RE: Locking for temporary ad-hoc changes?

[David Masterson]

Wil Cooley wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 11:59 -0800, David Masterson wrote:
> 
>> Sounds like you should setup your "update.conf" to do something like
>> the following: 
>> 
>> 1. Check if the master config files are newer than the local one --
>> copy if necessary. 
>> 2. Check if /var/cfengine/config config files are newer than the
>> local one -- copy if necessary. 
>> 3. Check if /var/cfengine/inputs config files are newer than
>> /var/cfengine/configs -- copy if necessary.
>> 
>> Then, if you need to make a local change, modify the file in
>> /var/cfengine/config and let cfagent pick it up on it's next run.
> 
> Are you talking about the problems of preventing cfagent modifications
> while I'l working or propagating changes back to my repository?  If
> for the former, waiting for cfagent to run (or manually running it)
> is still not a tight enough loop to avoid frustation.  If for the
> latter, I don't follow.

The former -- but it won't work if you're doing checksum based copying.  I
suppose you could simplify this by having update.conf define a class if a
file exists and then only do copying if the class is not present.  The idea
is to temporarily tell cfagent to not do an update from the master while
you're making local modifications.

As to the latter, that entails running cfservd locally and have the master
copy changed files back.  It could then alert you to the changes and allow
you to check them into your repository.

-- 
David Masterson
VMware, Inc.
Palo Alto, CA