The CFEngine application is fully contained within the /var/cfengine directory tree. Here is a quick breakdown of the directory structure and some of the files and functions associated with each subdirectory.

/var/cfengine/bin

Agents

  • cf-agent: Executes the promises.cf file; ensures that all promises are being kept
  • cf-key
  • cf-promises: Verifies CFEngine's configuration syntax
  • cf-runagent: Contacts a remote system to run cf-agent

Daemons

  • cf-execd: Starts the cf-agent process at a specified time interval.
  • cf-monitord: Collects system statistics
  • cf-serverd: Provides network services; used to distribute policy and data files
  • runalerts.sh: Updates Mission Portal status and activates alert actions (Enterprise only)
  • cf-hub: Responsible for collecting reports from remote agents. (CFEngine Enterprise only)

See also: CFEngine component applications and daemons

Directories for policy files

/var/cfengine/modules

Location of scripts used in commands promises.

/var/cfengine/inputs

Cached policy repository on each CFEngine client. When cf-agent is invoked by cf-execd, it reads only from this directory.

/var/cfengine/masterfiles

Policy repository which grants access to local or bootstrapped CFEngine clients when they need to update their policies. Policies obtained from /var/cfengine/masterfiles are then cached in /var/cfengine/inputs for local policy execution. The cf-agent executable does not execute policies directly from this repository.

Output directories

/var/cfengine/outputs

Directory where cf-agent creates its output files. The outputs directory is a record of spooled run-reports. These are often mailed to the administrator by cf-execd, or can be copied to another central location and viewed in an alternative browser. However, not all hosts have an email capability or are online, so the reports are kept here.

/var/cfengine/reports

Directory used to store reports. Reports are not tidied automatically, so you should delete these files after a time to avoid a build up.

/var/cfengine/state

State data such as current process identifiers of running processes, persistent classes and other cached data.

/var/cfengine/lastseen

Log data for incoming and outgoing connections.

/var/cfengine/cfapache

/var/cfengine/config

/var/cfengine/httpd

/var/cfengine/lib

Directory to store shared objects and dependencies that are in the bundled packages.

/var/cfengine/master_software_updates

/var/cfengine/plugins

/var/cfengine/ppkeys

Directory used to store encrypted public/private keys for CFEngine client/server network communications.

/var/cfengine/share

/var/cfengine/software_updates

/var/cfengine/ssl

Log Files in /var/cfengine

On hosts, CFEngine writes numerous logs and records to its private workspace.

CFEngine Enterprise provides solutions for centralization and network-wide reporting at an arbitrary scale.

  • cf3.[hostname].runlog

A time-stamped log of when each lock was released. This shows the last time each individual promise was verified.

  • cfagent.[hostname].log

Although ambiguously named (for historical reasons) this log contains the current list of setuid/setgid programs observed on the system. CFEngine warns about new additions to this list. This log has been deprecated.

  • cf_notkept.log

In CFEngine Enterprise, a list of promises, with handles and comments, that were not kept.

  • cf_repair.log

In CFEngine Enterprise, a list of promises, with handles and comments, that were repaired.

  • promise_summary.log

A time-stamped log of the percentage fraction of promises kept after each run.

Database files in /var/cfengine

state/cf_classes.lmdb

A database of classes that have been defined on the current host, including their relative frequencies, scaled like a probability.

state/cf_lastseen.lmdb

A database of hosts that last contacted this host, or were contacted by this host, and includes the times at which they were last observed.

state/cf_lock.lmdb

A database of active and inactive promise locks and their expiry times. Deleting this database will reset all lock protections in CFEngine.

Note: Locks are purged in order to maintain the integrity and health of the underlying lock database. When the lock database utilization grows to 25% locks 4 weeks or older are purged. At 50% locks 2 weeks or older are purged and at 75% locks older than 1 week are purged.

state/cf_changes.lmdb

The database of hash values used in CFEngine's change management functions.

state/nova_agent_execution.lmdb

state/nova_track.lmdb

state/performance.lmdb

A database of last, average and deviation times of jobs recorded by cf-agent. Most promises take an immeasurably short time to check, but longer tasks such as command execution and file copying are measured by default. Other checks can be instrumented by setting a measurement_class in the action body of a promise.

Process (AKA PID) files in /var/cfengine

The CFEngine components keep their current process identifier number in pid files in the work directory.

  • cf-execd.pid
  • cf-hub.pid
  • cf-monitord.pid
  • cf-serverd.pid

Sockets in /var/cfengine

  • cf-hub-local

Datafiles in /var/cfengine

  • policy_server.dat

IP address of the policy server

Binary files in /var/cfengine

  • randseed

git in /var/cfengine/bin

  • bin/git
  • bin/git-cvsserver
  • bin/gitk
  • bin/git-receive-pack
  • bin/git-shell
  • bin/git-upload-archive
  • bin/git-upload-pack

Misc. in /var/cfengine/bin

  • bin/curl
  • bin/lmdump
  • bin/openssl
  • bin/rpmvercmp
  • bin/rsync
  • bin/runalerts.sh

Postgres in /var/cfengine/bin

  • bin/clusterdb
  • bin/createdb
  • bin/createlang
  • bin/createuser
  • bin/dropdb
  • bin/droplang
  • bin/dropuser
  • bin/initdb
  • bin/pg_basebackup
  • bin/pg_config
  • bin/pg_controldata
  • bin/pg_ctl
  • bin/pg_dump
  • bin/pg_dumpall
  • bin/pg_isready
  • bin/pg_receivexlog
  • bin/pg_resetxlog
  • bin/pg_restore
  • bin/postgres
  • bin/postmaster
  • bin/psql
  • bin/reindexdb
  • bin/vacuumdb

Not verified

  • state/history.lmdb

CFEngine Enterprise maintains this long-term trend database.

  • state/cf_observations.lmdb

This database contains the current state of the observational history of the host as recorded by cf-monitord.

  • state/cf_state.lmdb

A database of persistent classes active on this current host.

  • state/nova_measures.lmdb

CFEngine Enterprise database of custom measurements.

  • state/nova_static.lmdb

CFEngine Enterprise database of static system discovery data.

  • state/cf_procs A cache of the process table. This is useful for measurement promises about processes.

  • state/cf_rootprocs A cache of the process table of processes owned by the root user. This is useful for measurement promises about processes.

  • state/cf_otherprocs A cache of the process table for processes not owned by the root user. This is useful for measurement promises about processes.

  • state/file_changes.log

A time-stamped log of which files have experienced content changes since the last observation, as determined by the hashing algorithms in CFEngine.

  • state/*_measure.log

CFEngine Enterprise maintains user-defined logs based on specifically promised observations of the system.

  • state/env_data

This file contains a list of currently discovered classes and variable values that characterize the anomaly alert environment. They are altered by the monitor daemon.

  • /var/logs/CFEngine-Install.log

This file contains logs related to the CFEngine package installation.