getting started guide

[josephholsten]

I'd love to start playing with configi, noticed there isn't an obvious tutorial, introduction or getting-started-guide on http://configi.org

I think it would be great to at least say how to run http://configi.org/#example-policy

I expect most folks would also want a little more guidance than http://configi.org/modules/modules/template.html has.

I'd love to throw together a doc showing a standard "deployment" pattern:

• install package
• template a config
• start a service
• add a crontab

and "user" pattern:

• add group
• add users
• set ssh keys
• set passwords
• manage sudoers file

Does that sound useful?

[golgote]

👍

[tongson]

Hello!

Indeed it's going to be useful. Just ask here if you have questions or if you encounter any problems.

Thank you very much.

[josephholsten]

Is a simple make supposed to generate the compiled cfg-agent? I'm seeing a bin/cfg-agent.lua, but not the compiled form.

[tongson]

Change the DEFAULT_GOAL in the top-level Makefile to release. That should compile the executable.

[josephholsten]

Hmm, where's the best place to document that for regular users? A README? The download page?

[tongson]

The DEFAULT_GOAL was/should be release. I held off too long for 2.0.0. I will change that now.

... and done.

[josephholsten]

awesome, on to the next!

so I thought I'd see what happened when I ran the example policy on my ubuntu box:

file.directory"/tmp/dir"{
  comment = "Create directory if running on Gentoo",
  context = fact.osfamily.gentoo,
     mode = 0700,
   notify = "touch"
}

yum.present"mtr"{
  context = fact.osfamily.centos
}

file.absent"/tmp/dir"{
  notify = "touch"
}

file.touch"/tmp/dir"{
  comment = "Handle 'touch' notifications. This is only executed once.",
   handle = "touch"
}

And I'm seeing:

$ cfg-agent -f policy.lua 
[string "file.directory"/tmp/dir"{..."]:3: attempt to index a function value (field 'osfamily')
stack traceback:
	[string "file.directory"/tmp/dir"{..."]:3: in main chunk
	(...tail calls...)
	[string "cfg-core.cli"]:136: in function 'cfg-core.cli.main'
	[string "cfg-core.cli"]:285: in function 'cfg-core.cli.opt'
	[string "bin.cfg-agent"]:22: in local 'func'
	[string "cfg-agent"]:36: in main chunk

My lua is a bit rusty, do I need to explicitly call the fact function? Am I supposed to set fact myself?

Also, it appears http://configi.org/reference/factid/ will need some love after I'm done here ;-)

[josephholsten]

ah, $ cfg-agent -F -f policy.lua!

[josephholsten]

one thing I'm noticing: occasionally I get what appear to be complete hangs. With -v, I get as far as Applying policy: cfg/policy.lua and then nothing. Not seeing any logging or process death with a SIGTERM.

pstree seems to indicate sadness coming from dpkg-preconfigure:

$ pstree 24594
cfg-agent───apt-get───sh───dpkg-preconfigu─┬─dpkg-preconfigu
                                           ├─postfix.config.
                                           └─whiptail

[tongson]

Sadly, I haven't tested in Ubuntu/Debian recently.

I'll fire up a Debian container for testing.

[josephholsten]

no worries, it seems to be from the mutt package.

BTW, I've been looking around at other curricula and I'm going to start with a straightforward port of https://learn.chef.io/tracks/infrastructure-automation.

I'm also considering making this happen inside a docker container, so if there's a platform you're most comfortable with, I can just use that.

[tongson]

Sound good.

About needing to pass -F. There's a bug that's requiring the factid module when it shouldn't be. I'll look into that.