Re: [gentoo-user] Managing multiple systems with identical hardware

[Grant]

>> > Puppet seems like overkill for what I need.  I think all I really need
>> > is something to manage config file differences and user accounts.  At
>> > this point I'm thinking I shouldn't push packages themselves, but
>> > portage config files and then let each laptop emerge unattended based
>> > on those portage configs.  I'm going to bring this to the 'salt'
>> > mailing list to see if it might be a good fit.  It seems like a much
>> > lighter weight application.
>>
>> Two general points I can add:
>>
>> 1. Sharing config files turns out to be really hard. By far the easiest
>> way is to just share /etc but that is an all or nothing approach, and
>> you just need one file to be different to break it. Like /etc/hostname
>>
>> You *could* create a "share" directory inside /etc and symlink common
>> files in there, but that gets very tedious quickly.
>
> How about using something like unison? I've been using it for a while
> now to sync a specific subset of ~ between three computers.
> It allows for exclude rules for host-specific stuff.

I think what I'd be missing with unison is something to manage the
differences in those host-specific files.

- Grant