Overview
From Cfwiki
An Overview of Cfengine
Cfengine is the brainchild of Mark Burgess, Professor at Oslo University College. The project started in 1993 as part of a continuing research project.
Cfengine is designed to let you use configuration files to describe the desired state of a system, rather than describing what should be done to a system to reach that state. You can think of Cfengine configuration files as being in a very high level language - much higher level than Perl or shell scripts. For example, a single cfengine configuration file statement can result in hundreds of links being created, or the permissions of hundreds of files being set.
The idea of Cfengine is to create a single set of configuration files which describe the setup of all hosts on your network; a configuration policy that is deployed over a network. In a typical setup, Cfengine runs on every host, retrieves configuration data from the master server, and applies changes as needed.
Cfengine focuses upon a few key areas of basic system administration and provides a declarative language designed to remove if/then/else constructs. In this way the configuration files are shorter and more transparent.
Here are some tasks Cfengine can automate:
- Checking and configuring network interfaces.
- Creating, changing and deleting files.
- Making and maintaining symbolic links.
- Checking and setting file permissions.
- Deleting 'junk' files lying around your systems.
- Automated mounting of filesystems.
- Controlling execution of scripts and shell commands.
- Monitoring md5 file checksums against a database.
- Checking daemons and restarting them if needed.
- Configuring new installations according to standardized rules.
- Duplicating systems readily.
- Reverting unauthorized changes, whether malicious or not.
Where to go from here?
Cfengine is a very powerful tool and it can really simplify your life. But for people new to Cfengine it can be a steep learning curve, so be patient, it will take some time to get set up. We suggest that as you get set up, you take a look over this site, read some docs and articles, and/or join us in the #cfengine or #cfwiki channels on freenode IRC. You can also find more information on the newsgroups or the mailing lists and our Links page.
[Feel free to add a paragraph or rephrase this page]
Quick Links
Main Page - Overview - Glossary - Links - Articles - Wishlist - Tips, Tricks and Notes - Current Events
Interview - Support - Books - Help - Mascot - Motto - All Pages - Statistics - Cfwiki.org Changes
