any experiences administering large collections of debian (more generally linux boxes)

[Walter Tautz <wtautz@math.uwaterloo.ca>]

 I would like some feedback on people's experience administering
large groups of machines which do not have individual people administering
them. in particular suppose one wanted to configure a given package
in the same way on a 100 hosts, say, exim. In other words,
can one automatically configure packages with a preset set of answers. In turn
these `answers' could be administered  on a single host and then apt-get could
perhaps suck down these configurations once a week via a cronjob and reconfigure
itself. The configuration should also be flexible enough to allow local
admins on the machine to override the defaults I have set without clobbering
my general changes...

let me know of your setups....I am trying to convince certain manager types
(in a university setting) that debian is an appropriate solution.


for an idea for what we are doing here have a look at

ftp://ftp.math.uwaterloo.ca/pub/xhier/LISA91/paper.ps

to see what the packaging system used here under solaris....it is a bit
dated but has nice features. 

-walter