On 04/26/2016 03:27 PM, Tim Dunphy wrote:
So what I'd like to know is it better in your opinion to install from repos than to install by source as a best practice?
Your tools should save you time.
Building packages should involve three steps: download the source, update the version number in your spec file, mock build / sign / publish (the last set should be a small shell script). Building in mock means that the package is predictable. Every time it builds, it'll detect the same available libraries during ./configure, so your build is consistent.
Is it always better to use puppet, chef, ansible etc even if the environment is small?
Again, your tools should save you time.
If your configuration manager takes more effort than configuring a system by hand, you should probably look for a better tool. Personally, I like bcfg2. And yes, I use it for everything. I use templates extensively so that anything that varies from site to site or host to host is easy to adjust, and I can apply a configuration far more quickly and reliably than I can configure a system manually.