It is useful to run cfengine on a daily basis from a cron
script.
Use a line like the following one to start cfengine each night. (Note the
curiosities of older BSD cronfiles).
0 0 * * * /usr/local/lib/cfengine-3.0/bin/cfwrap cfdaily
where cfdaily is a script which looks something like
#!/bin/sh CFINPUTS=/usr/lib/cfengine/inputs /usr/local/bin/cfengine
You will need to include full path names to the scripts in the cron file.
The syntax for using cfwrap is as follows.
host% cfwrap mycommand host% cfwrap cfengine host% cfwrap script_which_sets_CFINPUTS_and_calls_cfengine
When you run cfengine it normally only generates output if something is
wrong which needs your attention. If you are running cfengine as a
cron job then the results of each job are normally mailed back to
you -- or to root. But this causes problems in a networked
environment, since mail to root is usually redirected to some central
place which local system administrators cannot access. Moreover, you
have no way of knowing which host sent the information. The solution is
to use a script as a wrapper. The script simply executes some command
and collects the output from that command into a file which then gets
mailed to some address.
The address to be mailed to is obtained directly from cfengine by
calling it with the -a switch. The name of the host running
cfengine is prepended to the file before it is sent making it easy to
see where each message originated. This is also transferred to the
subject header of the mail message. cfwrap calls cfmail
in order to mail the result of the command back to the system
administrator.
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