inspec/docs/profiles.md

title
About InSpec Profiles

InSpec Profiles

InSpec supports the creation of complex test and compliance profiles, which organize controls to support dependency management and code reuse. Each profile is a standalone structure with its own distribution and execution flow.

Profile Structure

A profile should have the following structure::

examples/profile
├── README.md
├── controls
│   ├── example.rb
│   └── control_etc.rb
├── libraries
│   └── extension.rb
|── files
│   └── extras.conf
└── inspec.yml

where:

• inspec.yml includes the profile description (required)
• controls is the directory in which all tests are located (required)
• libraries is the directory in which all InSpec resource extensions are located (optional)
• files is the directory with additional files that a profile can access (optional)
• README.md should be used to explain the profile, its scope, and usage

See a complete example profile in the InSpec open source repository: Example InSpec Profile

Also check out Explore InSpec resources on Learn Chef Rally to learn more about how profiles are structured with hands-on examples.

inspec.yml

Each profile must have an inspec.yml file that defines the following information:

• Use name to specify a unique name for the profile. Required.
• Use title to specify a human-readable name for the profile.
• Use maintainer to specify the profile maintainer.
• Use copyright to specify the copyright holder.
• Use copyright_email to specify support contact information for the profile, typically an email address.
• Use license to specify the license for the profile.
• Use summary to specify a one line summary for the profile.
• Use description to specify a multiple line description of the profile.
• Use version to specify the profile version.
• Use inspec_version to place SemVer constraints on the version of InSpec that the profile can run under.
• Use supports to specify a list of supported platform targets.
• Use depends to define a list of profiles on which this profile depends.
• Use attributes to define a list of attributes you can use in your controls.

name is required; all other profile settings are optional. For example:

name: ssh
title: Basic SSH
maintainer: Chef Software, Inc.
copyright: Chef Software, Inc.
copyright_email: support@chef.io
license: Proprietary, All rights reserved
summary: Verify that SSH Server and SSH Client are configured securely
version: 1.0.0
supports:
  - os-family: linux
depends:
  - name: profile
    path: ../path/to/profile
inspec_version: "~> 2.1"

The inspec.yml also supports embedded ERB in the file. For example:

name: dummy
title: InSpec Profile
maintainer: The Authors
copyright: The Authors
copyright_email: you@example.com
license: Apache-2.0
summary: An InSpec Compliance Profile
version: 0.1.0
depends:
- name: inherit
  url: "https://artifactory.com/artifactory/example-repo-local/inspec/0.4.1.tar.gz"
  username: <%= ENV['USERNAME'] %>
  password: <%= ENV['API_KEY'] %>

Verify Profiles

Use the inspec check command to verify the implementation of a profile:

$ inspec check examples/profile

Platform Support

Use the supports setting in the inspec.yml file to specify one (or more) platforms for which a profile is targeting. The list of supported platforms may contain the following:

• Use platform-family to restrict to a specific platform family.
• Use platform-name to restrict on a specific platform name.
• Use release to restrict to a specific platform version (used with platform-name).
• Use platform to restrict on either platform-name or platform-family.

For compatibility we support os-name and os-family. We recommend all users to change os-name to platform-name and os-family to platform-family.

With InSpec 2.0, we introduced new families to help distinguish the cloud platforms. The new families can restrict the platform family to os, aws, azure or gcp.

For example, to target anything running Debian Linux:

name: ssh
supports:
  - platform-name: debian

and to target only Ubuntu version 14.04

name: ssh
supports:
  - platform-name: ubuntu
    release: 14.04

and to target the entire RedHat platform (including CentOS and Oracle Linux):

name: ssh
supports:
  - platform-family: redhat

and to target anything running on Amazon AWS:

name: ssh
supports:
  - platform: aws

and to target all of these examples in a single inspec.yml file:

name: ssh
supports:
  - platform-name: debian
  - platform-name: ubuntu
    release: 14.04
  - platform-family: redhat
  - platform: aws

Profile Dependencies

An InSpec profile can bring in the controls and custom resources from another InSpec profile. Additionally, when inheriting the controls of another profile, a profile can skip or even modify those included controls.

For hands-on examples, check out Create a custom InSpec profile on Learn Chef Rally.

