); $PriorityAofA = (Get-F5.iControl).LocalLBPool.get_member_priority( @($Pool), @( @($AddrPort) ) ); $ratio = $RatioAofA[0][0]; $priority = $PriorityAofA[0][0]; "Pool '$Pool' member '$Member' ratio '$ratio' priority '$priority'"; } Setting the values with the set_member_priority and set_member_ratio methods take the same first two parameters as their associated get_* methods, but add a third parameter for the priorities and ratios for the pool members. set_member_priority( in String [] pool_names, in Common::AddressPort [] [] members, in long [] [] priorities ); set_member_ratio( in String [] pool_names, in Common::AddressPort [] [] members, in long [] [] ratios ); The following Powershell function takes as input the Pool and Member with optional values for the Ratio and Priority. If either of those are set, the function will call the appropriate iControl methods to set their values. function Set-PoolMemberDetails() { param( $Pool = $null, $Member = $null, $Ratio = $null, $Priority = $null ); $AddrPort = Parse-AddressPort $Member; if ( $null -ne $Ratio ) { (Get-F5.iControl).LocalLBPool.set_member_ratio( @($Pool), @( @($AddrPort) ), @($Ratio) ); } if ( $null -ne $Priority ) { (Get-F5.iControl).LocalLBPool.set_member_priority( @($Pool), @( @($AddrPort) ), @($Priority) ); } } In case you were wondering how to create the Common::AddressPort structure for the $AddrPort variables in the above examples, here’s a helper function I wrote to allocate the object and fill in it’s properties. function Parse-AddressPort() { param($Value); $tokens = $Value.Split(":"); $r = New-Object iControl.CommonAddressPort; $r.address = $tokens[0]; $r.port = $tokens[1]; $r; } Download The Source The full source for this example can be found in the iControl CodeShare under PowerShell PoolMember Ratio and Priority.F5 + VSCode; 2024 roadmap
Greetings team! As I started the vscode project in 2019, I had no idea where it would go. I just knew there was value in using it as a workbence to streamline f5 automations. Since then it has grown into a handful of project covering several different aspects of F5. I am very thankful for all the great comments and feedback over the last couple of years. As the 2023 year comes to an end, I wanted to take a moment to step back and solicit some feedback from the community. Please take a couple of minutes to review the following link and provide feedback. https://github.com/f5devcentral/vscode-f5/discussions/234 In short, this is a way for me to guage where I can make the biggest impact with these projects. Thank you.
F5 Archiver Ansible Playbook
Problem this snippet solves: Centralized scheduled archiving (backups) on F5 BIG-IP devices are a pain however, in the new world of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Super-NetOps tools like Ansible can provide the answer. I have a playbook I have been working on to allow me to backup off box quickly, UCS files are saves to a folder names tmp under the local project folder, this can be changed by editing the following line in the f5Archiver.yml file: dest: "tmp/{{ inventory_hostname }}-{{ date['stdout'] }}.ucs" The playbook can be run from a laptop on demand or via some scheduler (like cron ) or as part of a CI/CD pipelines. How to use this snippet: F5 Archiver Ansible Playbook Gitlab: StrataLabs: AnsibleF5Archiver Overview This Ansible playbook takes a list of F5 devices from a hosts file located within the inventory directory, creates a UCS archive and copies locally into the 'tmp' direcotry. Requirements This Ansible playbook requires the following: * ansible >= 2.5 * python module f5-sdk * F5 BIG-IP running TMOS >= 12 Usage Run using the ansible-playbook command using the inventory -i option to use the invertory directory instead of the default inventory host file. NOTE: F5 username and password are not set in the playbook and so need to be passed into the playbook as extra variables using the --extra-vars option, the variables are f5User for the username and f5Pwd for the password. The below examples use the default admin:admin . To check the playbook before using run the following commands ansible-playbook -i inventory --extra-vars "f5User=admin f5Pwd=admin" f5Archiver.yml --syntax-check ansible-playbook -i inventory --extra-vars "f5User=admin f5Pwd=admin" f5Archiver.yml --check Once happy run the following to execute the playbook ansible-playbook -i inventory --extra-vars "f5User=admin f5Pwd=admin" f5Archiver.yml Tested this on version: 12.1
Automating iControlSnapIn installation from Powershell
Hi, I am trying to automate the installation of the iControlSnapIn from a Powershell script. The installation should be silent so that it can ran unsupervised and automatically. From the script I am trying to invoke something like Start-Process "msiexec" -ArgumentList /i iControlSnapInSetup.msi /qn -Wait -Passthru This does not return any error; however the snapin is not installed at the end. No files are copied to the program files folder. Has anyone successfully attempted this? Is there any other argument to be passed in to the msiexec to make this work? UPDATE: if I remove the /qn option to run without UI and manually click throgh the wizard then it works. Therefore I believe there's something related to running silently that makes this installation fail (some missing parameter?)
