Re: Bootstrapping

[Nate Campi]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2004 at 11:05:19AM -0600, Luke A. Kanies wrote:
> 
> How do I know if all of my machines are updating themselves?  How do I
> know if all of my machines have successfully copied all of their files,
> started all of their processes, made all of their changes?  There are many
> potential problems (issues with the cfengine keys, configurations for the
> processes, nonexistent files) and although it's straightforward to have
> cfengine email me, it's less straightforward to turn those emails into
> meaningful information.

A couple thoughts:

Extending cfexecd would go partway towards meeting your goals, and
nicely compartmentalize the changes into an existing wrapper program. It
could be taught to send output in other ways besides SMTP, to filter the
output, and even send alerts via other methods if certain strings are
seen.

Another thought, which seems right in-line with how cfagent does things:
have definable classes when errors are seen, let cfagent deal with it's
own problems via a new "errordefine" feature:


copy:

                $(master_etc)/motd
                                dest=/etc/motd
                                type=checksum
                                server=$(fileserver)
                                define=newmotd
                                errordefine=brokenmotd
                                backup=false

shellcommands:


        brokenmotd::
                "/some/command/to/send/alert"


-- 
Nate

If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...
                ...Oh, wait a minute, he already does.