annouce cfengine #2
Mark!
A system configuration engine,
by Mark Burgess
Dept of Computing, Oslo College, Norway, and
Dept of Theretical Physics, Univ. of Oslo, Norway.
[ Queries/bug reports to: bug-cf...@prep.ai.mit.edu ]
Cfengine is a language based tool specifically designed for
configuring and maintaining BSD and System-5-like operating systems
attached to a TCP/IP network. You can think of cfengine as a very
high level language---much higher level than Perl or shell: a single
statement can result in many hundreds of operations being performed on
multiple hosts. The main purpose of cfengine is to allow you to
create a single, central configuration file which will define how
every host on your network should be configured. The cfengine
interpreter runs on every host on the network and parses the central
file (or file-set); the configuration of each host is checked against
this file and then, if you request it, any deviations from the define
configuration are fixed. If such a central file had to mention every
single host on a network individually, it would have to be very large,
but cfengine uses a flexible system of ``classes'' which helps you to
describe many hosts with a single statement, or make complex decisions
which pick out very specific actions for specific hosts if necessary.
GNU cfengine is a self-documenting system whose primary aim is to be
easily-understandable and portable. Cfengine works currently with the
following operating systems:
Sun 3 systems with SunOS4.*.*
Sun 4 systems with SunOS4.*.*
Solaris 2
HPUX
AIX
OSF/1
IRIX
GNU/Linux
ULTRIX
This is release 1.0.* of GNU cfengine. Earlier prototypes of cfengine
have been available, but are considerably inferior to this first
official GNU release. There are also sufficient syntactial differences
that we consider this to be a new program, hence the version number
starting at 1.0. Prototype versions are no longer supported.
(If you have an early version, consider getting the GNU distribution
-- the improvements are significant.)
The release consists of:
Language interpreter
100 page manual in TeXInfo
Here are some of the things cfengine can be used for:
Central configuration or simple script programs.
Check and configure the network interface.
Edit textfiles.
Make and maintain symbolic links, including multiple links from
a single command.
Check and set the permissions and onwership of files.
Tidy (delete) junk files which clutter the system.
Systematic, automated mounting of NFS filesystems.
Checking for the presence of important files and filesystems.
Controlled execution of user scripts and shell commands.
Cfengine follows a class-based decision structure.
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