[CLUE-Tech] Managing multiple servers (long)

[Keith Hellman]

DH has a good suggestion about setting up your own repository and
pointing your RPM/apt to it.  I would do some thing similar but not
quite the same: 

I would simply have a dedicated build/nfs machine export a /usr/local
to all my servers.  This way you can compile from source the critical
applications you want (set them up to run from /usr/local;
./configure --prefix /usr/local).

I would set up my /etc/init.d to be rsynced on each boot to the same
build machine, so that you only have to update one set of basic init
scripts.

If running your servers with remote mounted binaries is too risky
(given the environment this could be a very valid concern), I would
just rsync the /usr/local tree on every boot.

In a SYSV setup, move all the critical daemons/services you want to
runlevel 4 (that's what it's there for).  The first script in rc.4 is
00rsync_rc4, the second is either 00mount_usr_local or
00rsync_usr_local.

Just my 2c