Re: [gentoo-server] Genoo Automatistation

[Kurt Lieber]

On Sat, Oct 16, 2004 at 04:55:10PM +0200 or thereabouts, Jose Gonzalez Gomez wrote:
>    From my limited understanding, cfengine provides a way to centrally
> manage hosts with common configuration, am I right?

Yes.

> Do you have the
> possibility of defining "classes" of hosts? I mean, let's say I have a
> mail server, several web servers, desktop machines.... I would like to
> have common configurations for all of them, is this possible?

Yes. You can also have common configurations for most of them, but specific
special configurations that apply to only one or two machines.  You have
nearly limitless flexibility in defining classes.

>    Another question... let's say I have to install a lot of machines, I
> understand that I just would install all the required packages,
> configure cfengine, and then all the machines would automatically
> configure themselves using my centrally stored configuration, am I
> right?

Yes.  That's what we do now, in fact.

> Can you automate the process of package installation, so maybe
> you could have a "desktop profile/class", "mail server profile/class",
> etc... that stores packages and their configurations?

You could do this, but I wouldn't recommend storing the packages
themselves.  Instead, I'd recommend storing information about how to
install the packages the way you want them.  

In other words, don't store the binaries -- store the ebuilds and have
cfengine emerge the packages you want using those ebuilds.

--kurt