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Fabric is a command-line tool for application deploymentand systems administration tasks. It allows the user to run commands across aserver farm.

At GDS, we use Fabric to simplify and automate common systems administrationtasks. These scripts are deployed on our "jumpbox" machines at/usr/local/share/govuk-fabric, and can be executed using thegovuk_fabhelper script, installed in/usr/local/bin

In order to use the fabric scripts, you will need to enable ssh-agentforwarding when you connect to the jumpboxes. For example:

$ ssh -A jumpbox-1.management.production

You can also use the fabric scripts from an external machine with a small amountof setup on your part. You will need to install Fabric,

$ pip install -Ur requirements.txt

NB: if you get a "pip: command not found" error, run this first:

$ sudo easy_install pip

configure it (seethe fabric documentation for more examples),

$ echo 'user = jimbob' >> ~/.fabricrc

and then you should be able to run it:

$ fab preview all hosts...$ fab preview class:frontend do:'uname -a'...