Bringing OpenBolt Task & Plans into Foreman!
OpenBolt is the open source successor of bolt by Perforce. OpenBolt supports running Tasks or Plans against various targets / via different transport protocols. OpenBolt and Bolt are CLI-only tools. They connect to the targets from a central location (usually a jumpnode or workstation).
Tasks are little executeable things, like binaries or scripts. They are enhanced with a metadata file, which describes input and output parameters. A task is copied to N targets and executed there.
Plans provide complex logic options, written in Puppet DSL. Besides the usual Puppet DSL functions, it's also possible to execute tasks and evaluate their responses.
OpenBolt is the Ansible counterpart and OpenBolt is Puppet "native". OpenBolt and Puppet integrate very well together and OpenBolt can reuse your existing Puppet code. Since OpenBolt is a CLI only application, and most Puppet users run Foreman anyways, it made sense to integrate OpenBolt into Foreman, instead of writing another web UI.
The installation is split into four parts:
- Foreman Plugin
- Foreman Smartproxy Plugin
- OpenBolt
- Code Deployment
See How_to_Install_a_Plugin for how to install Foreman plugins. The theforeman/foreman puppet module also supports the Foreman plugin installation. The theforeman/foreman_proxy puppet module also supports the Foreman Smartproxy plugin installation.
as of 2025-12-15 integration into the foreman installer is still pending
The Foreman plugin provides UI elements to start Tasks on various nodes. Foreman then talks to a Smartproxy to run OpenBolt. The Smartproxy also establishes the connections to the various targets. This is usually a ssh or WinRM connection (and soon choria, see the TODO section.
You need to have bolt in your $PATH on the Smartproxy.
You can use the legacy bolt packages from Perforce from the puppet-tools repo on apt.puppet.com or yum.puppet.com.
If you have an active Perforce license, you can also download their commercial bolt version.
OpenBolt packages are available at yum.voxpupuli.org & apt.voxpupuli.org in the openvox8 repo.
The Foreman integration is tested with OpenBolt and the last Bolt opensource release 4.0.0
The integration is supported on Foreman 3.15 and all following versions, including development/nightly builds.
OpenBolt relies on Tasks & Plans. They are distributed as puppet modules. The plugin assumes that you deployed your code. We recommend to use r10k or g10k to deploy code, as you do it on your compilers.
A handful of core/default Tasks & Plans are also included in the OpenBolt rpm/deb packages.
(all screenshots were taken on Foreman 3.17)
After installation, you will see a new UI element
The "Launch Task" option allows you to select any smartproxy with the openbolt feature (which is available when the OpenBolt Smartproxy plugin is installed).
Afterwards you can select N targets to run the task and select an available task from the selected Smartproxy.
On the right side you can configure OpenBolt connection settings.
After selecting a task, the task metadata is fetched and shown. Additional input elements will appear, if the task support it.
The metadata can contains a description and datatypes for tasks. Those information can be shown as well.
While the task is running, the UI polls the status from the smart proxy.
After the task finished, it will display a success for failure page.
You can also see the used parameters for a task.
We also display the used OpenBolt command line, in case you want to manually run it or debug it.
OpenBolt returns JSON for executed tasks. That's visible in the UI. For failed tasks but also for passed tasks.
- Integrate plans into the web UI
- provide a choria transport plugin
Fork and send a Pull Request. Thanks!
If you have questions or need professional support, please join the #sig-orchestrator channel on the Vox Pupuli slack.
Copyright (c) 2025 Overlook InfraTech
Copyright (c) 2025 betadots GmbH
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
- bump version in
lib/foreman_openbolt/version.rbandpackage.json - run
CHANGELOG_GITHUB_TOKEN=github_pat... bundle exec rake changelog - create a PR
- get a review & merge
- create and push a tag
- github actions will publish the tag
The Foreman team packages this gem as Debian package (deb) and as RedHat package (rpm). They have a bot that will automatically propose an rpm/deb update at github.com/theforeman/foreman-packaging.