Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Configuring a System
Using Distributed Systems Administration Utilities
Chapter 3146
A new tool in this toolkit is Configuration Engine (cfengine). cfengine
is a popular open source tool for configuration synchronization. It allows
policy-based or goal-based configuration management that allows the
administrator to define the management actions to be applied to groups
of systems so those systems reach a desired state.
cfengine is a client/server based tool. A central configuration master
system or policy server hosts a configuration policy file which defines the
management actions to be performed on each managed client. The
configuration master also hosts the “golden image” files, or reference
copies of files that should be distributed to the clients. The administrator
can use cfengine to perform tasks such as:
• Ensure that client systems are using a correct set of configuration
files by copying over reference files or directories.
• Disable inappropriately configured files on the client.
• Check file permissions, ownership, and track checksum changes.
• Edit files.
• Execute specified shell commands on each client.
• Check for processes or signal processes.
• Check for specific filesystem mounts.
A Configuration Synchronization Wizard (csync_wizard) is available to
help the administrator quickly configure cfengine for managing a set of
distributed systems or configuring it as a highly available service in a
Serviceguard cluster.
cfengine Overview
The administrator starts by defining a central system or Serviceguard
cluster to act as the master configuration server or policy server. The
Configuration Synchronization Wizard (csync_wizard) is a user-friendly
front-end to the initial configuration process. This central system will
house the master policy files (for example, cfagent.conf) which define
the desired configuration policies, and also reference copies or master
copies of files that should be distributed to the managed clients.
Each managed client copies down the master copies of the policy files
from the central configuration server and evaluates its current state
versus the desired state defined by the policy file. Any differences cause
configurations rules to run in order to resynchronize the client.