[CentOS] how to install standard software on systems with heterogeneous hardware?

Tue Nov 29 18:37:27 UTC 2011
Thomas Burns <tburns at hawaii.edu>

I've been thinking about ways to proceed if I need to set up 5
machines with basically identical software but somewhat variable
hardware. A simple approach would be to just set up my golden system
and clone the disk, but the hardware differences would probably cause
problems.

One approach that appeals to me is to install minimal centos on the
first system, add a few rpms after installation, do my desired config
file tweaks, then somehow generate an rpm that depends on all the
post-install rpms and contains my custom versions of the config files
I tweaked. Then, to set up the other 4 systems, I'd use the kickstart
file from the first, then yum localinstall my custom rpm, which would
install all the dependencies and tweak all the config files. I assume
the centos install would deal with the hardware differences. Does this
idea make sense? What happens when two different rpms want to provide
the same config file?

Are there any other simple alternatives I have overlooked? What is the
best practice when setting up identical software on multiple systems
with heterogeneous hardware?

mahalo,
Dave