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Server validation with Goss

Checkup

Goss describes itself as a tool for "quick and easy server validation"  [1], which perfectly sums up its functionality. Configuring Goss is a breeze, and the checks are usually completed within a second. Plus, the financial outlay is zero thanks to the Apache open source license. On the downside, though, all the software really offers is unit testing (aka module testing or component testing). If a check fails, you will need to carry out an in-depth investigation to determine the cause.

Goss has been testing Linux systems for almost 10 years, with support for Windows being added in 2020, although the Windows side still has some limitations (more on that later). In Docker, Goss runs its checks inside the container and outputs a report. Goss is not the first software of its kind and sees itself as an alternative to Serverspec, a tool that is more versatile but also more complex to configure than Goss.

Getting Goss Up and Running

The goss command is all you need for a server check. Use either of the following commands:

goss validate
goss v

to instruct goss to examine the goss.yaml configuration file and begin the validation process. For impatient admins, in the next section I look at the autoadd function, which populates the configuration file with routine tasks.

The Goss binary file is available from GitHub. Just download the file to your Windows or Linux computer from any web browser or at the Linux command line:

curl --location --output /usr/bin/goss https://github.com/goss-org/goss/releases/download/v0.4.9/goss-linux-amd64
chmod +x /usr/bin/goss

The process is similar in Windows, where the curl command has been available since Windows 10:

curl --location --output

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