Configuration for GNU / News: Recent posts

Believe it or not, development continues on the Config4GNU project, though at a very slow pace due to little time commitment. Since the last news posting, there have been multiple file releases of the WBEM-based config system, and various updates to the website. Development of the older, XML-based system has stagnated.

The file releases have consisted of:
* owperlprovider - a Perl provider interface for OpenWBEM -- this lets OpenWBEM run providers written in Perl
* config4gnu-wbem - various providers written in Perl... development has been started on providers for BIND, Nagios, and Samba
* cimbrowser - a front-end interface for configuration via WBEM... read more

The Config4GNU project is about finding and creating ways to unify and simplify management of configuration on GNU/Linux systems. The Config4GNU website contains lots of information about an XML-based approach to configuration management. This is not in sync with what I've personally been working on, which is using the DMTF-defined WBEM and CIM standards to manage configuration data. Read on to find out more.... read more

In recent weeks, a number of messages have been posted to various mailing lists including Gnome Setup Tools and freedesktop.org that mention CFG. We are very excited about this jump in interest in our project.

Much of these posts have focused on what CFG brings to the table and how various related projects can work together. Check out our mailing list for much of the discussion and feel free to share your own thoughts. Stay tuned for more news on increased cooperation with other projects!

For those tracking the Config4GNU project, you may have been disappointed in the past few months as there has been no news and very little traffic on the mailing list. This can mainly be attributed to the project leaders--Jason Long and Justin Yackoski--finishing their classes and graduating. Justin also got married in June (congratulations to him!) so that's been keeping him busy.

Meanwhile, I, Jason, have been focusing on doing some research into some new directions and ideas. A few weeks ago I announced on the mailing list my intention of looking into WBEM for configuration. WBEM (Web-Based Enterprise Management) is a set of standards for managing enterprise networks. After some initial difficulties, I did figure out how to write an OpenWBEM provider in C++. In addition, I feel like I'm starting to have some understanding of what WBEM can do for configuration, although I will not go into detail here.... read more

Config4GNU, a project to provide a single unified interface to system configuration data on Linux computer systems, is still quite active. A lot has happened since the last news update, including the writing of a new implementation guide, using a new XML library, and finding a new way to do scripting language bindings.

In late November, all of December, and even some of January, a lot of work has been focused on an "implementation" document, which is a guide for how various parts of the system will work and how they fit together. It is a more detailed document than anything we have done so far. Understand that it is a constant work-in-progress; there are many parts that are out of place, inconsistent, or already out-of-date as the project changes. It can be viewed at http://config4gnu.sourceforge.net/docs/implementation/.... read more

Config4GNU's various prototypes are coming nicely. The GTK GUI (see our screenshots) can now modify and save config files, and the core layer has some major improvements. We now have a PHP interface which is slightly less functional than the GTK UI. We've added a new developer and received various contributions. Overall, we've made significant progress since the last update and things seem to be right on schedule for finishing the alpha stage by the end of the year.... read more

Config4GNU, a project to provide a single unified interface to system configuration data on Linux computer systems, is currently analyzing existing configuration file formats in order to best design a data model that can represent all of the various types of configuration. Work is currently focused on creating a systems requirements specification document and a document analyzing the various configuration file formats found on Linux.... read more

The Config4GNU Project has been started! The Config4GNU project (C4G for short) will work towards creating a unified configuration interface for configurating system applications and computer settings under GNU operation systems (e.g. Linux). The project will not attempt to replace any existing configuration methods, but rather provide a single, unified interface to the configuration data. This will allow the creation of GUI and web-based front-ends to configure things. This may sound a lot like existing projects, such as LinuxConf and Webmin, but there are some important differences. The project is currently in the design stage and would appreciate feedback from the open-source community. Check out the project's website at http://config4gnu.sourceforge.net which has lots of information and rational for the project.