Facter release notes

Facter 3.14.24

Released August 2022 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.28.0.

No release notes.

Facter 3.14.23

Released April 2022 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.27.1.

No release notes.

Facter 3.14.22

Released January 2022 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.26.0.

No release notes.

Facter 3.14.21

Released November 2021 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.25.1.

Resolved issues

Puppet 6.25.0 runs take over two minutes on non-EC2 VMs. This release fixes a regression where the AWS IMDSv2 endpoint was not called with the correct session and request timeouts, resulting in Facter using a default timeout of 2 minutes. FACT-3082

Facter 3.14.20

Released October 2021 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.25.0.

New features

DisplayVersion fact for Windows. This release adds a new fact called os.windows.display_version. This fact reads the version from the DisplayVersion registry key. FACT-3058
AWS IDMSv2. This release ports the AWS Instance Metadata Service Version 2 (IMDSv2) functionality from Facter 4 to Facter 3. FACT-2904

Resolved issues

Mismatched processor frequencies found on AIX. Previously, Facter added all the processors found in the ODM query, without checking their status. Now if the status is not available, Facter skips the processor. FACT-2955
Windows 2022 detected as Windows 2019. The os.release.full and os.release.major facts now correctly detect Windows 2022 and output 2022, instead of 2019. FACT-3075

Facter 3.14.19

Released July 2021 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.24.0.

This release includes minor maintenance changes. For the latest features, see the release notes for Facter 3.14.18.

Facter 3.14.18

Released June 2021 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.23.0.

Enhancements

Support for Mac OS X 11. This release adds support for Mac OS X 11 Big Sur. FACT-3017

Facter 3.14.17

Released 26 April 2021 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.22.1.

Enhancements

Azure identification fact. This release adds the cloud.provider fact for Azure identification on Linux and Windows platforms. FACT-1847
Azure metadata fact. This release adds the az_metadata fact which provides information on Azure virtual machine instances. For more information, see the Microsoft Azure instance metadata documentation. FACT-1383
Facter 3 API extended with resolve. This release backports a limited version of the Facter.resolve API to Facter 3. Note that the following options were not implemented: custom-dir, external-dir, no-block, no-cache, timing (not supported in Facter 3). FACT-2935
Facter 3 support for Rocky Linux. This release adds support for the Rocky Linux operating system. Contributed by Puppet community member StackKorora. FACT-2957

Resolved issues

The puppet facts diff command logs error when apt module is installed. Previously, each time you executed require facter, the Facter and Puppet bin directories were added to PATH environment variable, even if they were already there. This is now fixed and require facter only adds Facter and Puppet bin directories to PATH if they are not there. FACT-2941
Fix os.name detection of AlmaLinux. Facter 3 can now detect AlmaLinux. Contributed by Puppet community member cschug. FACT-2943

Facter 3.14.16

Released 9 February 2021 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.21.1.

Resolved issues

FACTER_ environmental facts overrides does not work with external facts. Previously, environment facts were overwritten by external facts when you ran the puppet fact command. Now the flow is set to facts -> external facts -> environment facts by default. FACT-2918

Facter 3.14.15

Released 20 January 2020 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.20.0.

This release includes minor maintenance changes. For the latest features, see the release notes for Facter 3.14.14.

Facter 3.14.14

Released 20 October 2020 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.28.0.

Resolved issues

Linux Mint 20 OS version bug. This release fixes an issue where Facter incorrectly reported the OS as Debian on Linux Mint 20 platforms.FACT-2759

Facter reports wrong Windows build. This release uses ntdll.dll instead of ntoskrnl.exe to get the Windows build number for the kernelrealese fact. FACT-2751

Facter 3.14.13

Released 25 August 2020 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.18.0.

Resolved issues

Puppet lookup loads external facts on the initiating node. Previously, some Puppet default settings required Facter to retrieve data that loaded all external facts and slowed down Puppet. With this release, local external facts are not evaluated when performing a lookup command on a remote node. FACT-2666

Facter 3.14.12

Released 14 July 2020 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.28.0.

Resolved issues

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

Facter 3.14.11

Released 3 June 2020 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.16.0.

This release includes minor maintenance changes. For the latest features, see the release notes for Facter 3.14.10 .

Facter 3.14.10

Released 30 April 2020 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.15.0.

New features

cached-custom-facts has moved to a new section in `facter.conf`. This release moves `cached-custom-facts` to a new section in the`facter.conf` file, called `fact-groups`. FACT-2544

New ability to cache and block the output of custom facts. This release allows you to cache custom facts based on the facter.conf file. Custom facts defined in facter.conf under Facts.cached-custom-facts can be cached, depending on the ttl defined under Facts.ttls. FACT-1575

Resolved issues

AIX kernel resolver redirects stderr to stdout and breaks facts on OS errors. Previously, when the oslevel -s command is executed on AIX, redirects stderr to /dev/null were shown on stderr and the kernel fact broke. This is now fixed. FACT-2545

Not compatible with leatherman >= 1.0.0. This release adds a compile guard so that Facter can compile with older Leatherman versions. FACT-2537

No resolver for external facts file error for os-specific facts. Previously, when os-specific facts were not resolved, Puppet logged a warning. The release lowers the severity of the logged messages to debug. FACT-2489

Incorrect log format on non-executable external fact scripts. Previously, if an external fact script could not be executed, the Facter log did not indicate what happened and the error output format was incorrect. This is now fixed. FACT-2618

Facter 3.14.9

Released 10 March 2020 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.14.0.

