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Well, I'm pretty sure there are some lesser known solutions out there. I've just learned about `guix deploy` for instance, which could make such a thing doable,

Well, I'm pretty sure there are some lesser known solutions out there. I've just learned about `guix deploy` for instance, which could make such a thing doable, and might be even easier to maintain in the long run. No pretty GUIs for now, though, and it configuring a setup seems to require at least a good understanding of guix/scheme. Give it a bit more adoption, though, with more examples, snippets and tools, and that specific solution could do wonders. This is often a problem in the Open-Source world: little manpower, so works progresses slowly. I'm pretty sure there are more (or less) obscure solutions. https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-deploy.html https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Invoking-guix... https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/towards-guix-for-devops/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/towards-guix-for-devops/

jandrese 6y ago
This is an example of a tool that solves only a slice of the problem and requires a wizard to operate it. Plus, it doesn't seem well suited to changing configuration on already deployed machines. If corporate comes and tells you all users must have their machines configured to automatically lock the screen after 5 minutes idle and enable some password requirements this tool would struggle.
- MayeulC 6y ago
  I'm not really sure why the tool would struggle, it seems like it was made for that use-case: running the command will ssh into each of the listed existing machines, perform some basic sanity checks, upload the new configuration (and packages in case of a system update), and finally atomically update the symlink, thus applying the new policy. I'll grant you that it seems to require a wizard to operate, or at least write a tutorial and investigate that use-case, but so does most software: I would be clueless in a AD environment, and it would take me a few hours to catch up on some basic concepts. Now, it hasn't been designed with your specific example in mind (it could have been), so some wizard would most likely need to expose these knobs (lockscreen timeout, password policy)as easily accessible config items.

jandrese 6y ago

This is an example of a tool that solves only a slice of the problem and requires a wizard to operate it. Plus, it doesn't seem well suited to changing configuration on already deployed machines. If corporate comes and tells you all users must have their machines configured to automatically lock the screen after 5 minutes idle and enable some password requirements this tool would struggle.

MayeulC 6y ago
I'm not really sure why the tool would struggle, it seems like it was made for that use-case: running the command will ssh into each of the listed existing machines, perform some basic sanity checks, upload the new configuration (and packages in case of a system update), and finally atomically update the symlink, thus applying the new policy. I'll grant you that it seems to require a wizard to operate, or at least write a tutorial and investigate that use-case, but so does most software: I would be clueless in a AD environment, and it would take me a few hours to catch up on some basic concepts. Now, it hasn't been designed with your specific example in mind (it could have been), so some wizard would most likely need to expose these knobs (lockscreen timeout, password policy)as easily accessible config items.