ISconf
ISconf is a tool to execute commands and replicate files on all nodes of a computer park. The nodes need not to be up; the commands will be executed when they boot. The system has no central server so commands can be launched from any node and they will replicate to all nodes. This makes it a distributed configuration management tool. The actual instructions are defined using Makefiles.
Theory
ISconf comes from the "InfraStructure administration" movement which created and defined most of the OS-side backgrounds (in theory terms) of what is now making up the Devops sphere.
Major Versions
The major version in common use apparently were ISconf2 and ISconf3, while ISconf4 stayed in a very long beta period. It had in fact been finished and put to use in larger environments but due to the delay saw limited community adoption.
- ISconf 1
- ISconf 2 (early 200x?) written by Steve Traugott tried to adhere to the principles of infrastructure administration better.
- ISconf 3 (2002) was a rewrite of version 2 by Luke Kanies. (Unknown to what extent he contributed to it)
- ISconf 4 was mostly written by the original author, Steve Traugott.
Trivia
Luke Kanies later switched to CFengine2, until finally authored and released Puppet. This makes ISconf definitely the grandfather of Puppet.
See also
External links
- ISconf's web site
- Lukes description of ISconf 3 theoretical background and goals
- Theory section and mailing list archives for system management automation
- Github Repository for ISconf4
- O'reily interview with Luke Kanies