Config: A Mechanism for Installing and Tracking System Configurations
John P. Rouillard and Richard B. Martin
University of Massachusetts at Boston
Abstract
One problem that faces system administrators is how to install and
maintain local configuration information on a large number of
machines. Some previous approaches such as cloning [2] help, but they
only provide a baseline, not ongoing configuration control. Other
mechanisms such as Typecast [7], Hobgoblin [5], Scrape [3] or Mkserv
[6] assist in the configuration process, and provide some support for
ongoing maintenance. However supporting multiple system
configurations is still troublesome. Also it can be very difficult to
delegate system administration tasks. Insufficient logging of file
changes can create a nightmare when attempting to find the cause of a
problem.
The method we present uses rdist and integrates it with make(1) and
the CVS version control system to provide the ability to delegate and
log changes. End node users can make changes to their workstations,
however all changes are logged, so that it is possible to see what has
changed on a given machine when problems occur. When making changes
that affect a large number of machines (e.g., amd automount maps, rc
files) previous versions of the file are available in the CVS tree and
can be retrieved and distributed in case of unforeseen problems.
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