* der.hans ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) spake thusly: ... > > Perhaps you can take the hard drives out of most of the boxes and > > stick them in a single high-powered box. Then make that high-powered > > box the server and the rest as diskless X terminals. This way the > > terminals have no config on them to deal with, it is all unified on > > the server. > > We've already done that :). We need the diskless stations to have different > configs based on their use, though. They are also different architectures, > e.g. x86, ppc, arm, strongarm and maybe xface, sparc. Running the same > binaries isn't an option :). > > We take boards and put them online for development, hence the name > DevelopOnline :). We end up with different purposes for the different > environments. In the end I'll also need a way to keep packages in sync, both > by what's installed and by what version. > > A single config won't work. Plus we have several servers which need to > remain separate. > > This is something that needs to be easy for admins anyway, so we need a tool > that will do it well and securely.
The only tool I can think of is pen and paper: audit all those computers and work out which files on which boxen can be distributed as is, which need to be edited for a particular box, etc. Once you've figured out what exactly you want to do, you can try to find something in the usual places (like sourceforge), or write a bunch of cron + ssh + perl + CVS scripts to do what you want. Having an all-debian network helps, at least you can use apt's get- and set-selections to keep packages in sync. <SMILEY type="envious"/> Dima -- E-mail dmaziuk at bmrb dot wisc dot edu (@work) or at crosswinds dot net (@home) http://www.bmrb.wisc.edu/descript/gpgkey.dmaziuk.ascii -- GnuPG 1.0.4 public key Q276304 - Error Message: Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters and Cannot Repeat Any of Your Previous 30689 Passwords -- RISKS 21.37
