Open Infrastructure

h1. How to configure servers with cdist

h2. Introduction

We are using "cdist":https://www.nico.schottelius.org/software/cdist/ to manage our system configurations. This software has originally been developped by ungleich-folk, but now has a much broader community.

h2. The ungleich cdist environment

Our environment is composed of 4 repositories:

* ungleich-intern/cdist-workdir: meta-repository used as convenience helper to run access types across our 3 type repositories.

* ungleich-intern/dot-cdist: internal (= private) and historic cdist repository. Contains our manifests.

* ungleich-public/cdist-ungleich: public (infrastructure transparency, sharing with the community) ungleich types that are too specific to be upstream to core cdist or cdist-contrib.

* ungleich-public/cdist-contrib: community-managed repository for types that do not fit into core-cdist.

h2. Applying changes to servers

When a server needs to be (re-)configured, login to control.ungleich.ch with ssh agent forwarding enabled. The username is the same as the customer you want to apply configurations for. If you want for instance to configure the ungleich infrastructure, proceed as follows:

<pre>

# Login to configuration server

ssh -A ungleich@control.ungleich.ch

# Ensure cdist configuration is up-to-date

cd ~/.cdist

git pull

# Configure

cdist config -vv <hostname>

</pre>