managing multiple machines

[David Wright <ichbin@shadlen.org>]

I manage a cluster used for computational neuroscience at a University.
The number of machines is starting to get to a point where it is difficult
to maintain software synchronization across machines. Any tips?

I already use LDAP to distribute user and group information and NFS to
share /home directories.

I have considered sharing /usr via NFS as well, but since configurations
are stored in /etc, I'd have to share /etc too. But that won't work, since
machine-specific information like an IP address and name is stored in
/etc. (Whatever happened to the very intelligent policy of configuring
programs in /bin in /etc, configuring programs in /usr/bin in /usr/etc,
and configuring programs in /usr/local/bin in /usr/local/etc?!)

I have also thought of trying to make the workstations diskless and
using DHCP -- but then how can I give each machine a fixed name and IP
address?

I have also though to trying to sync everything up via rsync -- but then
every time I add a software package I would have to edit the list of stuff
to be rsync'ed.

Help!