Nightly packages are very useful for testing new features of CFEngine. Right now (as of August 2020), nightly packages can be used to test out these new features:
Compliance Reports. Mission Portal Dark Mode. New host info page with variable pinning and copy buttons. Note that these features are in development, some parts may be unfinished or buggy. Nightly packages are not supported and should not be used in production environments.
Contributor and CFEngine Champion, Jon Henrik Bjørnstad, developed a tool for encrypting files using CFEngine host keys, called cf-keycrypt. Thank you to Jon Henrik and all of our contributors for helping improve the CFEngine project. Our developer, Vratislav Podzimek, recently took some time to review the cf-keycrypt code, and made many improvements and fixes. The most notable changes were:
Switched to hybrid encryption (payload is encrypted with randomly generated AES key, AES key is encrypted with RSA key).
About a year ago, I wrote a small python script to automate installing and bootstrapping CFEngine on virtual machines in AWS. It had some hard coded IP addresses that I needed to update when I spawned new hosts, but other than that, it worked well. During manual testing, it saved me a lot of time instead of having to do things manually. Deploying CFEngine normally consists of these steps:
Determine what CFEngine package to use.
cf-runagent is a component for triggering remote agent runs using the CFEngine network protocol. It does not allow for arbitrary commands to be executed, but rather asks the remote host to run the policy it already has. To trigger cf-runagent from other systems or web interfaces, you want to be able to run it as non-root.
Install and bootstrap I will use cf-remote to set up a demo hub running CFEngine Enterprise 3.
CFEngine no longer supports the conversion tool for upgrades from CFEngine version 2 to 3. Manual intervention was still needed after its usage, and a simple, direct translation can be a poor choice that misses the opportunity for improvement. We recommend following the Upgrading from CFEngine 2 to 3 guide, alternatively in combination with Professional Services from CFEngine to provide a ‘best effort’ conversion.
CFEngines 1 & 2 CFE3 Community Core CFE Nova World-wide deployment Consistent extensible syntax Introducing Knowledge Management Technology leader Enhanced configuration modelling Scalable reporting Brought convergent repair Lists, patterns, methods Native windows support User extensible without scripts SQL, LDAP integration Fault tolerance features CFDB searchable knowledge bank Generalized package model Spreadsheet model for content driven policies Simplified installation and upgrade Packaging Product integration Support
