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From: Andrew Heybey <ath@bellcore.com>
To: Doug Rabson <dfr@render.com>
cc: "Karl Denninger, MCSNet" <karl@mcs.com>,
        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: And the winner is! 
In-reply-to: Your message of Mon, 05 Feb 1996 12:22:18 +0000.
             <Pine.BSF.3.91.960205121828.17901M-100000@minnow.render.com> 
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 1996 10:22:05 -0500
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  dfr> It seems like one could use sup to keep systems in sync.
  dfr> Basically, you would run a supserver on the 'code server' and
  dfr> regularly sup the client systems against it.  The sup config
  dfr> files allow you to do stuff like run ranlib on /usr/lib/lib*.a,
  dfr> execute newaliases when /etc/aliases changes, don't take
  dfr> specific files from /etc/ which are per-system.

Yes, sup would work and has some advantages (for one thing reconcile
needs the server to be NFS mounted).  For me it was a matter of being
familiar with reconcile.  Also, reconcile does several things that I
don't know if sup can do:

1.  Map from one file name to another.  For example, one could have
/etc/sysconfig.CLIENT (since the server probably wants a different
configuration in its /etc/sysconfig) which gets copied to
/etc/sysconfig on the clients.  [Speaking of which, if one wants to
set up several machines, it is somewhat obnoxious that the hostname
and interfaces are hard-wired in sysconfig.  I like hostname.* files
better instead of running sed on sysconfig.  Just MHO.]

2.  Reconcile won't touch files on the client that have changed.  Not
just files that are newer on the client (which is what I gather sup
can do (from a cursory inspection of the man page)).  Reconcile keeps
a database of the mtimes (or ctimes, I'm not sure) of the files so as
tell if the file has changed on the client.  I happen to like this
feature--if something changes on the client it is probably for a
reason and one doesn't want the change wiped out just because the rest
of the client's file system is being kept up to date.

3.  Reconcile can automatically create symlinks to the server instead
of copying if you want to save disk space on the client.  (Again, this
assumes a LAN and NFS mounting of the server.)  For example on the
machines I set up, /usr/src -> /server/user/src.

andrew