Re: Suggestion for future release

[Marco van Beek]

What I am doing at the moment is to have a subdirectory structure on the 
master based on the hostname. I then use a copy command to copy all of 
the /${configroot}/${hostname}/* files into a directory on the client 
called host, so I am basically using the copy command to not only select 
the right files (and only those files), but also to put them into the 
same place on every host (so the same file on different clients will 
contain different information).

The problem is then I have to write a small bash script to read in the 
relevant data into each and every cfengine variable I want to define.

So I have cracked getting the data easily onto each client, the problem 
is getting it easily into CFEngine.

Cheers,

Marco

Scott Lackey wrote:
>     The granular per-host configuration solutions are always difficult 
> with cfengine. I don't know that this should be a part of cfengine, as 
> doing host configs does not scale any easier than system administration 
> without cfengine at all.
>      I've been trying to up a system where groupfile data is stored in a 
> database and pulled via cfengine at the time of execution in order to 
> centralize group membership data and facilitate reporting, which really 
> doesn't exist right now. If I have time to finish it, it might be useful 
> in solving some of the problems of keeping up with individual host 
> configurations.
>
>
> On 3/8/06, *Marco van Beek* < mvanbeek@supporting-role.co.uk 
> <mailto:mvanbeek@supporting-role.co.uk>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Everyone,
>
>     I have a suggestion for CFengine. It would be nice to be able to have a
>     plain text config file with variables, which could be read by a client
>     on a host by host, and/or class by class basis.
>
>     The data would be read in by CFEngine (probably set in cfagent.conf) and
>     would be available to all subsequent cf files being processed.
>
>     I did something a while ago because I wanted to read the same data in
>     Perl as PHP for a project I have been dabbling with.
>
>     Anyway, an example config plus working Perl code is below. It would save
>     me having to use complicated bash code to extract data from a plain
>     text
>     file. I have a config file per host which means I can define each boxes
>     purpose outside of CFEngine, which makes it easier to maintain.
>
>     Cheers,
>
>     Marco
>
>
>     ==============================================================
>     EXAMPLE CONFIG FILE
>     ==============================================================
>
>     #######################################
>     # Cross language config file for SSiS #
>     #######################################
>     # Comments are allowed    #
>     # White space is allowed  #
>     # syntax is 'key = value' #
>     ###########################
>
>     ...
>
>     #########
>     # MySQL #
>     #########
>
>     mysql_server = localhost
>     mysql_datasource = dbi:mysql:ssis
>     mysql_database = ssis
>     mysql_username = ssis
>     mysql_password = ssis
>     mysql_palm_gluetable = PDA_Sync
>     mysql_ldap_gluetable = LDAP_Sync
>
>     ########
>     # LDAP #
>     ########
>
>     ou = ou=SSiS
>     dc = dc=supporting-role,dc=co,dc=uk
>     ldap_bindas = uid=ssis,ou=People,dc=supporting-role,dc=co,dc=uk
>     ldap_password = secret
>     ldap_server = localhost
>     ldap_port   = 389
>     ldap_version = 3
>
>     ===============================================================
>     PERL CODE TO EXTRACT FROM CONFIG AND DUMP INTO ARRAY
>     ================================================================
>     my %settings;
>     open(CONFIG,"/etc/ssis-config");
>     while(<CONFIG>)
>              {
>              chomp;                  # no newline
>              s/#.*//;                # no comments
>              s/^\s+//;               # no leading whitespace
>              s/\s+$//;               # no trailing whitespace
>              next unless length;     # Anything left?
>              my ($var, $value) = split(/\s*=\s*/,$_, 2);
>              $settings{$var} = $value;
>              }
>     close CONFIG;
>
>     my $mysql_datasource            = $settings{"mysql_datasource"};
>     my $mysql_username              = $settings{"mysql_username"};
>     my $mysql_password              = $settings{"mysql_password"};
>     my $mysql_palm_gluetable        = $settings{"mysql_palm_gluetable"};
>     my $public_user                 = $settings{"public_user"};
>     my $Memo_user                   = $settings{"Memo_user"};
>     my $ToDo_user                   = $settings{"ToDo_user"};
>     my $Address_user                = $settings{"Address_user"};
>     my $Datebook_user               = $settings{"Datebook_user"};
>     ==================================================================
>
>
>     _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> --
> -Scott