Re: Cfengine and package management databases

[Chris (Ducky) Chapin]

I think I mentioned this already not too long ago, but here it is for
completeness:

We had a small test environment here using dpkg and apt to both track
class inheritance (nearly empty packages, with maybe importable cfengine
scripts) and patch levels (some class packages might "require" higher
versions of binary packages, etc). Dpkg/apt was ported to Solaris and
during install all the Sun packages would get imported into that database
so within cfengine we could, for instance, do something based on the
SUNWusx class being active.

Our test worked ok, except we determined the packaging process was
prohibitive for our small group - we're basically 3 or 4 admins creating
baselines for 2000+ hosts for other, more frontline groups to build off
of. And we also found that cfengine didn't like activating the more than
500 classes we were using. =)

Something in-band (ie, cfservd) to distribute the dependency hierarchy
would be better, as would a simpler method to create said hierarchy.
cfengine has some of the tools built-in to describe the interdependencies,
but not things like conflict resolution.

A full SQL database is overkill and also adds complexity to the
configuration system.

--

 Christopher 'Ducky' Chapin                        ducky@qualcomm.com
 Unix Systems Administrator - Qualcomm, Inc.           (858) 651-5433
 IT Host Services - AE-209F

On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Systems Administrator wrote:

>       Hi all.  It seems like a number of people are using cfengine with
> some kind of package management database.  Are there any packages that
> have that kind of setup already bundled up for use, or is everyone just
> rolling their own on an ad-hoc basis?
>
>       I'm already aware of the link below, and think it could be adapted
> to my purposes, but I was wondering whether anyone else has anything else
> which might already be closer to what I want.
>
> http://astro.uchicago.edu/~davidr/cfengine-tools/lisa-paper_html/
>
>       I guess the main differences I'm hoping for are:
> 1.    Uses the cfengine classes to decide what software goes on which
>       machines.  I think this is possible, but am not 100% sure.
> 2.    Uses PostgreSQL (not a hard change, I think)
>
>       :)
>
> --
> Tim Nelson
> Systems Administrator
> Sunet Internet
> Tel:?+61 3 5241 1155
> Fax: +61 3 5241 6187
> Web: http://www.sunet.com.au/
> Email: sysadmin@sunet.com.au
>
>
>
>
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