Re: Prepackaged configurations

[Stephen Smoogen <smoogen lanl gov>]

On Sun, 23 May 2004, Carwyn Edwards wrote:

>Stephen Smoogen wrote:
>
>> We do many of the same things with CFengine.
>
>CFengine is one of the few other "good" solutions. We're optimistic 
>about the Ximian/Novell/Suse merger producing something nice in this 
>area too.
>

It would be useful to get an idea of the other ones are. I started to do
some research on it a couple of months ago, but work has been constant
for a bit. [I am just hoping that the Ximian+Novell+SuSE merger doesnt
end up a bad case of heart-burn.]


>> The one thing I have found is that the syntax of CFengine really
>>needs a good washing.
>
>Same with LCFG :-( We're in the thinktank stage prior to a rewrite.
>

My thinking has been something a bit more pythonish to try and use 
something that people might be familiar with. [Plus it gets in the craw 
of the fellow here who says to write it in Guile/LISP syntax so that it 
would be so obvious to use.] 

There are parts of cfengine that I really like as most of my interests
are in dependable secure services and configuration management. The idea
of working towards a computer immunology sort of appeals to that.  
However, my years at company <name withheld> also make me want
something that can be implemented and commercially acceptable.

I do know of someone who is trying to do a 'clean-up' of the CFengine
syntax at the moment to try and make the parser smarter. 

-- 
Stephen John Smoogen		smoogen lanl gov
Los Alamos National Lab  CCN-5 Sched 5/40  PH: 4-0645
Ta-03 SM-1498 MailStop B255 DP 10S  Los Alamos, NM 87545
-- You should consider any operational computer to be a security problem --