Hi Eystein Thanks for the feedback. I agree that effort is better spent developing the cfengine promises first, then using that to do the deployment (it would seem to fit with a key underlying philosophy of cfengine!). However, we have the following scenario: A "master copy" installed server comes into my team from another team (developers with different operating philosophies and technologies) with a complex set of installed services and software packages, we then deploy and administer the system, creating copies (or similar installs) and deploying more as requested, based on the reference copy.
The profiles of these "master copy" machines change quite frequently as they come into the team, and it would seem that analysing each one and interpreting the details into cfengine code would soon become labour intensive (and error prone), whereas the strategy of automating this analysis (to produce a baseline template) would seem to offer a more efficient way to work. Baseline templates can always be tweaked depending on what variations are required. Once these base templates can be built, we would then be able to adjust them by hand, depending on how future "clones" must be modified for different a function in time ... Given this, it would seem reasonable to check if cfengine has an efficient mechanism for automating 'templating'/'profiling' in this manner, to at least assist the processes of manually creating promises, if not to replace it entirely. Regards, Traiano ________________________________ From: Eystein Måløy Stenberg <eystein.stenb...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2010 12:30:43 +0200 To: <help-cfengine@cfengine.org> Subject: Re: Generating Host Profiles Using CFengine3 Hi Traiano, The points you state are all standard operations easily achieved with Cfengine. But I suspect that creating the promises manually would be much more efficient than trying to create scripts that in turn create Cfengine policies. It also allows for much greater flexibility in case you don't want every bit equal on all servers at some point. Cfengine is built around the idea that agents are independent entities, rather than the old-fashioned clone/rebuild/rollback model. I suggest that instead of spending time on installing packages on and configuring your "master" server, create Cfengine promises. Good luck with the first steps. -- Regards, Eystein On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Traiano Welcome <traiano.welc...@mtnbusiness.co.za> wrote: > Hi List > > (Newbie Alert!) I've got a test installation of cfengine3 running on a few > freebsd servers: What I'd like to do is use cfengine to automate the > creation of a Server Template for package installation and configuration. > > So, for example, I have a server which is an ideal installation template > (right packages installed, right processes running, right configuration > files), and I deploy cfengine on it, and cfengine checks the packages > installed (and possibly the config files in /etc/) and generates for me 3 > .cf files: > > 1. A file containing cefengine code to install all packages on the server > that are listed as installed, > 2. A file containing cfengine code to create and configure all configuration > files in /etc/ and, > 3. A file with cfengine code to check if all the processes running on the > freebsd server are running, and if not to start them up. > > The idea would then be to deploy these 3 files and cf-agent on other bare > freebsd installed servers and cfengine would do the work of 'cloning' the > configuration profile of the new systems. > > Is this easily doable with the current tools that come with cfengine3? > > Thanks in advance, > Traiano Welcome > ________________________________ > NOTE: This e-mail message and all attachments thereto contain confidential > information intended for a specific addressee and purpose. If you are not > the addressee (a) you may not disclose, copy, distribute or take any action > based on the contents hereof; (b) kindly inform the sender immediately and > destroy all copies hereof. Any copying, publication or disclosure of this > message, or part hereof, in any form whatsoever, without the sender's > express written consent, is prohibited. 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