# Configuration management

Protocol version 2

Revision 7.0
Wichert Akkerman
The Debian Project

    wakkerma@debian.org

Joey Hess
The Debian Project

    joeyh@debian.org

1998 1999 2000 Wichert Akkerman and Joey Hess

This text is copyright by the authors under the terms of the BSD license, sans advertising clause.

## Introduction

Configuration management is quickly becoming a very important issue. Having programs which do cool stuff is great, but we need to store their configuration as well. We see more and more different configuration systems being introduced all the time, which is not very practical. This text introduces a general configuration management system which flexible enough to be used for all kinds of applications.

## Configuration Data

### The configuration space

All configuration information is stored in what I call the configuration space. This is a database with a special design which resembles the method we look at configuration information. This is done by defining a hierarchy of information. Each package receives its own space in the hierarchy. Each package is free to use a flat space, or divide its space further into sub-hierarchies. If multiple packages share a common purpose they may use a shared toplevel hierarchy, preferably with the same name as a shared (virtual) package name (for example, both mutt and elm can use `mail-reader`, strn and nn could use `news-reader`). This shared tree can also be used as a default, ie a variable `news-reader/nntpserver` can be used by strn if `strn/nntpserver` does not exist.

Each variable in the configuration space has some information associated with it. Most importantly, it has a value. It also may have a set of flags and a set of substitution data.

## Templates

Each variable in the configuration space is associated with some meta-data. The minimum meta-data associated with a variable is: long and short description, type, and default value. The meta-data is essentially static; the protocol described below does not allow it to be changed.

The meta-data exists in a space with similar naming properties to the configuration space described above, and typically one variable in the configuration space will have associated with it metadata with the same name in the meta-data space. However, this need not be the case; many different variables can all be associated with the same meta-data. In effect the meta-data serves as a template for the configuration variable.

### Template information

So, what do we need to store in a variable template? Of course we need a name to identify the template. Template names are made up of components separated by the character `/' (slash). Each component is limited to alphanumerics and `+' `-' `.' `_' (plus, minus, full stop, underscore).

A type is also needed so data can be verified. Here is a table of common types; implementations are free to make up more. &type_table;

Of course a default value is useful as well, and finally we need a description of the variable. We actually use two descriptions: a short one (limited to 50 characters or so) and an extended one.

The extended description may be word-wrapped by the FrontEnd. To make separate paragraphs in it, use `.` on a line by itself to separate them. Text in the extended description that is prefaced by additional whitespace will not be wordwrapped. Both the description and extended description may have substitutions embedded in them. Ie, `${foo}`. These will be expanded when the descriptions are displayed.

This information is stored in a template file that consists of stanzas in a rfc-822 compliant format, separated by blank lines. Here is an example:

    Template: hostname
    Type: string
    Default: debian
    Description: unqualified hostname for this computer
     This is the name by which this computer will be known on the network. It
     has to be a unique name in your domain.

    Template: domain
    Type: string
    Description: domain for this computer
      This is the domain your computer is a member of. Typically it is
      something like "mycompany.com" or "myuniversity.edu".

For localization, the description field (and also the choices field of a select or multiselect type question, and the default field of a string or password type question) can be supplemented with versions for other languages. These are named Description-ll, Description-ll_LL, Description-ll_LL.encoding and so on.

## Configuration frontends

Of course applications can use the database and meta-database directly. But there should be a simple system to interact with the user that is simple and modular enough to be used with systems ranging from shell-scripts to Fortran programs. To do this we define a general frontend that can be driven using the simplest and most common form of communication: stdin and stdout.

Using this simple form of communication gives us a great advantage: it becomes easy to change the frontend. That means the user can switch between a console, a graphical or even a web-interface at will.

Besides being able to switch between types of frontends there is another important aspect of a good user interface: user friendliness. We have to account for the fact that some users know more then others and change the information we show or ask from the user. We do this by giving everything a priority and giving the user control over what kind of questions he wants to see. Experts can request to see everything, while novices get the option of only seeing only important questions. Finally there is an option to simply skip all questions, so it becomes possible to do automatic configuration using default values or values that are downloaded into the database from a remote location. This makes it simple for example to install and manage clusters or lab rooms or do installs for dummies.

## Communication with the frontend

This communication between the frontend and the application should be as simple as possible. Since most IO implementations default to line-buffered IO, so we use a simple language where each command is exactly one line.

After sending each command to stdout, the client should read one line from stdin. This is the response to the command, and it will be in the form of a number followed by whitespace and an optional string of text. The number is the status code, while the text provides additional information. &statuscodes_table;

Here are the currently supported commands.

&command_list;

## Debian install-time configuration

Debian has had an excellent packaging system for a long time now. There is one thing missing though: a system to handle the configuration of packages so we don't have to stop the installation every time a package needs some data from the user or wants to show some information.

We want to make a package which does not break older dpkg's, and we want to be able to get the configuration information before the package is unpacked. To do this we add two new files, config and templates, to the control.tar.gz of a .deb package. Since all installation-software (apt, dselect, dpkg) download the package before installing it, we can extract this before the package is unpacked.

The templates file lists the templates for variables that this package uses. This is done using the format as used in the example in the section on templates.

The config-file contains a new element, which I call the configmodule. This is a program that will determine the configuration before the package is unpacked. This means it is usually run before the preinst, and before the package is unpacked!

Please see debconf-devel(7) for details.

This is done to make sure that we can use the desired configuration in the preinst if necessary.

How does the configmodule get its information? The configmodule needs a way to retrieve information from the configuration space, ask the user for information if necessary, etc. But we don't want to implement a user interface for each package. To solve this we use a separate frontend as specified in the section on frontends.