Resolved issues

Facterno longer crashes if the user has a numeric hostname. (FACT-2346)
Facter correctly displays the ssh host key fact, in the case the host key file does not contain a comment. (FACT-1833)

Facter 3.14.8

Released 18 February 2020 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.13.0.

New features

The ability to cache external facts using external facts filename as cache group. (FACT-2307)
A new ssh fact on Windows — available when OpenSSH is present. (FACT-1934)

Resolved issues

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

Facter 3.14.7

Released 14 January 2020 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.12.0.

New features

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-2054

Resolved issues

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 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
Facter now takes the root-reserved space into account when reporting mountpoints. Contributed by Valia0906. FACT-2128

Facter 3.14.6

Released 19 November 2019 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.11.0.

New features

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

Resolved issues

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

Facter 3.14.5

Released 1 October 2019 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.10.0.

Resolved issues

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 causes mountpoints of type autofs to be automatically mounted, which is not the intended behavior. Automounts are now skipped by Facter when resolving mountpoints. FACT-1992

Facter 3.14.4

Released 17 September 2019 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.9.0.

Resolved issues

This release makes the EC2 session timeout, in milliseconds, configurable via the EC2_SESSION_TIMEOUT environment variable. If the environment variable does not exist or is set to an invalid value, Facter defaults the variable to 5000 (5 seconds). FACT-1919

Facter 3.14.3

Released 21 August 2019 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.8.0.

New features

This release adds an new AIX-specific fact, nim_type, which returns the type of the NIM configuration. This fact returns a value of:

'server'
'standalone'
if '/etc/niminfo' is missing, no value is returned.

Resolved issues

The previous version of Facter could not be compiled on the latest Archlinux version. This release fixes this issue by unpinning gem dependencies for Ruby spec tests so they work regardless of gem versions. and enabling detection of the optional UDEV library on Linux, which provides a serial number fact for disks. FACT-1968
On Linux, if multiple mountpoints are mounted on the same directory, Facter showed only the first one retrieved from /etc/mtab. Now Facter shows the mountpoint that is a device or is the "tmpfs" type. FACT-1964
Prior to this release, when you ran facter ipaddress6 on Windows servers, Facter returned the IPv6 with the interface identifier. This was caused by a Windows function that retrieves ipaddress6 together with the interface identifier. Now it correctly returns only the ipaddress6 without the interface id. This also fixes the network6 fact, which also returned network6 together with the interface identifier. FACT-1935
The dmi fact did not return the chassis type. Facter now resolves the following DMI chassis descriptions for:
- "25" - "Multi-system"
- "26" - "CompactPCI"
- "27" - "AdvancedTCA"
- "28" - "Blade"
- "29" - "Blade Enclosure"
- "30" - "Tablet"
- "31" - "Convertible"
- "32" - "Detachable"
FACT-1933

Facter 3.14.2

Released 23 July 2019 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.7.0.

Resolved issues

Prior to this release, Facter returned warnings if ip route show output was not in a key-value format. Because this format does not apply to all configurations, Facter no longer returns warnings about it. FACT-1916
Previously, the mountpoint fact showed only temporary file systems and physical mounts. Now Facter returns mount points for all mounts on the system. FACT-1910

Facter 3.14.1

Released 1 July 2019 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.6.0.

New features

Facter now report disk serial numbers on Linux and FreeBSD FACT-1929
This release adds a primary network interface check for FreeBSD. FACT-1926
Previously, the mountpoint fact showed only temporary file systems and physical mounts. Now Facter returns mount points for all mounts on the system. FACT-1910
This release adds support for Virtuzzo Linux facts. FACT-1888

Facter 3.14.0

Released 19 June 2019 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.5.0

New features

In this release, Facter adds new facts for Windows version 10/2016+:

ReleaseID: The four-digit Windows build version, in the form YYMM. On Windows10-1511-x86_64, the release ID is not displayed, as is not present in the registry.
InstallationType: Differentiates Server, Server Core, Client (Desktop): Server|Server Core|Client.
EditionID: Server or Desktop Edition variant: ServerStandard|Professional|Enterprise.
ProductName: Textual Product Name.

Facter 3.13.1

Released 26 March 2019 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.4.0

Resolved issues

This release fixes an issue where the dhcp fact failed on Red Hat 8 (beta). Because Red Hat 8 is a beta version, not all functions are verified to work correctly. FACT-1906

Facter 3.13.0

Released 20 February 2019 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.3.0

Resolved issues

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 3.12.3

Released 24 January 2019 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.2.0.

Resolved issues

Facter now returns the correct path to system32 on 64-bit systems where the sysnative folder has been created manually. FACT-1900

Facter 3.12.2

Released 18 December 2018 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.1.0.

Resolved issues

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 3.12.1

Released 6.1.0 and shipped with Puppet Platform 18 December 2018.

New features

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

Facter 3.12.0

Released 18 September 2018 and shipped with Puppet Platform 6.0.0

New features

Key type is now included as part of the facts for each SSH key. (FACT-1377)

Resolved issues

Systems relying entirely on systemd-networkd for DHCP management do not use dhclient. This checks the DHCP leases directory of systemd-networkd (/run/systemd/netif/leases) in addition to the lease files of dhclient when attempting to identify DHCP servers. (FACT-1851)
Facter no longer checks for missing dmidecode and does not report a warning when it’s missing on POWER Linux machines. (FACT-1765 and FACT-1763)