Re: [gentoo-user] Managing multiple Gentoo systems

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Thursday 07 July 2011 14:01:55 kashani did opine thusly:
> On 7/7/2011 1:37 PM, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Thursday 07 July 2011 11:23:15 kashani did opine thusly:
> >> On 7/2/2011 3:14 PM, Grant wrote:
> >>> After a frustrating experience with a Linksys WRT54GL, I've
> >>> decided to stick with Gentoo routers.  This increases the
> >>> number of Gentoo systems I'm responsible for and they're
> >>> nearing double-digits.  What can be done to make the
> >>> management
> >>> of multiple Gentoo systems easier? I think identical
> >>> hardware
> >>> in each system would help a lot but I'm not sure that's
> >>> practical.  I need to put together a bunch of new
> >>> workstations
> >>> and I'm thinking some sort of server/client arrangement with
> >>> the only Gentoo install being on the server could be
> >>> appropriate.
> >>> 
> >>> - Grant
> >>> 
> >> 	You may want to look at something like a config management
> > 
> > system.
> > 
> >> I'm using Puppet these days, but Gentoo support isn't
> >> spectacular. It would be a bit complex to have Puppet install
> >> the packages with the correct USE flags. However you could
> >> use Puppet to manage all the text files and then manage the
> >> packages somewhat manually.
> > 
> > Give chef a try.
> > 
> > It overcomes a lot of the issue puppet ran into, and of course
> > makes new ones all of it's won, but by and large chef is more
> > flexible.
> 
> Too late. I've already put a year in with Puppet and have too much
> working code to switch. Also I'm not much of a programmer so I get a
> bit more out of the DSL though my templates are getting fairly
> fancy these days. For anyone else interested in what we're talking
> about, here's a fairly balanced and up to date link talking about
> some of the differences.
> 
> http://redbluemagenta.com/2011/05/21/puppet-vs-chef/

At least with puppet you can still work around shortcomings as you 
find them (no black box tricks in puttet)

But regardless of it's quality, it's still 1,000,000's of times better 
than doing it all manually!

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com