The appliance command line interface (CLI) enables the administrator to apply a common set of configuration settings contained in one or more centrally located global configuration text files to multiple appliances on the network.
Later, by manually editing or reconfiguring one or more configuration settings in the global configuration files, the administrator effectively reconfigures those settings for all appliances using these files.
Every configuration setting that you view or make through the Setup tab pages in the Appliance Manager is recorded as one or more parameters in configuration files on the appliance.
Two configuration files exist by default or are automatically generated by the appliance software as you install the appliance and configure it through the Appliance Manager Web pages or the CLI:
When the appliance software boots up, the local appliance determines its active configuration by reading default.cfg settings first and local.cfg settings last. Settings in the last read file, local.cfg, overwrite any conflicting settings in any previously read files, in this case, default.cfg.
To view local changes made by administrators to the appliance, enter the following CLI command:
show $local.cfg:config.*
The administrator can create customized global configuration text files containing appliance settings to be stored on a source server or a source appliance and applied uniformly to a set of target appliances. The administrator can then configure those target appliances to periodically read the settings in the global configuration files and incorporate the global configuration file settings into each target appliance's active configuration.
Global configuration file settings are meant to be applied by each appliance after the default.cfg settings, but before its local.cfg settings. If the settings in the global configuration file conflict with the local.cfg settings, local.cfg settings are applied. Settings in the last-applied configuration file overwrite any conflicting settings in previously applied configuration files.
The following table describes how centrally configured settings in global configuration files can be applied to all appliances in a network.
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The settings in global configuration files consist of a version number and a list of configuration option strings and values specifying the appliance settings that the administrator wants to apply globally.
The first line of the file specifies the version of the appliance with which the option strings that follow are compliant. The syntax of the version line is:
#!Config Vx.xxx
where x.xxx is the appliance version number.
The option strings are the same strings used with the set command when configuring an appliance through the CLI, the same option strings that appear if you enter show config.* in the CLI console.
The syntax for each setting is:
config.option_string =valid_appliance_value
For example, a global configuration file named globlbw.cfg might contain the following streaming settings, which the administrator might want to apply uniformly to all the appliances in the network:
config.streaming.rulelist.bandwidth = // allow group ourgroup and bitrate 0k - 140k allow group theirgroup and bitrate 0k - 56k allow time 7am - 7pm and bitrate 0k - 56k deny any // config.streaming.rulelist.cacheability = // no-cache server-name www.mine.com no-cache not group finance no-cache bitrate 1Mbps //
For a complete listing of CLI config.* option strings, see the configuration option reference table in the Command Line Reference.
Global configuration files are text files. They can be created either manually or by redirecting the output of the CLI show command.
Using a text editor on a server where you want to locate your global configuration files, you can manually create a global configuration file and its entries if you are familiar with the CLI option strings.
Using the CLI show -clone command, redirect the show -clone command output of an existing appliance configuration to a configuration file on an FTP or HTTP server. For example:
show -clone > ftp://srvrz:cfg/multicache1.cfg
Then edit that file to contain only the settings that you want to apply globally over multiple appliances.
Note
If you manually create a global configuration file, begin the file with the following version line string: #!Config Vx.xxx where x.xxx is the appliance version number that your option strings are complaint with.
Using the settings of a source appliance that has already been configured through the Appliance Manager, you can generate a configuration file by completing the following steps.
To append to rather than overwrite values for matching settings specified in earlier configurations, edit your later configuration file settings, replacing the = character with the += character combination.
In the following table, Example 1 shows the config.auth.users setting in global configuration file A overwritten by the matching setting in global configuration file B. Example 2 shows the config.auth.users setting in global configuration file A appended to by the matching setting in global configuration file B.
If you manually edit your configuration files, you can use the # character to set off comment lines. For example:
# The following section sets bandwidth allocation # Do not change!
Note
Comment lines starting with the # character in the source global configuration file will be stripped out of the active configuration that is pulled or cloned to target appliances. Restore operations from target appliances to global configuration source files will overwrite all comment lines.
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Part No. 210-00317
File: multch11.htm
Last updated: 11/12/02 16:57:16