On Thu, Sep 01, 2011 at 11:36:00AM -0700, Atom Powers wrote:
> 
> Assuming your conf-file parser can read and deal with conflicts, I've
> found that having a default/global configuration file with a directory
> of included files much easier to deal with than a large monolithic
> file. Especially when a service is deployed to many different hosts in
> a variety of ways.
> 
> Take for example a bind/named configuration. I need to keep a
> different configuration file for every host; if I need to change a
> global parameter I have to change every single file for every host.
> This is a real pain.

Limoncelli's HostDB DNS tool doesn't seem to be active --  maybe
it Just Works and doesn't need much. It has a notion of a zone
database and generates zone files. http://code.google.com/p/hostdb/.
It looks featureful.

> Contrast that with Apache, which supports a global configuration file
> and includes additional configuration files in a "conf.d" directory. I
> can keep one copy of the global defaults for all hosts and a library
> of host-specific or service-specific configurations. This is much
> easier to manage.

+1. Apache's approach strikes me as an object-oriented model
implemented with help from the filesystem. And there's the logwatch 
model to consider.

> Of course using a configuration engine (cfengine etc.) makes it all
> much easier, but IIR all of them are better at copying files around
> than combining file parts together.

I'd like to manage host & service definitions from LDAP or a
database, generate monitoring configs + zone files + DHCP +
server templates + other-configs + wiki-docs centrally. All in
one, so nothing is defined in > 1 place. Existing tool might 
be configured to serve. Most of the pieces must have been
worked out by now, but I haven't yet found an open solution
with a wide-enough scope. If I could get time management under
control I could research integrating the current toolchains :). 
A Nov 2010 post on www.unixdaemon.net about the Zabbix API was
insightful. Rancid/Netomata/ZipTie might be part of my solution.

-- 
Charles Polisher


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