cdist-stages(7) =============== Nico Schottelius NAME ---- cdist-stages - How the configuration is built DESCRIPTION ----------- Starting the execution of deployment with cdist-deploy-to(1), cdist passes through different stages, each can be triggered and debugged on its own. STAGE 1: TARGET INFORMATION RETRIEVAL -------------------------------------- In this stage information is collected about target using so called explorers. Every existing explorer is run on the target and the output of all explorers are copied back into the local cache. The results can be used by manifests and types. See cdist-explorers(7) and see cdist-cache(7). - Second stage: Initial manifest run The initial manifest (see cdist-manifests(7) is run, which is done by cdist-manifest-init(1). This run creates an internal database in cconfig format (see cdist-config-layout(7), that contains all objects configured for the specific host. In this stage, no conflicts may occur, i.e. no object of the same type with the same id may be created. You can trigger the first stage part using cdist-manifest-init(1). - Third stage: Execution of types Every object is checked whether its type has an init script (see cdist-types(7)). If the type of the object has an init script, it is run. This init script may generate additional objects. For instance the object __apache/www.test.ch is of type __apache, which may contain an init script, which creates new objects of type __file. The newly created objects are merged back into the existing tree. No conflicts may occur during the merge. A conflict would mean that two different objects try to create the same object, which indicates a broken configuration. - Fourth stage: Code generation The "gencode" binary of the types for every existing object is called to generate code that will be executed on the target host. This binary should create code to be executed on the target on stdout. If the gencode binary fails, it must print diagnostic messages on stderr and exit non-zero. A description of what the generated code may/must/should do can be found in cdist-types-gencode(7). - Fifth stage: The resulting code is transferred to the target host and executed, the run of cdist-deploy-to(1) ends. SEE ALSO -------- cdist(7), cdist-deploy-to(1), cdist-config-layout(7), cdist-manifest-init(1) COPYING ------- Copyright \(C) 2010-2011 Nico Schottelius. Free use of this software is granted under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3).