Sanity check needed on an idea

[Lowell Gilbert]

Tuc <tuc at ttsg.com> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> 	I'm planning on deploying a few servers, each of which will be
> doing some same things (Web, mail, etc) and some that will have other
> tasks (MRTG, IRRPT, etc).  
> 
> 	I'm to the point where going to upgrade software or make a config
> change on 10 servers gets really annoying. I was looking to do something 
> a little different. I know there are other things out there to do this
> (cfengine) but wondered if that was alot more than I need.
> 
> 	I've installed a Promise RM4000 onto a single server, giving me 1TB
> of capacity. I want to be able to install software on that machine, and that
> one alone, do the upgrades, config changes, etc. My directory structure
> would be something like :
> 
> /mnt/bin
> /mnt/etc
> /mnt/lib
> /mnt/machine1/bin
> /mnt/machine1/etc
> /mnt/machine1/lib
>     ...
> /mnt/machineX/bin
> /mnt/machineX/etc
> /mnt/machineX/lib
> 
> 
> 	I would then mount this on every machine under /usr/local/SHARED/nfs.
> I then make a softlink in /usr/local/shared/bin to 
> /usr/local/SHARED/nfs/machineX/bin, /usr/local/shared/etc to
> /usr/local/SHARED/nfs/machineX/etc, and so on. 
> 
> 	If machineX didn't need a different etc/hosts.allow lets say than
> a "default" one, I would just link /mnt/machineX/etc/hosts.allow to 
> ../../etc/hosts.allow . 
> 
> 	Does this sound too convoluted?

To be honest, yes.  Maintaining the links you need seems like it will
be just as much work as doing the upgrade.  And some of the
configuration needs to be *different* on each machine...

A little better might be to point your path into the shared tree, but
you'll need to also build those ports in that location, using that
path as a PREFIX.  Obviously, my idea is still half-baked.