Would like to manage varnishncsa service and its logformat.

[Yggdrasil]

Affected Puppet, Ruby, OS and module versions/distributions

• Puppet: 4.10
• Ruby:
• Distribution: Ubuntu 14.04 & 18.04
• Module version: 5.0.1

What are you seeing

I'm in the process of replacing our Ubuntu 14.04 servers with 18.04 and want to use this module instead of a legacy one we built many years ago.

I can manage Varnish just fine, but am unable to manage the varnishncsa logging service.

What behaviour did you expect instead

I'd like to be able to manage and configure the varnishncsa service via this module. It is included with Varnish but disabled by default. So that means I'd like to define the logformat it uses via Hiera, as well as ensuring the service is started and running.

How do you currently run varnishncsa, or do you not log Varnish requests at all? Would it be possible to add this functionality to your otherwise excellent module?

I currently define the logformat on Ubuntu 14.04 in /etc/default/varnishncsa (yes, all the backslashes are necessary to get json output). On systemd systems such as 18.04 this should probably be done differently.

VARNISHNCSA_ENABLED=1
LOG_FORMAT="-F{\\\"timestamp\\\": \\\"%{%Y-%m-%dT%T%z}t\\\",\\\"client_ip\\\": \\\"%h\\\",\\\"varnish.bytes_write\\\": %b,\\\"varnish.hit_miss\\\": \\\"%{Varnish:hitmiss}x\\\",\\\"varnish.time_first_byte\\\": %{Varnish:time_firstbyte}x,\\\"varnish.handling\\\": \\\"%{Varnish:handling}x\\\",\\\"varnish.cacheable\\\": \\\"%{X-Cacheable}o\\\",\\\"varnish.response_time_usec\\\": %D,\\\"content_type\\\": \\\"%{Content-Type}o\\\",\\\"x_forwarded_for\\\": \\\"%{X-Forwarded-For}i\\\",\\\"auth\\\": \\\"%u\\\",\\\"status_code\\\": %s,\\\"http.request_full\\\": \\\"%r\\\",\\\"http.request\\\": \\\"%U\\\",\\\"http.querystring\\\": \\\"%q\\\",\\\"http.host\\\": \\\"%{host}i\\\",\\\"http.method\\\": \\\"%m\\\",\\\"http.referrer\\\": \\\"%{Referer}i\\\",\\\"useragent\\\": \\\"%{User-agent}i\\\"}"

This file is sourced by the init script /etc/init.d/varnishncsa and the LOG_FORMAT variable is passed to the daemon.

start_varnishncsa() {
<--snip-->
    if start-stop-daemon --start --pidfile ${PIDFILE} \
        --chuid $USER --exec ${DAEMON} -- ${DAEMON_OPTS} \
        "${LOG_FORMAT}" \
        > ${output} 2>&1; then
<--snip-->

Much appreciated!

[Yggdrasil]

I'm definitely willing to make an attempt at adding this functionality, as well as adding Ubuntu 18.04 support, but would like some guidance on how you would like to see this done.

Maybe simply a varnish::varnishncsa class that has an enabled boolean and a logformat parameter? This class can both manage the service and set the logformat depending on the init-provider available. Or would you prefer I manage the varnishncsa service in service.pp and its logformat in config.pp. I think the default behaviour should stay as it is now but it should be easy to enable and configure via Hiera. Any other ideas?