How To Install cl-consfigurator on Ubuntu

Posted on April 1, 2023 (Last modified on May 20, 2023 )

3 minutes • 613 words

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install cl-consfigurator on Ubuntu.

What is `cl-consfigurator`

cl-consfigurator is:

Consfigurator is a system for declarative configuration management using Common Lisp. You can use it to configure hosts as root, deploy services as unprivileged users, build and deploy containers, install operating systems, produce disc images, and more. Some key advantages:

Apply configuration by transparently starting up another Lisp image on the machine to be configured, so that you can use the full power of Common Lisp to inspect and control the host.
Also define properties of hosts in a more restricted language, that of :POSIX properties, to configure machines, containers and user accounts where you can’t install Lisp. These properties can be applied using just an SSH or serial connection, but they can also be applied by remote Lisp images, enabling code reuse.
Flexibly chain and nest methods of connecting to hosts. For example, you could have Consfigurator SSH to a host, sudo to root, start up Lisp, use the setns(2) system call to enter a Linux container, and then deploy a service. Secrets, and other prerequisite data, are properly passed along.
Combine declarative semantics for defining hosts and services with a multiparadigmatic general-purpose programming language that won’t get in your way.

Declarative configuration management systems like Consfigurator and Propellor share a number of goals with projects like the GNU Guix System and NixOS. However, tools like Consfigurator and Propellor try to layer the power of declarative and reproducible configuration semantics on top of traditional, battle-tested UNIX system administration infrastructure like distro package managers, package archives and daemon configuration mechanisms, rather than seeking to replace any of those. Let’s get as much as we can out of all that existing distro policy-compliant work!

There are three methods to install cl-consfigurator on Ubuntu. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install cl-consfigurator Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install cl-consfigurator using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install cl-consfigurator

Install cl-consfigurator Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install cl-consfigurator using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install cl-consfigurator

Install cl-consfigurator Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install cl-consfigurator using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install cl-consfigurator

How To Uninstall cl-consfigurator on Ubuntu

To uninstall only the cl-consfigurator package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove cl-consfigurator

Uninstall cl-consfigurator And Its Dependencies

To uninstall cl-consfigurator and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove cl-consfigurator

Remove cl-consfigurator Configurations and Data

To remove cl-consfigurator configuration and data from Ubuntu we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge cl-consfigurator

Remove cl-consfigurator configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove cl-consfigurator configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge cl-consfigurator

Dependencies

cl-consfigurator have the following dependencies:

References

cl-consfigurator website

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install cl-consfigurator package on Ubuntu using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.