Abraxas has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hey everyone!

I have the problem that I want to set attributes on files and directories on a Unix system. Doing this manually takes a long time since there are many directories on the system.

Is there a framework where I can define attributes for

The framework should work with a configuration file (XML or plain text) and report any action to a log file.

Would be great, if you could give me some advice.

Thanks in advance!

  • Comment on Open source framework for Unix file attributes

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Re: Open source framework for Unix file attributes
by andreas1234567 (Vicar) on May 29, 2008 at 07:40 UTC
    Consider cfengine. It's an incredibly powerful tool. I use it (among other things) to ensure files have the correct ownership and permissions: 
    files:
   any::
     /usr/bin/perl m=755 o=root act=warnall
     /opt/etc/cfengine/modules/cpanModVer.pl m=755 act=fixall
     /etc/my.cnf  m=644 o=mysql act=fixall

    [download]
    For example, the above will (when invoked) ensure that /etc/my.cnf is owned by user mysql and has file permissions 664.

    Update: cfengine is free, open source software released under the GNU General Public License. cfengine works with both Unix, Linux and Windows platforms.

    --
    No matter how great and destructive your problems may seem now, remember, you've probably only seen the tip of them. [1]
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      Thanks for your help! CFEngine looks interesting but surely needs some time to get familiar with - and is not for free, unfortunately. I will have a closer look at it and see, if it is useful for me...
[reply]
        Quite contrary Abraxas, cfengine is as free as it gets: 
        $ head -14 cfengine-2.1.21/COPYING | tail -4

                    GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
                       Version 2, June 1991

        [download]
        --
        No matter how great and destructive your problems may seem now, remember, you've probably only seen the tip of them. [1]
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Open source framework for Unix file attributes
by ysth (Canon) on May 29, 2008 at 07:40 UTC
[reply]

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