Defining the Dependencies

Before a profile can use controls from another profile, the to-be-included profile needs to be specified in the including profile’s inspec.yml file in the depends section. For each profile to be included, a location for the profile from where to be fetched and a name for the profile should be included. For example:

depends:
- name: linux-baseline
  url: https://github.com/dev-sec/linux-baseline/archive/master.tar.gz
- name: ssh-baseline
  url: https://github.com/dev-sec/ssh-baseline/archive/master.tar.gz

InSpec supports a number of dependency sources.

path

The path setting defines a profile that is located on disk. This setting is typically used during development of profiles and when debugging profiles.

depends:
- name: my-profile
  path: /absolute/path
- name: another
  path: ../relative/path

url

The url setting specifies a profile that is located at an HTTP- or HTTPS-based URL. The profile must be accessible via a HTTP GET operation and must be a valid profile archive (zip, tar, or tar.gz format).

depends:
- name: my-profile
  url: https://my.domain/path/to/profile.tgz
- name: profile-via-git
  url: https://github.com/myusername/myprofile-repo/archive/master.tar.gz

url also supports basic authentication.

depends:
- name: my-profile
  url: https://my.domain/path/to/profile.tgz
  username: user
  password: password

git

A git setting specifies a profile that is located in a git repository, with optional settings for branch, tag, commit, and version. The source location is translated into a URL upon resolution. This type of dependency supports version constraints via semantic versioning as git tags.

For example:

depends:
- name: git-profile
  git: http://url/to/repo
  branch:  desired_branch
  tag:     desired_version
  commit:  pinned_commit
  version: semver_via_tags

supermarket

A supermarket setting specifies a profile that is located in a cookbook hosted on Chef Supermarket. The source location is translated into a URL upon resolution.

For example:

depends:
- name: supermarket-profile
  supermarket: supermarket-username/supermarket-profile

Available Supermarket profiles can be listed with inspec supermarket profiles.

compliance

A compliance setting specifies a profile that is located on the Chef Automate or Chef Compliance server.

For example:

depends:
- name: linux
  compliance: base/linux

Vendoring Dependencies

When you execute a local profile, the inspec.yml file will be read in order to source any profile dependencies. It will then cache the dependencies locally and generate an inspec.lock file.

If you add or update dependencies in inspec.yml, dependencies may be re-vendored and the lockfile updated with inspec vendor --overwrite

Using Controls from an Included Profile

Once defined in the inspec.yml, controls from the included profiles can be used! Let’s look at some examples.

Including All Controls from a Profile

With the include_controls command in a profile, all controls from the named profile will be executed every time the including profile is executed.

In the example above, every time my-app-profile is executed, all the controls from my-baseline are also executed. Therefore, the following controls would be executed:

• myapp-1
• myapp-2
• myapp-3
• baseline-1
• baseline-2

This is a great reminder that having a good naming convention for your controls is helpful to avoid confusion when including controls from other profiles!

Skipping a Control from a Profile

What if one of the controls from the included profile does not apply to your environment? Luckily, it is not necessary to maintain a slightly-modified copy of the included profile just to delete a control. The skip_control command tells InSpec to not run a particular control.

In the above example, all controls from my-app-profile and my-baseline profile will be executed every time my-app-profile is executed except for control baseline-2 from the my-baseline profile.

Modifying a Control

Let's say a particular control from an included profile should still be run, but the impact isn't appropriate? Perhaps the test should still run, but if it fails, it should be treated as low severity instead of high severity?

When a control is included, it can also be modified!

In the above example, all controls from my-baseline are executed along with all the controls from the including profile, my-app-profile. However, should control baseline-1 fail, it will be raised with an impact of 0.5 instead of the originally-intended impact of 1.0.

Selectively Including Controls from a Profile

If there are only a handful of controls that should be executed from an included profile, it's not necessarily to skip all the unneeded controls, or worse, copy/paste those controls bit-for-bit into your profile. Instead, use the require_controls command.

Whenever my-app-profile is executed, in addition to its own controls, it will run only the controls specified in the require_controls block. In the case, the following controls would be executed:

• myapp-1
• myapp-2
• myapp-3
• baseline-2
• baseline-4

Controls baseline-1, baseline-3, and baseline-5 would not be run, just as if they were manually skipped. This method of including specific controls ensures only the controls specified are executed; if new controls are added to a later version of my-baseline, they would not be run.

And, just the way its possible to modify controls when using include_controls, controls can be modified as well.

As with the prior example, only baseline-2 and baseline-4 are executed, but if baseline-2 fails, it will report with an impact of 0.5 instead of the originally-intended 1.0 impact.

Using Resources from an Included Profile

By default, all of the custom resources from a listed dependency are available for use in your profile. If two of your dependencies provide a resource with the same name, you can use the require_resource DSL function to disambiguate the two:

require_resource(profile: 'my_dep', resource: 'my_res',
                  as: 'my_res2')

This will allow you to reference the resource my_res from the profile my_dep using the name my_res2.

Profile Attributes

Attributes are frequently used to parameterize a profile for use in different environments or targets. It can also be used define secrets, such as user names and passwords, that should not otherwise be stored in plain-text in a cookbook. Attributes may be set for the whole profile in the inspec.yml.

