You might approach it from the opposite direction. Keep the crontab under SVN or the like and embed an $Id$ line in a comment. Then you can look at what revision of that is installed on the server to tell if that change has been made yet on that server.

And while cfengine would be a good mechanism for pushing the files out I don't think it really logs the change anywhere (at least from my understanding from giving it a quick once over). That's not to say that you couldn't extract what's been pushed where from cfengine's logs after the fact, but that'd just be moving the problem as well.

I have looked at cfengine a lot and it just won't do what I want. I almost have a system ready to release that answers my wants and what I see lacking about cfengine. The request for a /ChangeLog script fits in with the eventual replacement of cfengine, but I want to use it now. There is no way that cfengine could manage the consolidation I mentioned in the original post. Thanks for the help.

How about this for a change log script:

-----------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/perl

# $Id: changelog.pl,v 1.1 2005/09/07 11:47:15 megglest Exp $
# $Log: changelog.pl,v $
# Revision 1.1  2005/09/07 11:47:15  megglest
# almost done
#

# given a statement
# log that statement in either the specified ChangeLog file
# or in the nearest ChangeLog file found

use Getopt::Std;
use strict;

# globals
my @months = (
    'Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', 'May', 'Jun',
    'Jul', 'Aug', 'Sep', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec'
);
my $datepattern = '^\d\d\s+\w\w\w\s+\d\d\s+';

# parse the command line
our ($opt_h, $opt_v, $opt_u, $opt_m, $opt_f);
getopts('hvu:m:f:');
&usage if $opt_h;
#&usage if !defined($opt_m) and !defined($opt_f);
$opt_u = (getpwuid($>))[0] unless $opt_u;

###############
## main loop
###############
my $date = &today;
my $time = &now;
my $file = &findChangeLog;
my $msg = &getMessage($file, $opt_m);
my $append = &beenUpdated($file, $date);
$append = 2 if ! -f $file;
open(OUT, ">> $file") or die "$0: cannot append file '$file': $!";
print OUT "\n" if $append != 2;
print OUT "$date\n" if $append;
print OUT "\t* $time $opt_u\n";
if(ref($msg) eq 'SCALAR') {
    print OUT "\t  ", ${$msg}, "\n";
} else {
    print OUT "\t  ", join("\n\t  ", @{$msg}), "\n";
}
close(OUT);

###############
## utility functions
###############

# get today's date
sub today {
    my @t = localtime;
    return sprintf("%02d %-3s %02d", $t[3], $months[$t[4]], $t[5] + 19
+00);
}

# get today's date
sub now {
    my @t = localtime;
    return sprintf("%02d:%02d", $t[2], $t[1]);
}

# find the nearest ChangeLog file
sub findChangeLog {
    return $opt_f if $opt_f;
    my $pwd = $ENV{'PWD'} || `pwd`;
    chomp($pwd);
    my @a = split('/', $pwd);
    unshift(@a, '/');
    my $file;
    my $keep = &isroot ? '/ChangeLog' : "$pwd/ChangeLog";
    foreach my $part (@a) {
        $file .= '/' if length($file);
        $file .= $part;
        my $fn = $file . '/ChangeLog';
        $fn =~ s,//,/,go;
        $keep = $fn if -f $fn;
    }
    $keep =~ s,//,/,go;
    return $keep;
}

# is the user root?
sub isroot {
    return 1 if $> == 0;
    return 0;
}

# has the file been updated today?
sub beenUpdated {
    my $fn = shift;
    my $date = shift;
    my $lastdate;

    return 0 unless -f $fn;
    open(IN, "< $fn") or die "$0: cannot read file '$fn': $!";
    while(<IN>) {
        chomp;
        $lastdate = $_ if /$datepattern/o;
    }
    close(IN);
    return $lastdate eq $date;
}

# if no -m supplied, present an editor asking the user for a message
sub getMessage {
    my $file = shift;
    my $msg = shift;

    return \$msg if defined($msg);

    $msg = 'Not a terminal and no message suppled' if(system('tty -s')
+ >> 8) == 1;

    $ENV{'TMPDIR'} = '/tmp' unless $ENV{'TMPDIR'};        # set a defa
+ult directory
    my $tfile = "$ENV{'TMPDIR'}/changelog.$$";
    $ENV{'EDITOR'} = 'vi' unless $ENV{'EDITOR'};        # set the defa
+ult editor
    $ENV{'VISUAL'} = 'vi' unless $ENV{'VISUAL'};        # set the defa
+ult editor

    # create the temporary file
    open(OUT, "> $tfile") or die "$0: cannot create file '$tfile': $!"
+;
    print OUT "CL ------------------------------------------\n";
    print OUT "CL Enter a ChangeLog Message for file '$file'\n";
    print OUT "CL All lines beginning with 'CL' are ignored\n";
    print OUT "CL ------------------------------------------\n";
    close(OUT);

    # ask the user to edit the file
    system("$ENV{'VISUAL'} $tfile");

    # read the file contents in
    # remove all the junk messages
    open(IN, "grep -v '^CL' $tfile |") or die "$0: cannot read file '$
+tfile': $!";
    my @lines = <IN>;
    chomp(@lines);
    close(IN);

    # retun the message string
    return \@lines;
}

# how to use this script
sub usage {
    print "usage: $0: [-m MESSAGE][-f CHANGELOGFILE][-u USERNAME][-vh]
+\n";
    print "\t-m MESSAGE       - message to log\n";
    print "\t-f CHANGELOGFILE - specific ChangeLog file to log the mes
+sage\n";
    print "\t-u USERNAME      - username to log the message against\n"
+;
    print "\t-v               - verbose\n";
    print "\t-h               - help (this message)\n";
    exit 1;
}

__END__

=pod

TODO

=cut

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