[clue-tech] Configuration management recommendations?

[chris fedde]

On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 7:57 PM, Collins Richey <crichey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It depends on how narrow you hold the description of "configuration
> management". Both cfengine and puppet provide "configuration
> monitoring and controll" as well. If you are maintaining desktops in
> addition to servers, you may want to restrict users to a "sane"
> configuration and restore  standard configuration elements if anyone
> tries to change them. Just one example, for security reasons, you may
> want to prevent users from turning off locking after n minutes of idle
> time.
>
> It goes without saying, that either of these is a much more complex
> product than rdist.
>

We all get to pick our own poison. And you are welcome to define the
problem as broadly as you choose.   Still I think that it is worth
pointing out that rdist is not just a push only version of rsync.  It
includes audit and monitoring features, as well as file transfer,
architecture detection and  conditional remote execution.

Granted it is much less of a product than say Tivoli Site Manager or
BMC Patrol,  but for installations of a dozen to a few hundred
heterogeneous unixoid systems it has served me quite well. And it does
not require an army or a degree in logistics to maintain.