managing applications

[Steven W. Orr]

On Monday, Jan 7th 2008 at 16:31 -0000, quoth 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?

One humble suggestion (that might be appropriate for the right person) is 
to create /etc/RCS and then you can simply revision things like my.cnf 

And, in fact, there's no reason you can't use CVS so that the 
repository database ends up in the directory (or device, or machine) of 
your choosing.

I do this all the time.

-- 
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happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0
Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000
individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
steveo at syslang.net