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== The light-touch approach ==
There's a philosophy behind the way New World is set up. This is the "light touch approach" and goes like this:
Leave Debian-installed configurations and  defaults alone unless there is an actual operational or functional '''need''' to be addressed.
Thus:
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|Changes for cosmetic reasons
|No
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|Changes for management or administrative convenience
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Revision as of 07:25, 23 Haziran 2022

Guide to TechDocs for
administrators and content creators
Management and operation of systems Individual systems, applications and services

Grab-bag of unsorted topics

Page categories

Introduction

Sample image

For over twenty years the configuration of CSE's servers and lab computers has been managed by a home-grown product called conform. conform micromanaged the entire filesystem of each computer and handled the copying in of all configuration files, binaries, scripts, libraries, data files, etc, from a central repository called "the conformary" (and NFS server). conform is very powerful, but is also very labour intensive in regards to maintaining the conformary and the thousands of specification files which determine conform's actions. Also, being so old conform lacks many newer ideas such as pre- and post-install scripts. conform is part of the Old World.

The New World grew out a HoS-supported project to move as much CSE infrastructure as possible out of CSE's K17 data centre and into "the cloud", specifically Amazon's AWS. Early on, a decision was made that conform would be left behind and that all new servers and hosts set up in AWS would be managed some other way. This other way ended up being -- after a review of configuration management tools -- a split between cfengine and Debian's apt family of package manager utilities (apt, dpkg, apt-get, apt-file, etc.) In this split, apt handles all Debian package management (mainly installs and updates) and cfengine handles the rest, mostly configuration files.

Sample image #2

Debian was chosen because CSE's existing teaching platform was heavily based on Debian and the principle of least surprise was applied.

A bit more specifically, each New World host's filesystem is handled thusly:

Path Handled by
/etc Jointly managed by apt which mostly provides default versions of configuration files, and cfengine which installs CSE-specific versions of configuration files
/usr/local/extrafiles
/usr/local/extrapackages
/usr/local/debpkgs_lists
/usr/local/vmimages 		cfengine
/proc
/sys
/dev 		The kernel
/tmp
/var 		Whatever processes are running on the host
/export The kernel's nfsd (i.e., NFS server)
/import
/home 		The automounter
Everything else apt

Debian package management (apt)

Configuration management (cfengine)

The cfengine hub.

Devolving teaching-related software and configuration to CSE's teaching staff

The split between CSG's and teaching's bailiwicks

Differences between conform and cfengine

MediaWiki installation leftovers

MediaWiki has been installed.

Consult the User's Guide for information on using the wiki software.

Getting started

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