Erforscher

Erforscher, German for "explorer", is a poor man's service discovery tool that utilizes the AWS EC2 APIs to filter instances from a configured set of tags and writes hostnames (derived from a configured name tag) and private IP address mappings to /etc/hosts (or any file of your choosing).

By default, Erforscher will look for a configuration file in the following places (and in the given order);

• $HOME/.erforscher.yml
• /etc/erforscher.yml

As indicated below it's also possible to give the path to a configuration file using the -c|--config option, and in that case the given path will be used.

Otherwise, Erforscher will use the first file that exists, and will not attempt to merge settings if there should be files in the above mentioned places.

gem install erforscher --pre

It will be available as omnibus packages and most likely a Chef cookbook in the near future.

erforscher -h|--help
erforscher -v|--version
erforscher -T|--tags <K1=V1,K2=V2>
erforscher -N|--name <TAG>
erforscher -c|--config <PATH>

The configuration file is a simple YAML file, with the following structure:

name_tag: 'Name'
region: 'us-east-1'
tags:
  - environment: 'test'
    service: 'web'
  - environment: 'production'
    service: 'database'

Released under the MIT License :: 2014 Mathias Söderberg.