RE: How to make cfengine more verbose?

[Lyndon C. Lim]

I received several replies to my query
about how to make cfengine more verbose,
but in a systematic, parsable manner.

One suggestion was using the debug flags
to cfagent.  -d2, etc.  This doesn't work for
me because the manual clearly states that
the author reserves the right to change
the output.  Also, the format isn't well
structured for the kind of database we
want to build.

Another suggestion was to use
ShowActions = ( on )
I put that in, but I am not getting useful
output.  I am not sure I am using it correctly.
I am going to keep looking at this.

The third suggestion was to use "-I" option.
I am not sure where to put that in my cfexecd
invocation?  Also, will that be the same as
ShowActions = ( on )?

Thanks to Ed Brown, Douglas Reitmeier, and
Max Kliche for responding.


Separately, I am new, and still trying to
setup cfengine.  Some comments and
questions from me:

It has been harder than I expected.
Problems I encountered:

* I started with 2.1.7p1, and ran into
  the deadlock problem from the start.
  I kept thinking I had something wrong,
  when my processes would hang.  Thanks
  for putting up 2.1.8

* I had, and still have, a terrible time
  getting the public key exchange to
  work easily and consistently.  I must
  be doing something wrong, but it escapes
  me.  Steve Rader's terse guide was a
  godsend; at least I realized that having
  cfservd running everywhere made it easier
  to exchange keys.

* Some variables are case sensitive, and
  others are not.  This seems unnecessarily
  confusing to me.  I would have preferred
  all the reserved variables be one or the
  other.

* I was mystified that cfengine only sends
  mail when something differs in the output.
  This is helpful, except when you are first
  learning to set it up; then you
  keep thinking something didn't run.  It
  was made worse by the deadlock problem.
  I only realized it in reading the debug
  output.  Maybe it should be in the manual?

* I get these occasional outputs about
  SIGPIPE, protocol failed.  But, not always on the
  same machine.  Appears to be a intermittent
  failure.  How do I debug this?

* How do I associate an action with an update?
  i.e. If I update a file, like sendmail.cf,
  I want to send a HUP to it.  But, I don't
  want to HUP it all the time.

* Is on/true and off/false always synonymous?

* The admit: classes apply to the hosts
  running cfservd, not contacting cfservd?
  So, if I add a class to restrict access,
  that means only on the matching host is
  access to that directory granted, not the
  contacting host?  How do I prove I did this
  correctly?  I'm sorry if my description is
  confusing.

Despite all my questions, I like the overall
principle behind cfengine.  Many of the 
issues which have plagued our systems here
seem to have been considered and solved.
I just have to get it working here now.  :)

-- 
Lyndon C. Lim;  lyndon@artisan.com;  408.734.5600;  408.734.5050 (fax)
Artisan Components; 141 Caspian Court; Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1013; USA