Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Configuration file versioning

[Jan Hudec]

On Mon, Feb 21, 2005 at 21:29:24 -0700, Kevin Geiss wrote:
> you folks who use tla for tracking /etc; how do you handle the /etc dirs of 
> multiple machines, parts of which are the same, parts of which are different?

I don't. I track /etc on two machines, but each is completely different.
Still, there is a way for you -- nested trees.

> for example, I'd want the /etc/passwd files to be the same, 
> but /etc/exim/exim.conf will be different. 
> 
> do you just have a separate branch for each machine? or do you just track 
> each 
> machine completely seperately?
>
> I'm thinking there may be enough overlap in my /etc dirs to be able to 
> leverage 'tla replay --skip-present' at least, but enough differences I won't 
> be able to use 'tla star-merge' between branches.

I think you can use similar approach that is commonly used for
NFS-mounted stuff. The trick is, that you make the common files symlinks
to some other directory and mount that over NFS. With arch, you can do
the same, because:

1) Arch can manage symlinks. Even if they point outside the tree.
2) If some subdirectory of arch tree has {arch} subdirectory, it is
   ignored by inventory. It behaves as independent tree.

Thus I would have:
Directory       Branch
/etc            etc--host--0 (where host is hostname)
/etc/common     etc--common--0

and then /etc/passwd would be symlink to /etc/common/passwd -- and
similarly for any other files that are common. Or you can do it the
other way around and have common things in /etc and the specific ones in
/etc/host -- depending on which set is bigger.

But your replay --skip-present idea is usable too. If you commit
a change in the common configuration, you replay it on the other hosts.
If you commit to the specific ones, you sync-tree it on the others (to
make replay never consider it again).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                 Jan 'Bulb' Hudec 
<address@hidden>

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