Synchronizing replicated data from an RCS to multiple cfengine servers...

[Eli Stair]

I'm moving from a haphazard model with all cfengine config and managed 
files sitting on disk in one place, and occasionally edited in-place... 
to storing the config tree and managed files in our Perforce system. 
I'm referencing the relevant articles here:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-cfengine/2004-07/msg00014.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/05/13/distributed_cfengine.html
http://madstop.com/

What I'm leaning towards is a push-model initiated udpate of the cfservd 
systems, forcing them to checkout commited (final) changes from the RCS. 
 Files served by cfengine will be kept in a local ramdisk for speed 
reasons.  The makefile method Jamie Wilkinson mentioned seems apropos, I 
like the NIS-like feel of being able to manage things behind the scenes 
and then with one command update the served-state, though I don't know 
make so will try it with Perl.

The only pitfalls I can forsee moving this direction are:
1  making sure the ramdisk size/state is sane before starting cfservd 
(lest you wipe the configs of every connecting host....)

2  handling checkout from the RCS and sanity-checking (make sure 
errorcodes from checkout are handled, and overwrite of existing data is 
aborted on error)

1 is trivial.
2 probably requires a bit more work that I think I'm expecting, as the 
consequences of replicating bad/incomplete/empty checkouts are severe.

Does anyone see (or experienced) any other issues that are likely to 
result from this?  Any tips or suggestions on how you are handling a 
similar situation?

Cheers,

/eli