TITLE:
Automatic Synchronization of Common Parameters in Configuration Files
AUTHORS:
Moupojou Matango Emmanuel, Moukouop Nguena Ibrahim
KEYWORDS:
System Administration, Configuration File, Parameter, Update, Synchronization
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Software Engineering and Applications,
Vol.8 No.4,
April
17,
2015
ABSTRACT: In an information system, applications
often make use of services that they access using the parameters described in
their configuration files. Various applications then use different codes to
denote the same parameters. When access parameters of a service are modified,
it is necessary to update them in every configuration file using them. These
changes are necessary, for example because of security policies involving
regular changes of passwords, or departure of some system administrators. The
database password could be changed for example. When system administrators can
not immediately identify all services affected by a change or when they feel
they don’t have the skills to edit these files, these parameters remain
unchanged, creating critical security flaws. This was observed in more than 80%
of the organizations we studied. It then becomes necessary to ensure automatic
synchronization of all affected files when changing certain settings.
Conventional synchronization solutions are difficult to apply when the relevant
applications have already been developed by third parties. In this paper, we
propose and implement a solution to automatically update all configuration
files affected by a change, respecting their structure and codification. It
combines a parameters database, a mapping between the configuration files
parameters codes and those of the database, and templates for the generation of
files. It achieves the objective for all non-encrypted configuration files.