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.