SYSF 2.05
=========
- BUG Fix : when reading the hosts.conf file, sysf was aborting without any
        error message when an undefined host group was being used.
        This bug has been fixed.

- Extra feature : The "belongs_to" command has been added to sysf:
        # sysf -belongs_to HOST_GROUP -h HOST
	This sysf command checks that the host HOST belongs to the host group 
        HOST_GROUP. This is useful when wrinting certain admin shell scrypt.

- The HTML fnd ps doc files have been updated to describe the extra feature.

SYSF 2.04
=========

INTRODUCTION
============
Sysf is a system administration tool to configure centrally a network of
Unix/Linux computers. All the system configuration files of the
individual computers are archived in a common set of directories and sysf
maintains this archive of system files. Sysf complements linuxconf
and NIS. With sysf it is possible to ensure the homogeneous configuration
of all computers on a network, to quickly integrate a new computer on the
network and to easily reinstall or upgrade the operating system.
From a security point of view, sysf provides an efficient way to check the 
ownership, the access modes and the content of all the important files on the 
network.

COMPILING
=========
SYSF has been developped and compiled on RedHat linux and Solaris 7.
It should not be a problem to compiled it on other platforms but some minor
modifications might be necessary.

The file  "configure.csh" create the file "config.h" which defines the name 
LINUX or SOLARIS depending on the platform on which the command is executed.
These names are then used in "sysf.h" to define some platform specific
parameters. One might thus have to modify these files to compile sysf on 
another operating system. 

To compile sysf do the following

 # configure.csh
 # make 

INSTALATION AND CONFIGURATION
=============================
Then copy the executable sysf, oeh and optionaly sysfrpm (sysf does not use it)
to /usr/local/sbin or any other appropriate place.

Chose a config directory on an NFS mounted directory where the sysf config 
files will be stored and create the configuration files as described in the 
sysf documentation.

The Example directory contains some sample configuration files which one can
start to work from.

The documentation is given as the postscript files sysf.ps and sysfrpm.ps
and as the HTML documents sysf.html and sysfrpm.html in the doc directory.

WARNING 
=======
sysf is an administration tools which can modify important system files across 
an entire network. Configuring or using sysf without a detailed understanding 
of how it works can seriously damage vital files on many hosts at once. 
Although sysf has been  thoroughly tested by its author there is no guarantee 
that it is entirely bug free. It is thus recommended that every user testd new
configurations on dummy files before deploying them on a real system.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
===============
sysf uses the "RSA Data Security, Inc. MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm"
and code distributed as the RFC1321. The original RFC is included as the file 
rcf1321.txt with the source files and it is available for example 
from http://www.faqs.org/