Attributes may contain the following options:

• Use value to set a value for the attribute.
• Use type to restrict an attribute to a specific type (any, string, numeric, array, hash, boolean, regex).
• Use required to mandate the attribute has a value at the time of evaluation.
• Use description to set a brief description for the attribute.

Setting Attributes in the Profile Metadata File

You can specify attributes in your inspec.yml using the attributes setting. For example, to add a user attribute for your profile:

attributes:
  - name: user
    type: string
    value: bob

Example of adding a array object of servers:

attributes:
  - name: servers
    type: array
    value:
      - server1
      - server2
      - server3

To access an attribute you will use the attribute keyword. You can use this anywhere in your control code.

For example:

current_user = attribute('user')

control 'system-users' do
  describe attribute('user') do
    it { should eq 'bob' }
  end

  describe current_user do
    it { should eq attribute('user') }
  end
end

Setting Attributes in an External YAML Attributes File

For sensitive data it is recommended to use a YAML file located on the local machine to populate the values of attributes. To read values from a YAML file, use run inspec exec and specify the path to that YAML file using the --attrs attribute.

For example, your profile's metadata file, inspec.yml:

attributes:
  - name: username
    type: string
    required: true
  - name: password
    type: string
    required: true

The control:

control 'system-users' do
  impact 0.8
  desc '
    This test assures that the user "Bob" has a user installed on the system, along with a
    specified password.
  '

  describe attribute('username') do
    it { should eq 'bob' }
  end

  describe attribute('password') do
    it { should eq 'secret' }
  end
end

And a YAML file named profile-attribute.yml:

username: bob
password: secret

The following command runs the tests and applies the secrets specified in profile-attribute.yml:

$ inspec exec examples/profile-attribute --attrs examples/profile-attribute.yml

To change your attributes for platform specific cases you can setup multiple --attrs files.

For example, a inspec.yml:

attributes:
  - name: users
    type: array
    required: true

A YAML file named windows.yml

users:
  - Administrator
  - Guest
  - Randy

A YAML file named linux.yml

users:
  - root
  - shadow
  - rmadison

The control file:

control 'system-users' do
  impact 0.8
  desc 'Confirm the proper users are created on the system'

  describe users do
    its('usernames') { should eq attribute('users') }
  end
end

The following command runs the tests and applies the attributes specified:

$ inspec exec examples/profile-attribute --attrs examples/windows.yml
$ inspec exec examples/profile-attribute --attrs examples/linux.yml

See the full example in the InSpec open source repository: Example InSpec Profile with Attributes

Attribute Value Precedence

Attribute values are always set in the following precedence (highest to lowest):

1. Values from a file specified on the command line using --attrs
2. Values from a profile metadata file - an inspec.yml with an attributes: section
3. Values provided directly in control code - attribute('user', value: 'bob')

Profile files

An InSpec profile may contain additional files that can be accessed during tests. A profile file enables you to separate the logic of your tests from the data your tests check for, for example, the list of ports you require to be open.

To access these files, they must be stored in the files directory at the root of a profile. They are accessed by their name relative to this folder with inspec.profile.file(...).

Here is an example for reading and testing a list of ports. The folder structure is:

examples/profile
├── controls
│   ├── example.rb
│── files
│   └── services.yml
└── inspec.yml

With services.yml containing:

- service_name: httpd-alpha
  port: 80
- service_name: httpd-beta
  port: 8080

The tests in example.rb can now access this file:

my_services = yaml(content: inspec.profile.file('services.yml')).params

my_services.each do |s|
  describe service(s['service_name']) do
    it { should be_running }
end

describe port(s['port']) do
  it { should be_listening }
  end
end

For a more complete example that uses a profile file, see Explore InSpec resources on Learn Chef Rally.

"should" vs. "expect" syntax

Users familiar with the RSpec testing framework may know that there are two ways to write test statements: should and expect. The RSpec community decided that expect is the preferred syntax. However, InSpec recommends the should syntax as it tends to read more easily to those users who are not as technical.

InSpec will continue to support both methods of writing tests. Consider this file test:

describe file('/tmp/test.txt') do
  it { should be_file }
end

This can be re-written with expect syntax

describe file('/tmp/test.txt') do
  it 'should be a file' do
    expect(subject).to(be_file)
  end
end

The output of both of the above examples looks like this:

File /tmp/test.txt
   ✔  should be a file

In addition, you can make use of the subject keyword to further control your output if you choose:

describe 'test file' do
  subject { file('/tmp/test.txt') }
  it 'should be a file' do
    expect(subject).to(be_file)
  end
end

... which will render the following output:

test file
  ✔  should be a file