Re: Bootstrapping

[Nate Campi]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 02:50:28PM -0800, John Sechrest wrote:
> Nate Campi <nate@campin.net> writes:
> 
>  % A surprising amount of configuration could be shared across sites,
>  % enabling networks to get up quickly, and run better. Consultants could
>  % come into networks they've never been on before, but quickly solve
>  % problems and roll out new services, since he/she already understands the
>  % cfengine setup.

<snip>

>  Right now, I am using Files to simulate what I need to get
>  as I reach thru all of this stuff.
> 
>  Like:
> 
>       TrustedKeyFrom = ( Readfile(/var/mln/trustedhosts,1000))
> 
>  instead of saying
> 
>       TrustedKeyFrom = ( My list of hosts goes here)
> 
>  In this way, I should be able to mail to you a cf.XXX file and
>  you should be able to put it into use.
> 
>  Mark mentions that there are CFengine Packages that can be built
>  which end up with seperate name spaces, so that sharing 
>  files does not lead to collisions in the name spaces of the classes.

Good work.

>  % This is what I'd want the community-contributed cfengine configs to come
>  % from - actual use, practices proven on real networks. It would need to
>  % be it's own project, with active contributers. I plan on starting it on
>  % my own, then seeing if people want to join in once I have something
>  % working to get at least a small network up from scratch. It would
>  % probably need to be a custom debian distro on a CD, to bootstrap the
>  % whole process from a gold server.
> 
>  This brings up many questions for me...
> 
>  A) Why would this not work as a component of the CFengine work that
>     is already going on?

Well I suppose I mean separate mailing list, so as not to bother this
list.

>  C) Do you care that there already is an ongoing project working
>     on the same issue? (We got our sourceforge project approved recently)

Cool. I thought hard about going exactly the way you're going, with
UML's, right in line with the "utility computing" buzzword being slung
around a lot in the press and vendor marketing materials.

I decided against it, since we can make configuration of real hosts
almost as easy, and get all their performance. I have a surprising
number of hosts lacking on CPU, DISK and memory resources, mostly mail
servers. I need every last ounce of capacity out of a lot of my hosts.
There are very expensive and modern hardware platforms, it's just that
we have large clusters of mail and web servers that work very, very
hard.
-- 
Nate

"To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence." - Samuel 
Clemens