I have several linux boxes that process data. They are all identical with some minor config file changes. I was thinking I could make it easy to manage these servers by having them check into a central server where I kept up to date configurations for each server. I am also thinking I could create an interface for editing the configs.

Has this been done? I'm not looking for anything fancy and most of the apps I have seen try to do too much and they seem bloated for my purpose.

Is there anything I should keep in mind? I figure I would store the configs in a directory by hostname and I would need to make sure none of the processing was in progress when I updated the config file. Anything else?

**Update: To clarify, yes I will be doing this in perl. I mention my platform because there are apps that do this kind of config management. Cfengine is an example, but it seems like overkill for my purpose.

In reply to Centralized web based configuration by jalewis2

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.