[lug] configuration management

[David Anselmi]

Daniel Webb wrote:
> I've been looking for a package to help with managing my many (10+) Linux
> systems.  They are mostly similar, but of course each there are
> differences with each one.

cfengine was an early building block to meet your requirements.  I think 
using it alone doesn't scale very well.

A lot of people have done what you want to varying degrees.  The site at:

http://www.infrastructures.org

will give you quite a bit of background on the issues.  Their references 
page has many interesting links.  They won't exactly give you a plug and 
play solution but you can duplicate their system if you take the time to 
understand it.  Based on my experience they're dead on in their push vs. 
pull argument.

There are many tools that can fit into infrastructure management. 
radmind is one (the authors used it on Mac a few years ago--the registry 
was an obstacle for Windows and Linux packagers may well have been good 
enough).  Quattor is another that seems like a more complete solution, 
but it was developed for cluster management so it might not be exactly 
what you want.

Here's another paper that looks interesting.  I wonder how their 
approach compares to infrastructures.org:

http://isg.ee.ethz.ch/events/j2003/papers/sysmanager.pdf

HTH,
Dave