CFEngine Glossary
CFEngine Glossary
- Agent
- A piece of software that runs independently and automatically to carry out a task (think software robot).
Inn CFEngine, the agent is called
cf-agent and is responsible for making changes to computers.
- Amber host
- A host that has repaired more than 20% of its scheduled promises in the past 5 minutes.
(See yellow host.)
- Body
- A promise body is the description of exactly what is promised (as
opposed to what/who is making the promise). The term `body' is used in
the CFEngine syntax to mean a small template that can be used to
contribute as part of a larger promise body.
- Bundle
- In CFEngine, a bundle refers to a collection of promises that has a name.
- CDP
- Content Driven Policy. A way of simplifying the way users provide
information to CFEngine about policy by hiding the overhead of policy
coding. A CDP is a set of promises that is designed to solve a
particular task in a standard way. Users provide only a little data in
the form of a simple spreadsheet of data in a table.
- CFEngine
- The name of the CFEngine Company, as well as the name of the Software. CFEngine comes from
a contraction of `ConFiguration Engine'.
- CFEngine 3.x
- Major version 3 of the CFEngine software, started in 2008 and going up
to the present day. This comes in several editions, both Open Source and Commercial.
- CFEngine Community Edition
- Free and Open Source edition of the CFEngine software, published under the GPL3 license,
and optionally under the COSL license.
- CFEngine Community Open Promise-Body Library
- A collection of standard definitions that is open to the user community for comment and standardization.
- CFEngine Constellation
- An enterprise edition of CFEngine, that is designed to scale to huge
systems by using a federated design. Constellation allows better handling
of groups (i.e. constellations of objects) in a network.
- CFEngine Enterprise Editions
- Refers to commercial (paid) editions of the CFEngine software, published under the COSL license.
- CFEngine Nova
- The lowest level enterprise edition of CFEngine, that automatically creates a simple `star network'
mangement model for hosts in an environment.
- ChangeLog
- A file used to describe the changes made since the last version of the software.
- CMDB
- A Configuration Management Database. A term coined as part of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
as an outgrowth of an inventory database.
- CMS
- Content Management System. A kind of editor for maintaining something (often web pages).
- Code branch
- The development of software is a branching process. At certain times,
the software code splits into different versions following different
paths. Each path needs to be maintained separately for a while. This
often happens when a release is made, because one wants to freeze the
development of a public release (allowing nevertheless for some minor
bugfixes), while continuing to add features to a branch leading to
future versions.
- COPBL
- CFEngine Community Open Promise-Body Library (abbrev: CFEngine standard library).
A collection of standard definitions.
- COSL license
- The Commercial Open Source License used for the CFEngine
- CSS
- Cascading Style Sheets. Part of Web technology used to describe page design.
- Diff
- A `diff' is a report (originally that generated by the UNIX
diff command) that
details the differences between two files. The term is often used as slang meaning a file comparison.
- GPL3
- The GNU Public License, version 3.
- Green Host
- A host for which more than 80% of all promises are kept.
- GUI
- Graphical User Interface.
- Host
- UNIX terminology for a computer the runs `guest programs'. In practice, `host'
is a synonym for `computer'.
- Hub
- A software component in CFE Nova and CFE Constellation that works as a
single point of management in a local `star-network'. The term hub is
sometimes used to mean policy distribution server, but more commonly a
running
cf-hub process that does report collection from all CFEngine
managed hosts. The
term hub means the centre of a wheel, from which multiple spokes
emerge.
- Knowledge Map
- A master index of all the information known about a CFEngine managed environment, represented as
a set of web pages with an interactive interface based on a `semantic web'. The CFEngine Mission Portal provides a
web-based interface for browsing this knowledge map index.
- Mission
- The mission refers to the raison d'\hat etre of an organization. CFEngine's
task is to support this mission by keeping a set of promises for its IT infrastructure.
- Mission Portal
- The name given to the user interface used in commercial CFEngine editions, where
all reports and progress summaries are kept.
- Modular license
- A license granting partial functionality to an Enterprise Edition of CFEngine.
- LDAP
- The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. A kind of `phone book' service providing information
about persons and computers in an organization.
- Libraries
- A library generally refers to collection of standardized CFEngine code
that can be reused in different scenarios and environments. This might
be bundles of promises, or reusable body-parts.
- Packages
- Software binaries or executable files. The CFEngine company compiles and tests software
into packages suitable for different platforms.
- Platforms
- This usually refers to an operating system type, e.g. Linux (in its many flavours), or
Windows, etc. Platforms are described using short identifiers, e.g. RH5, REL5, SuSE 11, SLES, etc.
- Knowledge Map
- Content portal containing datacentre information, privately managed
knowledge resources and CFEngine documentation.
- PCI compliance
- Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of
requirements designed to ensure that ALL companies that process, store
or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment.
- Promise
- The CFEngine software manages every intended system outcome as `promises' to be kept.
A CFEngine Promise corresponds roughly to a rule in other software products, but importantly
promises are always things that can be kept and repaired continuously, on a real time basis,
not just once at install-time.
- Policy
- A policy is a set of intentions about the system, coded as a list of
promises. A policy is not a standard, but the result of specific
organizational management decisions.
- Semantic web
- A form of web content in which hyperlinks always explain the meaning of the
information they point to, in relation to the
subject of interest. Semantic web technologies include RDF, Topic Maps etc.
- Server
- A term used in many different ways, riddled with confusion. A server
is strictly a piece of software that runs on some computer in
order to perform a service, e.g. a web server is a program that
makes a computer part of the World Wide Web. For historical reasons,
certain computers are referred to as servers, especially when kept in
datacentres because such computers often run services. In CFEngine,
cf-serverd
is a software component that serves files from one computer to another.
All computers are recommended to run cf-serverd, making all computers CFEngine servers,
whether they are laptops, phones or datacentre computers.
- Service Catalogue
- A kind of directory of `services' provided in an environment. The concept of a service
could be anything from a human help desk to a machine controlled email subsystem.
In the CFEngine Mission Portal, the service catalogue (for maintenance) treats promise-bundles of promises as low-level
maintenance services, and relates these to high level business goals.
- SOX Compliance
- Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance. An audited accolade for financial data security
required by all companies on the New York stock exchange.
- Standard library
- The CFEngine Standard library is a collection of standardized definitions (see COPBL).
- Template
- A template is an incomplete piece of CFEngine code, with blanks to fill in. It is often
a policy fragment that can be re-used in different scenarios. This is often used interchangeably
with the term `library'.
- UI
- User interface.
- Yellow host.
- See amber host.