Cfengine

Infobox Software
name = Cfengine



caption =
developer = Mark Burgess
latest_release_version = 2.2.8
latest_release_date = Aug 5, 2008
latest_preview_version =
latest_preview_date =
operating_system = Cross-platform
platform = Unix, Linux, Windows
genre = Configuration management System administration Network management
license = GNU General Public License
website = [http://www.cfengine.org www.cfengine.org]

Cfengine is a policy-based configuration managementsystem written by Mark Burgess at Oslo University College. Its primary function is to provide automated configuration andmaintenance of computers, from a policy specification.

The cfengine project was started in 1993 as a reaction to thecomplexity and non-portability of shell scripting for Unixconfiguration management, and continues today. The aim was to absorbfrequently used coding paradigms into a declarative, domain-specificlanguage that would offer self-documenting configuration.

Portability

Cfengine provides an operating system independent interface to Unix-like host configuration. It requires some expert knowledge to deal with peculiarities of different operating systems and can perform maintenance actions across multiple Unix-like servers. Cfengine can be used on Windows servers as well, and is quickly becoming a widely accepted Fact|date=March 2008 method of managing a large number of Unix servers that run heterogeneous operating systems e.g. Solaris, Linux, AIX and HPUX.

Research-based tool

Shortly after its inception,cfengine inspired a field of research into automated configurationmanagement. The cfengineproject claims to attempt to place the problem of configurationmanagement in a scientific framework. Its author Mark Burgess has developed arange of important theoretical tools and results to talk about the problem,and has written several text books and monographs explaining these.

Convergence

One of the main innovations of cfengine is the idea that changes incomputer configuration should be carried out in a "convergent" manner.This means that each change operation made by the agent should have thecharacter of a fixed point. Rather than describing thesteps needed to make a change, cfengine describes the final state in whichone wants to end up. The agent then ensures that the necessary steps aretaken to end up in this "policy compliant state". Thus, cfengine can be run again andagain, whatever the initial state of a system, and it will end up with a predictableresult.

User base

Cfengine is used in both large and smallcompanies, as well as in many universities and governmentalinstitutions. Sites as large as 11,000 machines are reported, whilesites of several thousand hosts running under cfengine are common.

See also

* Comparison of open source configuration management software
* Anomaly-based intrusion detection system
* Host-based intrusion detection system

External links

* [http://www.cfengine.com/ Cfengine.com]
* [http://www.cfengine.org/ Cfengine.org]
* [http://cfwiki.org/ cfwiki.org: The Cfengine Wiki]
* [http://www.gnu.org/software/cfengine/ Introduction to cfengine] at gnu.org
* [http://del.icio.us/genehack/cfengine genehack's bookmarks tagged with cfengine] on del.icio.us