Facter release notes

• The facter -p command returns NUL character on stdout when called from nested Ruby on Windows. This release fixes an issue where Facter executed a system command using back ticks when called from Ruby. FACT-2682

• This release moves cached-custom-facts to a new section in thefacter.conf file, called fact-groups. FACT-2544

• This release allows you to cache custom facts based on the facter.conf file. Depending on the ttl defined under Facts.ttls, custom facts defined in facter.conf under Facts.cached-custom-facts will be cached. FACT-1575

• Previously, when the oslevel -s command was executed on AIX, redirects stderr to /dev/null were shown on stderr and the kernel fact broke. This is now fixed. FACT-2545

• Previously, when os-specific facts were not resolved, Puppet logged a warning. This release lowers the severity of the logged messages to debug. FACT-2489

• You can now cache external facts using external facts filename as cache group FACT-2307.

• New ssh fact on Windows (available when OpenSSH is present). FACT-1934

• Facter no longer crashes if the user has a numeric hostname. FACT-2346

• Facter correctly displays ssh host key fact, in case the host key file does not contain a comment. FACT-1833

• The facter --puppet command no longer throws a deprecation warning. FACT-2260

• This release adds support for the fips_enabled fact on Windows. The check examines the contents of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Lsa/FipsAlgorithmPolicy/Enabled. If the returned value is 1, it means that FIPS mode is enabled. FACT-2065

• Facter can now return the new scope6 fact to display IPv6 address scope. FACT-2016

• Facter command execution now accepts a Boolean parameter, expand. By default, Facter searches the command and expands it to absolute path. When expand is set to false, Facter verifies whether the command is a shell command and, if so, passes the command as is.FACT-1824

• Facter incorrectly reported disabled CPU cores as physical CPU cores. Now, Facter correctly reports physical and logical CPUs and ignores disabled CPUs. FACT-1824

• In previous releases, Facter did not report the cloud fact on Azure. This issue is now fixed. FACT-2004

• In previous versions, Facter could not always determine the primary network interface on Solaris, so it sometimes failed to return any valid interface. This is now fixed. FACT-2146

-In systems using Windows Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Facter returned an incorrect operating system fact. This was due to a Windows API deprecation that caused issues in mixed 32- and 64-bit application environments, such as RDS. FACT-2096

• Google Compute Engine's internal metadata service is deprecating the v1beta1 endpoint sometime before the end of 2019. To prepare for this, Facter now uses the v1 endpoint instead. FACT-2018

• When Facter starts a mountpoint to get the size and available space, it automatically mounts type autofs mountpoints, which is not the intended behavior. Automounts are now skipped by Facter when resolving mountpoints. FACT-1992

This release adds new facts for Windows 10/2016+ :

• ReleaseID: The 4 digit Windows build Version in the form YYMM

• InstallationType: Differentiates Server, Server Core, Client (Desktop): Server|Server Core|Client.

• EditionID: Server or Desktop Edition variant: (ServerStandard|Professional|Enterprise).

• ProductName: Textual Product Name.

Exception: on Windows 10 1511-x86_64, ReleaseID is not displayed, as is not present in Windows registry. FACT-1881

• This release fixes an issue with Facter gem installation errors, which occurred because Facter was pinned to Ruby 2.1.7. The pinned version is now 2.1. FACT-1918

• Prior to this release, Facter returned warnings if ip route show output was not in a key-value format. However, this format does not apply to all configurations, and Facter no longer returns warnings about this. FACT-1916

• Previously, the mountpoint fact showed only temporary file systems and physical mounts. Now Facter returns mount points for all mounts on the systems. FACT-1910

• This release adds support for Virtuzzo Linux facts. FACT-1888

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• Previously, Facter incorrectly reported operating system facts (such as os.name and os.release) on Ubuntu systems that did not have the lsb_release executable. Operating system facts are now resolved without relying on lsb_release. FACT-1899

• Facter now correctly returns the path to system32 on 64-bit systems when a user has manually created the "sysnative" folder. FACT-1900

• Previously, if you had multiple custom versions of a built-in fact, and only those with a weight of 0 could resolve, Facter used those zero-weighted values. Now, if only zero-weighted custom facts resolve, Facter uses built-in fact values instead. (FACT-1873)

• Facter now correctly distinguishes between Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019. (FACT-1889)

• Facter now indicates if SELinux is enabled on the system by also checking for the existence of the /etc/selinux/config file in addition to checking for the presence of the SELinux file system. (FACT-1477)

• Facter returned the wrong IPv6 information when IPV6 stack was disabled. Now,Facter correctly validates the IP command's output for the IPv6 family. If the IP command's output is invalid (for example, if it contains IPv4 info), then Facter ignores it. (FACT-1475)

• Facter failed on Solaris 11.3 patch 29.0.4.0 native zone. Now, Facter does not try to read kstat entries that it does not need to process. This avoids potential permissions issues when run in a zone or as non-root on Solaris. (FACT-1832)

• Facter has been updated to correctly read the format of /etc/system-release under Amazon Linux 2. This corrects the operating system release fact, which previously fell back to the kernel version. (FACT-1865)

• The os.architecture fact is now determined from the processors.models[0] fact. This addresses a problem where Puppet agent wasn't working with dynamic CPU allocations on AIX. (FACT-1550)

• The memory fact was occasionally failing on AIX. This has been fixed. (FACT-1821)

• Facter 3.11.3 correctly reads the format of /etc/system-release and reports the os release fact on Amazon Linux 2. Previous versions of Facter instead fell back to the kernel version. (FACT-1865)

• Facter 3.11.3 no longer tries to read kstat entries that it does not need to process. This avoids potential permissions issues when run in a zone or as non-root on Solaris. (FACT-1832)

• When using the systemd-networkd DHCP client, previous versions of the Linux networking resolver didn't know how to collect DHCP lease information, since it expected dhclient to be installed. Systems relying entirely on systemd-networkd for DHCP management do not use dhclient.

  Facter 3.11.2 checks systemd-networkd's DHCP leases directory (/run/systemd/netif/leases) in addition to dhclient's lease files when attempting to identify DHCP servers.

• Facter 3.11.1 properly checks for errors when gathering disk information on AIX, and no longer warns or reports bogus results for devices assigned to special uses, such as databases. (FACT-1597)

• Facter 3.11.1 reports MAC addresses on infiniband interfaces. (FACT-1761)

• The uptime fact for Windows now uses GetTickCount64, which is more reliable, minimizes clock skews, and offers better resolution than the previous method of computing using WMI BootUptime.

• For each SSH key, Facter 3.11.0 includes the key type as part of its ssh fact.