CentOS - Apr 2005 - system management - what do you use to manage your CentOS systems?

Greetings everyone.

Let me preface this with the following, I know this is not specific to
CentOS but I do value the input given by *many* of the users on this
list.
I can not think of a more appropriate place to ask these questions.

Let me just break down my setup:

20 CentOS 4 servers, all running apache.

The only things that are unique on each server are the network
settings and the apache virtual host config files, other then that,
they are identical.

I'm not using any networked file systems, content is synchronized via
rsync. NFS is not able to provide adequate performance in our
environment.

I wanted to get some feedback to see what other people here use to
manage their CentOS systems, apply updates, roll out new software
packages, update unique config files etc.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

--
enoch

On 4/1/05 10:57 AM, Enoch West wrote:
> I wanted to get some feedback to see what other people here use to
> manage their CentOS systems, apply updates, roll out new software
> packages, update unique config files etc.
For config files, I use cfengine. The learning curve is a bit steep, but 
imo well worth the time. I've got a .spec file online if you want to 
build it into a package:

* http://www.madboa.com/geek/specs/cfengine.spec

--
Paul

Enoch West wrote:
> I wanted to get some feedback to see what other people here use to
> manage their CentOS systems, apply updates, roll out new software
> packages, update unique config files etc.
I've tried Cfengine and I'm currently evaluating Radmind.
http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/radmind/

It allows you to do everything you just mentioned and monitor filesystem 
changes as well, like tripwire.  Their documentation and mailing lists 
seem to focus a lot on Mac OS X but it'll work on any UNIX or UNIX-like 
platform.

Here's one command line tutorial..
http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/radmind/files/radmind-tutorial-0.8.1.pdf

This paper might offer better insight..
http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/radmind/files/LISA-radmind.pdf

Here is my first post to their mailing list from a couple days ago 
inquiring about using Radmind on RPM based Linux distributions.  Check 
out the thread, there seem to be a few people using it on Fedora and RHEL.
https://mailman.rice.edu/pipermail/radmind/2005-March/009240.html

Hope this helps.

Avtar

On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 12:57, Enoch West wrote:
> I wanted to get some feedback to see what other people here use to
> manage their CentOS systems, apply updates, roll out new software
> packages, update unique config files etc.
ssh server yum -y update
works for me.  Ideally you would mirror the repository to a local
directory and add your own changes as rpm packages so the one
step does it all.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    les at futuresource.com