TCL & regex - help to parse APM configuration in tmsh
Hello World, I'm using a script to bring some automation to APM and provision resources to my AP from an external server. I'm stuck when comes the time to capture the macro name that I want to provision to the VPE. In a full APM config dump I can get the full resource assign objects using a regex like: apm policy policy-item AP_NAME-resources_assignment_act_full_resource_assign.+?caption "Dynamic Resource Assign" (in the VPE I have my macro named Dynamic Resource Assign of course) This returns me a string that contains (in my environment) 2 macros: apm policy policy-item AP_NAME-resources_assignment_act_full_resource_assign { agents { AP_SAG_NAME-resources_assignment_act_full_resource_assign_ag { type resource-assign } } app-service none caption "webtop Assign" color 1 item-type action loop false macro none partition Common rules { { caption fallback expression none next-item AP_NAME-resources_assignment_act_empty_2 } } } apm policy policy-item AP_NAME-resources_assignment_act_full_resource_assign_1 { agents { AP_NAME-resources_assignment_act_full_resource_assign_1_ag { type resource-assign } } app-service none caption "Dynamic Resource Assign" I'm stuck in finding the right regex to capture the macro name of the second occurrence (AP_NAME-resources_assignment_act_full_resource_assign_1_ag). I tried: AP_SAG_E11TST-resources_assignment_act_full_resource_assign.?.?_ag but of course it returns two entries: AP_SAG_NAME-resources_assignment_act_full_resource_assign_ag AP_SAG_NAME-resources_assignment_act_full_resource_assign_1_ag If anyone has a clue on how to filter out the caption "webtop Assign" entry or (better) make sure only the caption "Dynamic Resource Assign" one is returned that would help me quite a lot... Thank you all! JérômeAccess to F5's mysql from remote server
Hi there, I need to export a lot of learning suggestions from the ASM together with request data which triggered these suggestions. GUI does not allow to export learning suggestions. I realized that ASM learning suggestions are stored in the local mysql database PRX, to which I have access from F5's CLI as the 'asm' user. In order to work with these data efficiently and also because F5 does not allow me to install additional Python modules directly on the F5, I thought I could connect to this database from my remote server. But it looks like the F5 is refusing TCP/3306 connections although the 'asm' user is granted required privileges: GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'asm'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD '****' I assume that mysql is only allowing local connections from localhost, but I cannot verify it because I am not able to find the my.cnf on the F5 system. I tried connecting through management interface and also selfIP, but nothing worked. Port lock-down for my selfIP is allow any. According to netstat, F5 should be listening to port 3306 on all interfaces: tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:3306 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 19397/mysqld TCPDUMP on the last firewall in front of the F5 shows me SYN reaching the F5 and immediate RST sent back from the F5. Any ideas how to connect to F5 mysql from remote server? What do I need to check further? Is it even allowed by the system? thanks.
