[[!meta title="cdist - usable configuration management"]]

![cdist-logo](cdist-logo.png "cdist logo")

the KISS principle and is being used in small up to enterprise grade
environments.
cdist is an alternative to other configuration management systems like
[cfengine](http://www.cfengine.org/),
[bcfg2](http://trac.mcs.anl.gov/projects/bcfg2),
[chef](http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/)
and [puppet](http://www.puppetlabs.com/).

 * Browse the **documentation** for the [latest version](man/latest) or [all versions (>= 2.0.4)](man)
 * Read how to [[install or update cdist|install-update]]

### OS support

cdist was tested or is know to run on at least

 * [Archlinux](http://www.archlinux.org/)
 * [Debian](http://www.debian.org/)
 * [CentOS](http://www.centos.org/)
 * [Fedora](http://fedoraproject.org/)
 * [Gentoo](http://www.gentoo.org/)
 * [Mac OS X](http://www.apple.com/macosx/)
 * [OpenBSD](http://www.openbsd.org)
 * [Redhat](http://www.redhat.com/)
 * [Ubuntu](http://www.ubuntu.com/)
 * [XenServer](http://www.citrix.com/xenserver/)


## Support

### IRC

You can join the development ***IRC channel***
[#cstar on irc.freenode.net](irc://irc.freenode.org/#cstar).

### Mailing list

Bug reports, questions, patches, etc. should be send to the
[cdist mailing list](http://l.schottelius.org/mailman/listinfo/cdist).

### Linkedin

If you have an account
at [Linked in](http://www.linkedin.com/),
you can join the
[cdist group](http://www.linkedin.com/groups/cdist-configuration-management-3952797).

### Commercial support

You can request commercial support for cdist from
[my company](http://firma.schottelius.org/english/).

## Used by

If you're using cdist, feel free to send a report to the mailing list.
Interesting information are for instance

 * Which services do you manage?
 * How many machines do you manage?
 * What are the pros/cons you see in cdist?
 * General comments/critics

### Nico Schottelius, Systems Group ETH Zurich, local.ch and privately

Yes, I'm actually eating my own dogfood and currently managing

 * [plone](http://plone.org/) (cms)
 * [moinmoin](http://moinmo.in/) (wiki)
 * [apache](http://httpd.apache.org/) (webserver)
 * [kerberos (mit)](http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/) (authentication)
 * [nss-pam-ldapd](http://arthurdejong.org/nss-pam-ldapd/) (authentication)
 * [ircd-hybrid](http://www.ircd-hybrid.org/) (chat)
 * [stunnel](http://stunnel.mirt.net/) (SSL tunnel)
 * [mercurial-server](http://www.lshift.net/mercurial-server.html) (version control)
 * [xfce](http://www.xfce.org/) (lightweight desktop environment)
 * [slim](http://slim.berlios.de/) (graphical login manager for X11)

with cdist on more than **60** production machines of the
[Systems Group](http://www.systems.ethz.ch) at the
[ETH Zurich](http://www.ethz.ch) as well at home.

### Steven Armstrong, CBRG ETH Zurich

The CBRG is managing most of their compute clusters with cdist.

[[!tag cdist unix]]