Automating Local Configurations with cfengine

One of the most difficult tasks a system administrator must perform is maintaining hundreds of configuration files on different machines in a consistent manner. This task becomes even more difficult if the system uses different platforms, where the format of these configuration files and even “standard” Unix commands are completely incompatible.

cfengine attempts to solve this problem by providing an expert system for manipulating local machine configurations. The program includes a high-level language used to dictate configuration changes, and it manages the actual platform-dependent implementation of those changes. This section gives a brief introduction to cfengine's capabilities and configuration. ...

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