Re: Configuration management
On 28 Feb 2000, Olaf Meeuwissen wrote:
> However, I'm not really happy with this way of doing things. I'd like
> to hear about some other ways. I've toyed with the idea of using CVS,
> archiving /etc and making a local package. Slightly related, I'm also
> looking for ways to quickly clone a system.
We're using CVS for just that purpose. Right now we're source
controlling the full /etc directory for each machine. We've also
explored just a little the possiblity of sharing configuration
information for different machines using the module facility of cvs.
Overall, I'm pleased with what we have so far. The big win is we
can track all changes to our configuration, we can audit who changed
what when, and roll back to known good configuration.
The main limitation we've run into are:
* CVS (the remote protocol) doesn't track file permissions,
ownership and symbolic links.
All of these are important for configuration files.
* CVS component model is directory based.
To share configuration across machines the configuration files
for a particular package must be isolated in a separate
directory. Many Debian packages are not organized like this.
* Machine specific changes are hard to isolated.
Debian packages make this somewhat difficult. Something like
cfengine can handle this but it doesn't integrate well with CVS.
Hope this helps.
--
Jean Pierre
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