Alpine Configuration Framework

The Alpine Configuration Framework (ACF) is a mvc-style application for configuring an Alpine device. The primary focus is for a web interface - ACF's main goal is to be a light-weight MVC "webmin".

Why Haserl + Lua

Other competitors in the arena were Webmin, Ruby on Rails, PHP with templates.

A full webmin (Perl), RoR or PHP implementation each require several MB of installed code, and can have very slow startup times, especially when used in "cgi" mode. After evaluating many options, we found that Lua has the following advantages:

It is small (typically ~200KB of compiled code)
It compiles and runs much faster than PHP, Perl or Ruby
It provides a "normal" scripting language with features similar to PHP, perl, java, awk, etc.

Haserl + Lua provides a 'good enough' toolset to build a full-featured web application.

Why ACF is MVC

The MVC design pattern is used to separate presentation information from control logic. By MVC we mean:

Model - code that reads / writes a config file, starts / stops daemons, or does other work modifying the router.
View - code that formats data for output
Controller - code that glues the two together

Note the lack of words like: HTML, XML, OO, AJAX, etc. The purpose of ACF's MVC is simply to separate the configuration logic from the presentation of the output.

The flow of a single transaction is:

start -> execute requested function in controller, optionally reading/writing a file using functions in the model -> execute the view to format the output -> end

Every transaction follows this pattern. For ACF developers, the focus should be on getting a model that does a proper job of abstracting the config file into useable entities and then building a controller that presents useable "actions" based on the model. The presentation layer should be last on the priority list.

For good background information on what ACF attempts to do, please see Terence Parr's paper "Enforcing Strict Model-View Separation in Template Engines" at http://www.cs.usfcs.edu or the local copy of the pdf.

ACF Developer's Guides

mvc.lua reference - mvc.lua is the core of ACF
mvc.lua example - build a simple (command-line) application
acf www-controller reference - ACF www application functions
acf www-controller example - webify the above examples
ACF_how_to_write - Step by step howto for writing acfs
ACF core principles - Things that are standard across the application
LPOSIX - Documentation for the Lua Posix functions
ACF Libraries - Document the libraries and common functions
Writing ACF Views - Guide for writing a view
Writing ACF Controllers - Guide for writing a controller
Writing ACF Models - Guide for writing a model

ACF Layout

ACF has support for multiple skins.
Only a few skins are available. Feel free to contribute in programming css-stylesheets for ACF.

Howto contribute

First download ACF using svn or installing available acf's using apk_add.
Easiest is if you download latest Alpine ISO, boot a box on that and then run 'setup-alpine' and 'setup-webconf -a' that way you get a running envionment fast and easy!
Some example skins are available

/usr/share/acf/www/ice/
/usr/share/acf/www/snow/

Make a new skin-folder

mkdir /usr/share/acf/www/myskin

Create a css file called as the folder.

touch /usr/share/acf/www/myskin/myskin.css

Now you can start editing your myskin.css.
If you have ACF running on a computer, you can browse to this ACF-page and switch to your knew skin (called myskin) and see the results of your chagens.

Pack your myskin-folder, containing your css-file (and images, if there is any).
Send this patch to acf@lists.alpinelinux.org

ACF Modules

Networking

Networking related modules.

DHCP server

Status:	Ready for betatest
Summary:	Configure isc-dhcp.

Edit global settings
Edit subnets
Generate config-files

Firewall

Status:	Ready for betatest
Summary:	Configure shorewall.

Show program status
Guided configuration
Expert configuration
Show logfile

NTPD

Status:	Ready for betatest
Summary:	Configure timeserver openntpd.

Show program status
Guided configuration
Expert configuration
Show logfile

OpenVPN

Status:	Ready for alphatest
Summary:	Configure timeserver openntpd.

Show available configs
Show config-details
Guided configuration ToDo
Edit config in expert mode
Show certificate information ToDo
Show logfile

DNS

Status:	Work in progress
Summary:	Configure tinydns.
ToDo:	Caching/Hosting/for both Internet and Inside firewall nets

View current DNS-configuration/information
Edit config-files

Fetchmail

Status:	Work in progress
Summary:	fetchmail configuration/Relay host/store and forward.

Show program status
Guided configuration
Expert configuration

Applications

Application related modules

Web Proxy

Status:	Ready for betatest
Summary:	Configure squid.

Show program status
Guided configuration

Content Filter

Status:	Ready for betatest
Summary:	Configure dansguardian.

Show program status
Guided configuration

Snort

Status:	Ready for betatest
Summary:	Configure snort.
ToDo:	Figure out what acf-snort needs to do more.

Show program status
Show alert-list
Expert configuration

System

System/Other related modules

Interfaces

Status:	Work in progress
Summary:	Local interface management

Show configured interfaces
Edit/delete interfaces
Add new interfaces

LBU

Status:	Ready for betatest
Summary:	Saves your settings to floppy/usb/other media.

Show program status
Show unsaved changes
Guided configuration
Expert configuration
Commit/Save changes to media

General healt

Status:	Ready for betatest
Summary:	Show status on your running system.

Show system status
Show storage status
Show network status
Show modules status
Show proc status

System logging

Status:	Ready for betatest
Summary:	Configure syslog.

Show program status
Guided configuration
Expert configuration

Logfiles

Status:	Ready for betatest
Summary:	View/Delete/Download logfiles.

Delete logfiles
View logfiles
Download logfiles

Skins

Status:	Ready for use
Summary:	Switch skin.

Switch skin

DevTools

DevTools is a (set of) ACF(s) that could come in handy when developing ACF.

SVN status

Status:	Ready for use
Summary:	Different information/functions related to the SVN-tree

svn info (Shows overview of the svn-tree on the svn-server)
svn update (Fetch all available updates)
svn diff (Shows difference on your computer and on svn-server)
svn status (Shows whats changed since last 'svn update')
svn log (Shows the changelog 1week back in time)

ToDo

Still not started modules.

Routing

This is for remote/multi box routing, bgp...etc

VPN

Needs to be split into an administrative end for letting people connect to you(rogue warriors,personal laptop size connectivity) and VPN connectivity to other sites(remote office or location). These are to configured differently.

Dialup

Start/Stop Dialup connection

Dialup/PPPoE

Configure Dialup/PPP/PPPoE connectivity. Maybe other Internet connections that aren't ethernet-which is Interfaces

Source Manager

Way to change the /etc/apk/apk.conf

Package Manager

Way to say what to upgrade-install-remove...apk_*

Password Manager

Local password changer

Diagnostic

Stats/Resource use/maybe graphs-rrd