slack.conf(5)

💖 slack.conf(5) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to slack.conf(5) — yes that's the manual name, it lives in the File Formats Manual section, and it's literally just the vibe guide for one little config file. no cap. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

slack.conf — the configuration file for slack 🌸

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so the file /etc/slack.conf is where all the configuration tea lives for slack(8) and its backends. it's giving very "one keyword-value pair per line" energy, separated by an = sign. that's the whole format. iconic, honestly.

the rules, because there are rules 💅:

• Keywords must consist solely of capital letters and underscores. that's it. no lowercase, no dashes, no chaos.
• Values can be in whatever format makes sense, but they must not begin with a space. fr fr.
• Comments start with #, and everything from that # all the way to the end of the line is ignored. ghosted. 💀
• Trailing whitespace on lines is ignored. so you can leave your little accidental spaces, she doesn't care.
• Empty lines, or lines that are only whitespace and comments, are ignored too.

now the valid keywords, bestie. here they are, all of them, no skips:

• SOURCE — the master source for slack roles. this one has ✨four✨ forms and they all matter, so pay attention:
  • /path/to/dir

use a local directory. simple. cozy. 🍓

• somehost:/path/to/dir

use given directory on a remote host via rsync over SSH. 🔥

• rsync://somehost/module

use module on a remote rsyncd server (directly over the network).

• somehost::module

use the rsync daemon protocol over SSH to the given host. and for the full lore on this one, go read “USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION” in rsync(1). 🦋

all forms of SOURCE get passed directly to rsync, so you can absolutely do little tricks like adding user@ before the host on any of the remote forms. for more about what rsync can do, obviously go read its manual page, bestie.

for that last form though? we do a little magic ✨. rsync treats the last two forms equivalently, so we overload the last form by automatically passing -e ssh to rsync whenever we see it. this hack is how we let slack use this nice feature of rsync just by setting the SOURCE config option. slay.

• ROOT — the root filesystem into which to install slack roles. usually /. 👑
• ROLE_LIST — the location of the role list, which lists the roles to be installed by default on each host.

this can be a path relative to the source, or it can be a completely separate location if it starts with a slash or a hostname (optionally preceded by user@). your call, main character. 🫶

• CACHE — a local cache directory, used as a local mirror of the SOURCE.
• STAGE — a local staging directory, used as an intermediate stage when installing files.
• BACKUP_DIR — a directory in which to keep dated backups for rollbacks. so you can always rewind. 💅

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🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

a typical file might look like this:

# slack.conf configuration file
SOURCE=slack-master:/slack  # source is on a remote
                            # host named "slack-master"
ROLE_LIST=slack-master:/roles.conf
ROOT=/
CACHE=/var/cache/slack
STAGE=/var/lib/slack/stage
BACKUP_DIR=/var/lib/slack/backups

look at her. consistent. glowing. ✨

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🦋 FILES 🦋

• /etc/slack.conf

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• slack(8)
• rsync(1)

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ok that's the whole page, bestie. go forth and configure responsibly. 💖

and that's a wrap on slack.conf(5), from the File formats section — dated 2005-05-23, so she's an elder but she's still that girl. no notes. periodt. 👑🌸