managing applications

[Bill McGonigle]

OK, another unix operations theory question:

   What's the best way to maintain installs of applications?

For instance, take mysql as an average example.  For a mysql install,  
I'll have all of the application binaries and support files, but I'll  
also have, probably, an /etc/my.cnf and entries I've added to /etc/ 
sysctl.conf.  I'll also have added some rules to /etc/sysconfig/ 
iptables and there are data files in /var/lib/mysql.

Now, I want to move this mysql install to another machine.  Maybe I'm  
building a cluster, maybe it's new hardware, maybe I'm on the 6-month  
Fedora treadmill.  All I know to do is to move things manually, hope  
I've done documentation well (pfft) and test/pray.

Thoughts:
   This would be easier if there were /etc/sysconfig/iptables.d/mysql  
and /etc/sysctl.d/mysql.conf, but there aren't (yet).
   The RPM database (could be deb, doesn't matter) knows about many  
of these files.
   Sun has favored /opt, but that's a bit of an admission of defeat,  
at least from an LSB perspective.
   A tree of symlinks into /opt might be a compromise.
   Some kind of runtime patching (e.g. sysctl.conf-patch-mysql) might  
be appropriate.

Magic-wand:
   There's some tool (which understands pipes, of course) that will  
gather up the important bits of my install and put them in an archive.

I'm unlikely to be the first person to have thought about this, but  
if it was fixed 10 years ago I missed the memo.  Any thoughts?

-Bill

-----
Bill McGonigle, Owner           Work: 603.448.4440
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