> So what methods are people using to do this kind of > thing in big > multi-server and evolving environments? How do you > ensure that the set of > configuration files you centrally manage is always, > at any given time, the > right set?
Configuration packages. The rule is: you don't EVER touch a system interactively. No vi, no hacking of files - just forget it. The configuration files and/or changes come onto the system via packages - System V packages. I solved this with three types of packages - per network packages, per host packages, and per application packages. These are then plugged into a central software deployment server, from which they can be installed on tens of thousands of systems - in parallel. The only bottleneck is the network bandwidth. However, I cheat. And the way I cheat is that most of these configuration packages are generic, and they're built into the flash archive. The systems are preconfigured (via a configuration package, of course!) to report to the software deployment server once they are flashed via JumpStart(TM) and come up after the first reboot. DHCP is configured to automatically update DNS (which, you guessed it, is also initially configured via packages). Everything else, like users, is in LDAP. Technical users like "oracle" or "postgresql" are created via packages as well. Works well for over 22,000 systems. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ sysadmin-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/sysadmin-discuss
