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Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

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Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#21

Post by pedrocr »

I've been using puppet for everything for 8 years now. I try to avoid using the pre-built modules so that I know what everything is doing but I do use a few. There's a base config I use everywhere and then some modules that are specific to my workstation and some that are specific to servers. Makes it really easy to bring up a new personal laptop/desktop/server and have a great base setup (passwordless ssh, a tinc overlay VPN, automatic upgrades, root emails that show up in my inbox, etc) as well as making it very easy to bring up new services (e.g., a new website is just a few tweaks and a deploy) or migrate between machines.

Couldn't recommend it more. I started with puppet which seemed most robust at the time but I'm sure one of the others would do the same. Having all your configs in a single git repository and easy to deploy from a central point is great. And once you have that doing things like centrally managing keys (great for ssh and tinc) becomes really easy.

Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#23

Post by e12e »

mclarty wrote: post #5

For Windows, I use a PowerShell that launches a install of Choco followed by a bunch of Choco installs. For Mac, I have a bash script that installs homebrew then runs a bunch of brew and cask commands, installs xcode utils, and then command lines some App Store installs that aren’t available from cask.

I prefer https://scoop.sh for windows - although I've yet to try it for service/server installs.

But for personal tools, it feels a lot like using apt - but geared towards installation in the home dir (like xstow).

As far as I can tell scoop does support installs for multiple users/services too, though.

Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#26

Post by zzzcpan »

thom wrote: post #12

While I have tried to do things with Ansible, it was always more hassle than I could be bothered with for my personal computer. My current answer is use Arch, keep a list of installed packages, and restore a backup (of a subset of directories). I have come to accept that /etc is as good a declarative description of a system as you’re going to get.

Same. I've tried to automate this for Ubuntu-based desktops as well, but it didn't work out and I also ended up with Arch. Arch solves the problem by having a rolling release (no OS upgrades) and by keeping things minimal and barebones.

Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#28

Post by e12e »

towb wrote: post #7

No need to over complicate things. I just have my ~/.dotfiles and if I remembered I saved a list of installed packages on my old install that I can go through and pick whatever I need. Could add some scripts for the things I know I need to do but that's already adding too much. My feeling is you'll end up working hours and hours to create the perfect setup (which doesn't exist so you just keep tweaking it forever).

I've got home in a git repo with an on commit trigger to push to a remote repo.

There's some conveniences in my bashrc (add ~bin to PATH, add bash completions from ~/.bash_completions, similar for man-path etc).

Vimplug handles my (neo)vim plug-ins, so I just have a short .vimrc-file.

I've recently consolidated on asdf as a version manager for my workstation, so I no longer manually muck with ruby/python/go venv/paths:

https://asdf-vm.com/#/

Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#29

Post by WatchDog »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #16

It's a really bad idea to toot ones own horn before the horn is ready but I have (always have had) the same problems. I finally started using Docker with ssh -X so that my host laptop just acts as a X display and the Docker instance is what I "really" work in. The advantage is that I use docker files (dead simple templates) as my configuration - it's there in git right now. I change it when the thing I am doing gets…

I toyed with building a docker workstation, using X forwarding via XQuartz on a macos host.

Getting something to play nicely with a high-dpi display and a multi-monitor setup, seemed next to impossible.

Re: Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer?

#30

Post by JoshTriplett »

WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #10

I think overall its a mistake to try to over automate this process. It's brittle and the requirements are simply not the same as a server environment that needs to be simple to replicate X versions quickly, repeatedly and frequently. Automation needs fairly constant attention in the order of little tweaks week over week to fight the inevitable mismatch between the automation and the software networks that it interfac…

> I think overall its a mistake to try to over automate this process. It's brittle and the requirements are simply not the same as a server environment that needs to be simple to replicate X versions quickly, repeatedly and frequently.

> Do you reinstall your workstation once a week? Unlikely and probably would be an unproductive use of your time.

It's not about how often I reinstall. It's about how many machines I work on.

I have a personal laptop, a work laptop, a work build server, a personal cloud server, and accounts on various systems. I want all of those to have mostly the same packages, with some variations (such as no GUI on the servers, and SSH on the servers).

(In my case, I ended up with a simple set of Debian metapackages that between them depend on 99% of what I need, in addition to the usual git homedir.)

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