[Infrastructures] ISConf4 & Gentoo, practically

[jasonk]

Hi all,

I have just stumbled across infrastructures.org and am quite fascinated by
the idea; I think the idea of a distributed version-controlled "enterprise"
is fantastic.

I'm going to have a shot at setting up isconf4 on my home virtual Gentoo
server network and have a few questions before I start trashing things :) :

My understanding from reading the isconf documentation and some of the list
archives is that the best approach for an isconf network is consistent
installations of everything, i.e. avoiding online package management
systems.  Gentoo is essentially another package-based system.  If anyone has
used Gentoo with ISConf, I would love to hear any recommendations.

I was thinking that manually downloading the ebuild to /tmp/, building a
generic tbz2file (a compiled binary package) with emerge, then "snap"ing,
it.  Merging the corresponding binaries using isconf will then install as
appropriate?

So far that is fairly straightforward.  So we can get a machine installed
consistently and repeatably.  In fact the same machine should be installed
everywhere (since the VMs have the same "hardware" anyway and all machines
have a copy of all applications).  I'm guessing the difficult part starts
here: how to _effectively_ manage configuration differences.

Has anyone got any real-world hints I can use for managing configurations?
For example, if anyone is using a DB to manage this, what data do they store
in the DB and how do they consistently access it?  I assume you would still
need a snapped config script to access the DB and pull out the records?  How
do you go down this path without manually scripting everything anyway?  And
then; how do you manage your database machine?  Is it, too, isconf'd?  How
do you effectively change manage configuration data that applies specific,
to, say, versions of executables?  It's a lot of things to consider, and I
guess it would be nice to sit down and work out the best approach.  In fact
if I get it going nicely I would be very keen to compile some of the really
good ideas and some of the not so good ideas into something so that anyone
of any level can get started.

(It seems like most of the documentation is aimed at people who have been
admin'ing *nix machines for years.  I'm far from clueless, but I'm also far
from being a seasoned admin in the *nix world, though I am picking it up.
I'd never heard of this stuff before, but it is a great idea and if I can
contribute to pushing best practices out into the real world then I will do
what I can.  It makes my life easier when everyone else acts responsibly too
:p).

Apologies for the massive mail, but this is all great news to me :)

Thanks,

jasonk