OpenFact is a cross-platform system profiling library that discovers and reports per-node facts — structured data about a node’s operating system, hardware, networking, and more. Facts are available in OpenVox manifests as top-scope variables (e.g. $facts['os']['family']) and are used by the catalog compiler to make node-specific decisions.

OpenFact is the community-maintained continuation of Puppet’s Facter, originally adopted under Vox Pupuli stewardship alongside OpenVox. It is downstream-compatible with Facter — existing custom facts and external facts work unchanged.

How it works

OpenFact runs on each managed node and resolves facts by querying the system directly: reading /proc entries, running shell commands, calling OS APIs, and so on. Results are returned as a structured hash. When a fact can be resolved in multiple ways (for example, differently on Linux versus Windows), OpenFact runs the highest-weighted applicable resolution.

In an agent/server deployment, OpenFact runs automatically at the start of each agent run. The collected facts are sent to OpenVox Server and made available to the catalog compiler. Facts are not persisted without OpenVoxDB — they are used during catalog compilation and then discarded. The agent run produces a report, which OpenVox Server stores on local disk by default; without periodic cleanup, report storage will grow unbounded. OpenVoxDB is an optional component that provides durable storage for facts, catalogs, and reports.

Standalone, the facter CLI lets you query facts directly on any node — useful for ad-hoc inspection, debugging, or scripting without triggering a full agent run.

Included in openvox-agent

OpenFact ships inside the openvox-agent package and does not need to be installed separately. The version bundled with a given agent release is listed in Component versions in openvox-agent.

Getting started

• Core facts reference — every built-in fact that ships with OpenFact (auto-generated)
• Custom facts walkthrough — step-by-step guide to writing and distributing your own facts
• Custom facts reference — example-driven quick reference for fact authors
• Configuring OpenFact — facter.conf options
• CLI reference — command-line flags and options (auto-generated)
• Release notes — OpenFact version history