[Infrastructures] RCS/CVS (fwd)

[Steve Herber]

I replied directly to Brendan and his response was interesting so I have
included my note original note here and his response below.

 	I have felt the save way about RCS versus CVS and that is what I
 	use for local direct system changes.  On the other hand, I have
 	realized that this list discusses the problem you have when you
 	have so many machines it would be impossible for a single person
 	to do all the work on the machines directly.  That situation
 	requires higher level, centralized tools.  CVS gives you the
 	centralization.  CFEngine can be used to control the changes,
 	and so on.  The ideal goal I envision is getting a new computer,
 	capturing it's MAC address, adding that to a "gold" server and
 	updating the gold server to indicate what I want the new machine
 	to be, and then net booting the new computer and finally having
 	it totally load the necessary software and from then on being
 	totally managed by the centralized gold server.  RCS implies
 	that I made local changes which is in direct opposition to the
 	gold server idea.

 	So far, I haven't found a gold server that is as easy for me
 	as local RCS but I do have parts of a gold server in place such
 	as IP assignment from DHCP and a kickstart server.  I hope this
 	group is able to come up with a simple gold server.

Steve Herber	herber@thing.com		work: 206-221-7262
Security Engineer, UW Medicine, IT Services	home: 425-454-2399

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 11:40:48 -0500
From: Brendan Strejcek <brendan@cs.uchicago.edu>
To: Steve Herber <herber@thing.com>
Subject: Re: [Infrastructures] RCS/CVS

Steve Herber wrote:

> I have felt the save way about RCS versus CVS and that is what I use
> for local direct system changes.

...

> That situation requires higher level, centralized tools. CVS gives you
> the centralization.

I don't think CVS inherently implies a more central approach than RCS.
I use RCS to manage files on central servers, which then cause changes
to propagate to clients. I don't have a single point of administration
(for example, I don't have NIS data managed by cfengine), but I do have
several centers, each of which allow "central" management of many other
machines.

> So far, I haven't found a gold server that is as easy for me as
> local RCS but I do have parts of a gold server in place such as IP
> assignment from DHCP and a kickstart server. I hope this group is able
> to come up with a simple gold server.

I don't see anything wrong with keeping the services that constitute
central management (the "gold server") separate. Separation allows
ease of maintenance and upgrade, and helps prevent complicated
interdependencies from arising. Also, it means that DHCP (for example)
can fail without bringing down a number of other services.

Also, feel free to forward this reply to the list if you want, as it
might generate further discussion. Since your message was directly to
me, I did not think it polite to quote you back publicly.

--
Brendan Strejcek
Senior System Administrator
The University of Chicago
Department of Computer Science
http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/people/brendan