The Test LCFG Server

The test LCFG server (lcfgtest.inf.ed.ac.uk) serves two purposes:

1. It does major rebuilds more quickly than the main LCFG servers, because it compiles far fewer profiles and because no machines get their profiles from it, making apache less loaded. It can therefore give a quicker turnaround time to a CO or CSO trying to diagnose mass profile build problems.
2. It's used by the MPU to test out experimental configurations for the LCFG servers.

Its configuration is identical to that of the main LCFG servers, with these exceptions:

Fewer profiles

It compiles far fewer profiles than the main LCFG servers do. This is done by using the rsync module lcfg-master::lcfgtest in the server.fetch resource, instead of the lcfg-master::lcfginf module used on the main LCFG servers. The lcfgtest module takes its list of machines from a file on lcfg-master called /var/rfedata/lcfgtesthosts. This is editable using rfe. Edit the list of hosts with the command rfe lcfgtesthosts. The list contains comments explaining the various exclusions and inclusions in the list.

Not used by clients

By default DICE's LCFG clients do not consult the test server for their XML profiles. To override this for a particular machine, mutate that machine's client.url resource to the value http://lcfgtest.inf.ed.ac.uk/profiles.