demonCoder95 / info-gather

A basic information gathering application to collect debugging data from remote hosts. Useful for off-site infrastructure.

Information Gatherer

This is a basic application that can gather information from remote hosts. The information it can gather includes:

1. Kernel log from /var/log/messages
2. List of all installed packages and their versions as reported by yum
3. Kernel version of the remote host as reported by uname -r
4. Detailed hardware information as reported by lshw
5. Status of currently running processes as reported by ps -aux

It generates log files per information element and then bundles them together into a ZIP archive. Each remote host has its own archive.

The application accepts a configuration file which includes information about the remote hosts as well as indicators as to what information to collect.

A sample configuration file can look as follows:

[DEFAULT]
info_type=var_log,ps_aux,packages,hw_details,kernel_version
[192.168.10.10]
username=root
password=s0m3p4ssw0rd
[192.168.10.16]
username=root
password=s0m3p4ssw0rd

Each host has its own section with the username and password specified. Since a typical use case of this application is in off-site locations, passwords can be safely written in a configuration file and then deleted upon conclusion of the information gathering activity.

How to Use the Program

1. Install the dependencies of the application.

    pip3 install -r requirements.txt

2. Prepare a configuration file as suggested, say named config-file.ini.
3. Run the application.

    python3 main.py config-file.ini