cfagent - system configuration agent

/usr/local/sbin/cfagent [options]

cfengine is a language based system specifically designed for testing and configuring unix-like systems attached to a TCP/IP network. You can think of cfengine as a very high level language -- much higher level than Perl or shell. A single statement can result in many hundreds of links being created, or the permissions of many hundreds of files being set. The idea of cfenginge is to create a single file or set of configuration files which will describe the setup of every host on your network.

cfagent runs on every host and parses one file (or file-set), the configuration of the host is checked against this file and, if desired, any deviations are fixed. cfagent reads a configuration file called cfengine.conf in a directory pointed to by the environment variable CFINPUTS. cfagent performs host integrity and security checks as well as installing and repairing system configuration.

-a (--sysadm)

Print only the name of the system administrator then quit.

-b (--force-net-copy)

Forces net copy even if remote server is localhost

-c (--no-check-files)

Do not check access rights on file systems

-C (--no-check-mounts)

Check mount points for consistency. If this option is set then directories which lie in the ”mount point“ area are checked to see whether there is anything mounted on them.

-d (--debug)

Enable debugging output. (parsing -d1,run, -d2, lite -d3)

-D (--define)

Define a compound class symbol of the form alpha.beta.gamma.

-e (--no-edits)

Suppress file editing.

-E (--enforce-links)

Globally force links to be created where plain files or links already exist. You have to use this in interactive mode and answer a yes/no query before cfagent will run like this.

-f (--file)

Parse filename after this switch. By default cfagent looks for a file called cfengine.conf in the current directory.

-h (--help )

Help information. Display version banner and options summary.

-H (--no-hard-classes)

Prevents cfagent from generating any internal class name information. Can be used for emulation purposes.

-i (--no-ifconfig)

Do not attempt to configure the local area network interface.

-I (--inform)

Switches on the inform output level, whereby cfagent reports everything it changes..

-k (--no-copy)

Do not copy/image any files.

-K (--no-lock)

Ignore locks when running.

-l (--traverse-links)

Normally cfagent does not follow symbolic links when recursively parsing directories. This option will force it to do so.

-L (--delete-stale-links)

Delete links which do not point to existing files (except in user home directories, which are not touched).

-m (--no-mount)

Do not attempt to mount file systems or edit the filesystem table.

-M (--no-modules)

Ignore modules in actionsequence.

-n (--recon,--dry-run,--just-print)

No action. Only print what has to be done without actually doing it.

-N (--negate,--undefine)

Cancel a set of classes, or undefine (set value to false) a compound class of the form alpha.beta.gamma.

-p (--parse-only)

Parse file and then stop. Used for checking the syntax of a program.

-P (--no-processes)

Do not test the existence of processes, signal processes or optionally restart them.

-q (--no-splay)

Switch off host splaying (sleeping).

-s (--no-commands)

Do not execute scripts or shell commands.

-S (--silent)

Silence run time warnings.

-t (--no-tidy)

Do not tidy file systems.

-u (--use-env)

Causes cfagent to generate an environment variable CFALLCLASSES which can be read by child processes (scripts). This variable contains a summary of all the currently defined classes at any given time. This option causes some system 5 systems to generate a Bus Error or segmentation fault.

-U (--underscore-classes)

When this option is set, cfagent adds an underscore to the beginning of all hard system classes (like _sun4, _linux etc.) This can be used to avoid naming conflicts if you are so injudicious as to name a host by the name of a hard class. Other classes are not affected.

-v (--verbose)

Verbose mode. Prints detailed information about actions and state.

-V (--version)

Print only the version string and then quit.

-x (--no-preconf)

Do not execute the cf.preconf net configuration file.

-X (--no-links)

Do not execute the links section of a program.

-w (--no-warn,--quiet)

Do not print warning messages.

Mark Burgess, Oslo University College

http://www.cfengine.org