[Freedombox-discuss] Chef and Puppet experts?

[FreedomBox-Discuss.NeoPhyte_Rep at OrdinaryAmerican.net]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 7:14 PM, l.m.orchard at pobox.com wrote:
> On 9/8/11 9:15 PM, FreedomBox-Discuss.NeoPhyte_Rep at OrdinaryAmerican.net
 wrote:
>>
>>
>> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/puppet-chef-ease-transition-to-cloud-computing-09012011.html
>> Are there any Chef or Puppet experts here who can demonstrate the
>> configuration of a DreamPlug using either tool?
>
> Probably overkill for a DreamPlug.

Please enlighten me.  If the intent of the FreedomBox project is to
reliably set up a server, why would we not use a tool designed to
achieve that reliability.

Also, what would you suggest the FreedomBox use that you would not
consider overkill.

I can understand that Chef and Puppet my be too big for a small
program storage space, but, then, maybe, that should be an incentive
to bring make either or both more compact.

> But I do use Puppet (and Vagrant) regularly to build dev VMs for projects at
> work, and our hosting IT guys use Puppet to manage production & staging
> servers. It's very, very nice for codifying the desired state of a server,
> repeating and maintaining it on multiple machines, and keeping it as an
> artifact alongside code in revision control.

Is there a standard Puppet module for configuring a cross-platform
virtual machine environment?  If no, what sort of calendar time would
you expect it would take to develop one?

> --
> me at lmorchard.com
> http://decafbad.com
> {web,mad,computer} scientist

By the way,  is there anyone on this list that cares to describe the
DreamPlug development machine software stack they are using?  Others
might like to duplicate it and do some virtual testing.