[gentoo-server] Cluster-wide config updates

[Jacob Joseph]

After reading the thread about a security announcement tool, I'm 
motivated to inquire how people maintain configuration changes across 
medium-sized clusters of mostly identical machines?  After a little 
testing, executing "emerge update" isn't so bad across many machines, 
but going back and merging config can be a real time sink.  (As large 
groups of machines are identical, I often use konsole with input 
redirected to ssh sessions to all at once.)

Every once in a while, an update comes around that absolutely requires 
configuration to be changed, or I'd be tempted to not merge after every 
update.  I've toyed with putting everything important in subversion, so 
subsequent machines can be more easily updated.  Has anyone here taken 
this approach?  Any other tips would be appreciated.

I edit very few config files from the stock installation of most 
packages, yet the "replace-unmodified=yes" in dispatch-conf.conf seems 
to have no effect.  Anyone else experience this?

Thanks.
-Jacob