This is a work in progress configuration management system using Haskell and Git. Propellor enures that the system it's run in satisfies a list of properties, taking action as necessary when a property is not yet met. The design is intentionally very minimal. Propellor lives in a git repository. You'll typically want to have the repository checked out on a laptop, in order to make changes and push them out to hosts. Each host will also have a clone of the repository, and in that clone "make" can be used to build and run propellor. This can be done by a cron job (which propellor can set up), or a remote host can be triggered to update by running propellor on your laptop: propellor --spin $host Properties are defined using Haskell. Edit config.hs to get started. There is no special language as used in puppet, chef, ansible, etc.. just the full power of Haskell. Hopefully that power can be put to good use in making declarative properties that are powerful, nicely idempotent, and easy to adapt to a system's special needs. Also avoided is any form of node classification. Ie, which hosts are part of which classes and share which configuration. It might be nice to use reclass[1], but then again a host is configured using simply haskell code, and so it's easy to factor out things like classes of hosts as desired. ## security Propellor's security model is that the hosts it's used to deploy are untrusted, and that the central git repository server is untrusted. The only trusted machine is the laptop where you run propellor --spin to connect to a remote host. ## bootstrapping and private data To bootstrap propellor on a new host, use: propellor --spin $host That clones the git repository to the remote host. The repository on the remote host will have its origin set to the local git repository's remote.origin.url (or remote.deploy.url if available). This way, when propellor is run on the remote host, it can contact whatever central git repository you're using. Private data such as passwords, ssh private keys, etc should not be checked into a propellor git repository in the clear, unless you want to restrict access to the repository. Which would probably involve a separate fork for each host and be annoying. Instead, propellor --spin $host looks for a privdata/$host.gpg file and if found decrypts it and sends it to the host using ssh. To set a field in such a file, use: propellor --set $host $field The field name will be something like 'Password "root"'; see PrivData.hs for available fields. ## using git://... securely It's often easiest for a remote host to use a git:// or http:// url to its origin repository, rather than ssh://. So, to avoid a MITM attack, propellor checks that any commit it fetched from origin is gpg signed by a trusted gpg key, and refuses to deploy it otherwise. This is only done when privdata/keyring.gpg exists. To set it up: gpg --gen-key # only if you don't already have a gpg key propellor --add-key $MYKEYID In order to be secure from the beginning propellor --spin is used to bootstrap propellor on a new host, it transfers the local git repositry to the host over ssh. [1] http://reclass.pantsfullofunix.net/