Tips using embedded cfengine tool

sipXecs 4.6 now bundles the open source tool cfengine to apply configuration to a system and manage services. This is a role that sipXsupervisor played and will still play until eventually all configuration deployment is migrated to cfengine.

Here are some helpful tips with working with cfengine.

"classes" are just booleans

If you're coming from a programming background, classes usually mean OOP. In cfengine, think of them as booleans or flags you define.

How to develop cfengine scripts independently

Like a shell script, many times it makes sense to develop your cfengine script outside of sipXecs. Here is the simplest script you could write, and how you could execute it.

# this is a comment
bundle agent mytest {
  vars:
    any::
      "foo" string => "bar";

  commands:
    any::
      "/bin/touch"
        args => "/tmp/bar";

  classes:
    any::
      "myflag" expression => fileexists("/tmp/foobar");

  files:
    any::
      "/tmp/foo"
        create => "true";

  reports:
    linux::
      "foo variable is $(foo)";
    myflag::
      "/tmp/foobar does exist";
    !myflag::
      "/tmp/foobar does *not* exist";
}

body common control {
  bundlesequence => {
    "mytest"
  };
}

And how to run script

cd /var/cfengine/inputs
cf-agent -IKvf mytest.cf