Ideally Blue - Filed under 'cfengine'

Jan 4 / 1:16pm

CFEngine posts moving to cf-learn.info

I have been blogging about CFEngine here for a while (it's my most frequent tag). As of now, I'm starting to post all CFEngine-related posts to http://blog.cf-learn.info/, which is part of the web site for my book "Learning CFEngine 3". In this way, I intend to group all CFEngine-related content over there. I will still cross-post relevant things here, but if you want to stay fully up to date on my CFEngine writings, please subscribe over there as well.

I hope to see you around!

Filed under // announcements blog cf-learn cfengine

Dec 27 / 7:41pm

cf-cmd: A command-line tool for running CFEngine snippets

After building the typical "test bundle" scaffolding in an editor for the hundredth time, I decided to do something about it. The result is the cf-cmd command.

via blog.cf-learn.info

A little useful script I wrote for making it easier to test CFEngine code snippets. Follow the link to see the full details.

Filed under // cfengine tools

Dec 15 / 2:22am

New website for "Learning CFEngine 3"

I'm happy to announce that the website for my book is now live at http://cf-learn.info/.

In this website you will find:

General information about the book.
A discussion forum for any type of questions, feedback or suggestions about the book.
Downloadable code examples from the book, plus (over time) many other new examples.
List of Errata, and access to the Errata system at O'Reilly
A blog devoted to the book and to CFEngine.

The site is fairly empty at the moment (the blog, the forum and the errata page are live, I encourage you to participate, particularly if you have purchased the Early Release version of the book and want to provide any sort of feedback), but content will grow over time.

Check it out! And of course, let me know what you think.

Filed under // announcements book cf-learn cfengine

Dec 6 / 3:03pm

"Learning CFEngine 3" Early Release now available -use AUTHD to get 40-50% off

Learning CFEngine 3

Automated system administration for sites of any size

By Diego Zamboni

via shop.oreilly.com

My upcoming book "Learning CFEngine 3" is now available as an Early Release, which includes (for now) the first four chapters of the book. You can use the code AUTHD to get 40% off the print book, or 50% off the ebook version.

Go get yours! And of course, I'd be happy to receive any feedback you have.

Filed under // book cfengine oreilly

Nov 24 / 5:56pm

"Security in the Third Wave of IT Engineering"

Today I gave a presentation at UNAM's 2011 Computer Security Conference in Mexico City. Below you will find my presentation (done using prezi.com, follow this link if you can't see it below). You can also get the PDF version.

Security in the Third Wave of IT Engineering on Prezi

What's New in CFEngine 3: Making System Administration Even More Powerful - O'Reilly Radar

CFEngine is both the oldest and the newest of the popular tools for automating site administration. Mark Burgess invented it as a free software project in 1993, and years later, as deployments in the field outgrew its original design he gave it a complete rethink and developed the powerful concept of promise theory to make it modular and maintainable.

via radar.oreilly.com

I contributed to this article by Andy Oram on CFEngine 3. It talks about the history of CFEngine 3, why it is a powerful tool for system administrators, and what is new in the latest releases of both the commercial and the open-source versions of CFEngine.

(disclaimer: I work for CFEngine AS)

Filed under // cfengine nova oreilly

Oct 25 / 10:53pm

"Introduction to CFEngine 3 Nova" webinar

A new version of CFEngine 3 Nova was released today, and to go with it, there will be a free webinar called "Introduction to CFEngine 3 Nova" on November 2nd. It will be presented by one of the members of the core CFEngine team, and it will be a great opportunity to learn more about the new and improved capabilities in this release. If you are interested in CFEngine and maybe thinking of going the commercial route, or you need more information to decide, make sure to attend!

A new version of CFEngine Community (3.2.3), was also released today.

Filed under // announcements cfengine nova

Oct 19 / 12:21am

New job, new book

Today I have two big announcements to make.

First, as of this week I have a new job, I am now working with CFEngine AS, the company that develops and maintains cfengine. As you know if you read my blog, I am a big fan of cfengine. It is a mature and able tool that provides extreme flexibility and power to system administrators. The company is full of energy and with very interesting projects to make cfengine even better and more popular than it is today. I am very happy to be working with such a talented team. I will be working with the Products and Services group in a variety of roles and projects, about some of which you may be able to read here as well.

Second, and not entirely unrelated, I have been working in the last few months in a book titled Learning CFEngine 3. The book will be published by O'Reilly, and should come out sometime early next year. I can't tell you how excited I am to be writing a book for O'Reilly! I have learned so much from O'Reilly books throughout the years, so it is truly an honor to be able to join such select company and to contribute something back to the community. The book is a personal project and not part of my job at CFEngine, although of course working at the mothership makes things much easier in many respects, and my new colleagues are incredibly supportive of this project.

So, that's it for now. Big changes and big projects. I am very busy and very excited, and will keep you posted on both fronts. Thank you for reading!

Filed under // announcements book career cfengine oreillly personal

Aug 5 / 2:31am

Installing cfengine on Mac OS X

Cfengine (tested 3.2.0) installs easily on OS X (tested 10.7), given that it's Unix. One problem I encountered was that it does not compile with the bundled version of Berkeley DB (it recognizes it during configure, but produces compilation errors). The solution is to use some other DB engine. I chose Tokyo Cabinet. Using homebrew, the process is simple

brew install tokyo-cabinet

After this, configure --with-tokyocabinet, and then compile and install as usual.

I have submitted a homebrew formula for cfengine. Once/if it gets approved, you should be able to run brew install cfengine to do all of the above automatically.

Update (2011/09/03): The cfengine homebrew formula has been accepted into the repository! You can now simply run "brew update; brew install cfengine" to get cfengine 3.2.0 installed.

Filed under // cfengine homebrew howto mac osx

Nov 24 / 11:30pm

Editing sshd configuration files with cfengine3

Here's a cfengine bundle that I wrote for editing the sshd configuration file by passing an array with the parameters. Using an array is a very elegant way of defining the values to set. The bundle also restarts sshd after any changes are made, unless the no_restarts class is defined.

The first gist contains the edit_sshd bundle itself, together with the set_config_values bundle that actually performs the editing job (this should go into a library file, I have it in my personal version of cfengine_stdlib.cf). The second file is a sample bundle showing how to use edit_sshd.

Filed under // cfengine ssh

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