pkgng for configuration management?

[Atte Peltomaki]

On Wed, Nov 06, 2013 at 08:48:07AM -0800, R. Tyler Croy wrote:
> On Sun, 03 Nov 2013, Kamil Choudhury wrote:
> 
> > I've been setting up a private pkgng repository to push software to
> > a family of about 20 different hosts. 
> > 
> > One command software deployment is pretty awesome, so I got to
> > thinking: why not go one step further and start pushing
> > configurations for each of these hosts via pkgng as well (either by
> > putting the config files into the initial software pkg, or via a
> > separate pkg that installs only the configurations)? 
> > 
> > Has anyone else tried going down this rabbit hole? If so, what has
> > your experience with the system been?  
> 
> I highly recommend going the Puppet route instead of attempting to use the
> packaging system for configuration. There's lots of horror stories in the Linux
> community of people wrapping everything in the world into debs or rpms, and
> regretting it later.

I've done this on Linux in the past. It's a handy trick to distribute
small configuration pieces for clients which are not under same
administration (eg. users workstations). I used it to create meta-
packages like 'company-dev-environment' which includes all basic
packages for dev workstation, and packages like 'company-krb5-conf'
which installs and configures a proper /etc/krb5.conf for accessing
intranet services.

This hack is certainly not scalable to sanely extend into a real
configuration management system. In fact, I see little merit in doing it
at all in any environment where I have root on the target system.

-- 
Atte Peltomäki
     atte.peltomaki at iki.fi <> http://kameli.org
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you"