FAI working like RIS?

[Ben Willcox]

Michael Tautschnig wrote:

> But to answer your question in more detail, you should probably ask yourself
> (and tell us :-) ) a few things:
> 
> - What do you change exactly?
> - Do you really need all those scripts (there might be some things in FAI and/or
>   in Debian you are not aware of) - in other words, what is the job of those
>   scripts?
> - Adding/removing packages can easily be tracked using "dpkg --get-selections" and "diff"
> 

Thanks Michael,

Well really I'm just looking for clarification that I'm doing things the 
'right way'.
For example, a typical machine configuration is going to involve 
installing a specific combination of packages - well that's no problem, 
I just add them to the list in package_config.

But there are going to be several changes to config files scattered 
about the place, and installing new files as well, adding users etc. So 
I can either script the changes to existing config files using cfengine 
or something,  or use fcopy or ftar just to 'brute force' apply my 
configurations to the machine. Is there anything wrong with that? Up 
till now I've been using a combination of fcopy and ftar, but I'm 
thinking that the easiest way to do it is just tar all my changed 
configurations from the test machine, and in my FAI setup use ftar to 
apply all of the replacement config files to my target machine. Does 
that sound about right?

Thanks,
Ben.