Hi Jacob, Despite the solutions provided by cfengine and lcfg and other full packages like OSCAR, CLIC and Rocks (those tree are currently not appliable to Gentoo) there are another solutions, depending on our needs. Have you even heard about remote boot? In some environments it may be a good option. We use it on some laboratories to maintain multiple operating systems on bunches of machines. So, we can easily allow the user select its desired operating system. In just few minutes the whole system of the machine will be restored. One of the operating system avaliable to the users is Gentoo.
Actually, even systems like CLIC use some kind of remote boot tools. If you use a system based on remote boot you just need to maintain a reference machine up to date. The system of this machine will be replicated to the other ones. And here we have other tools, known as cloning tools, that may also work well for same cases. Yet, there maybe till other options like rsync. A prepared and well configured rsync (in a good script with some auxiliary commands and tricks, maybe even using the ssh protocol to transport the data) could "nicelly" deal with updatings of a group of similar machines. Well, I do not know if my suggestions/comments were useful. Best regards, DLK On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 08:57:52 -0500, Jacob Joseph <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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 > -- DLK "Imagination is more important than knowledge." (Albert Einstein) "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." (Albert Einstein) "The average mind is easily content with inherited and acquired things, or with the dicta of parents and teachers, because it is much easier to imitate than to create." (Emma Goldman) "Before complaining about something be sure that you had already done something that does the same or more, and do it better." (Diego Kreutz)
