Re: Commenting Files Managed via Cfengine

[Frank Smith]

--On Wednesday, June 29, 2005 08:30:27 -0400 "Brian E. Seppanen" 
<seppy@chartermi.net> wrote:

> Hi Folks:
> 
> I have a large number of files that I'm managing via cfengine and over the 
> two years that I've been using cfengine that number continues to grow. My 
> coworkers are new to cfengine, and are struggling to understand which hosts, 
> which files, etc cfengine
> is going to operate on.  I've been documenting these issues as I confront 
> them, but one idea that I would really like to incorporate is a comment 
> automatically added to each file by cfengine to indicate master repository, 
> path, classes, last update
> and a warning that cfengine will clean up after them whether they like it or 
> not.  Has anyone undertaken anything similar.  Cfengine is an awesome piece 
> of software that has made my life easier, but I now have more problems just 
> trying to document how
> it works, organize date so that others can better understand, and explaining. 
>  I must confess that I often get lost in all of the mazes as well, so such 
> efforts wouldn't be wasted on myself even if I understand cfengine fairly 
> well.
> 
> Any other suggestions on how to take the already high level cfengine syntax 
> and document it at an even higher level...

On the files that I use cfengine to copy to clients, I put a comment in the top 
of the file like:
#
#  WARNING !!! This file is mastered in cfengine so
# make changes there (/masterfiles/debian/etc/snmpd.conf)
##########################################################

On files where I use editfiles to replace a block, the block is bracketed with 
lines like:
##### BEGIN CFENGINE v1.2 #####
##### END CFENGINE #####

On other files where I do odd single line edits, the best I've been able to 
come up with
is prepending a line like:
#####  WARNING !!! Some of this file is controlled by cfengine #####
since the block editing features are clunky (to me) and bloat the config file.

I've been working on trying to just generate master files and use copy for 
everything.  My
goal is to never have to log into an individual machine to make changes and 
then there's
no question as to where an admin goes.

Frank

> 
> thanks.
> 
> Brian Seppanen
> seppy@chartermi.net
> 608.826.1464
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Help-cfengine mailing list
> Help-cfengine@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-cfengine



--
Frank Smith                                                fsmith@hoovers.com
Sr. Systems Administrator                                 Voice: 512-374-4673
Hoover's Online                                             Fax: 512-374-4501