Quick installation of CFEngine Enterprise

Getting started tutorial

Recommended for new users

If you're a new user, or haven't already read it, we highly recommend following along with the getting started tutorial in our documentation. Through it, you'll learn how to install CFEngine, explore the Web UI and reports for the first time, download ready to use modules, and more:

Getting started with CFEngine.

The quick install shell script

The quick install script can be useful for more experienced users who are familiar with CFEngine and just want to install the latest LTS release on a couple of Linux machines. If you are interested in installing CFEngine on other platforms, or other versions of CFEngine, see cf-remote or the enterprise download page. Follow the steps below to install and bootstrap CFEngine:

Check the requirements

CFEngine hub

64-bit machine with a recent version of Linux
2gb of memory
100mb of disk space per host you plan to connect to
Ports 5308 and 443 must be open & hostname must be set

CFEngine client

32/64-bit machine with a recent version of Linux
20mb of memory
20mb of disk space per host you plan to connect to
Port 5308 must be open

Find the IP address of both the client and the hub because you'll have to put them into the commands wherever we refer to HUB and CLIENT.

Note: If your hosts have multiple interfaces (multiple IP addresses and multiple networks) it matters which one you use. When we add these IP addresses to the configuration below, it works like a firewall - allowing those IPs and blocking other IPs. In practice, this means that if you are testing with 2 hosts in for example AWS, you'll want to use the private IP address for both the hub and the client for it to work correctly.

Set up the hub

Run the following command to download and automatically install the CFEngine hub package:

wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/cfengine.packages/quick-install-cfengine-enterprise.sh  && sudo bash ./quick-install-cfengine-enterprise.sh hub

If your hub and client are on different /16 subnets, meaning the first 2 numbers in their IP addresses (IPv4 dot-decimal notation) are not identical, you will have to specify which IP addresses/subnets are trusted. See the documentation for more details, or simply replace HUB and CLIENT with their respective IP addresses and run this command on the hub:

echo '{"variables": {"default:def.acl": ["HUB", "CLIENT"]}}' | sudo tee /var/cfengine/masterfiles/def.json

With the hub package of CFEngine correctly installed and configured, you must start CFEngine, by bootstrapping the hub to itself. Replace HUB with the appropriate IP address and run this command:

sudo /var/cfengine/bin/cf-agent --bootstrap HUB

Set up the client

Run the following command on any machine you'd like to connect to the hub; it will download and automatically install the agent.

wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/cfengine.packages/quick-install-cfengine-enterprise.sh  && sudo bash ./quick-install-cfengine-enterprise.sh agent

Now bootstrap the agent to the hub. Just like above, replace HUB in the following command:

sudo /var/cfengine/bin/cf-agent --bootstrap HUB

Set up and log in to CFEngine Mission Portal

In any modern browser, visit the IP address of your hub from step 2 above. You should see the Mission Portal first-time setup page where you need to set a secret code to proceed with the setup. The code was printed in the output of the Hub installation command you ran on the hub in step 2. To obtain a new code, you can run the following command on the hub machine:

sudo cf-hub --new-setup-code

Screenshot of the Mission Portal first-time setup page where you need to set a secret code to proceed with the setup.

Once you have set the secret code, you will be prompted to create an admin user.

Screenshot of the Mission Portal complete first-time setup page where you need to set admin credentials.

What's next?

Getting started with CFEngine tutorial series (Skip the cf-remote install command since you've already installed CFEngine).
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