I just finished off a system builder script last night
It takes a minimal install and adds in all the packages then updates all the configuration files with my server specific info (hostname, mail deamon settings) and finally builds a couple of tarballs for needed programs not available as RPM packages (ISPConfig and some others).
It's pretty cool to see it in action and has cut my server rebuild time down from a few hours of hunting and picking for packages to an hour of standardized selections with only a few places that require human interaction. I could probably remove all human interaction within the script using Expect.
(The final build will have restore images and backups but I needed a script to automate the initial build and consecutive rebuilds of the development rig.)
Now, it's currently a glorified .bat file until I get some grep and replace coding into it rather than "echo blah >> file" or "cp base.file /path/file" but wow is scripting a whole new thing under *nix. I used to write some crazy .bat for dos and have done some complicated .bat and .cmd for winNT but nothing like scripting for Bash.
I hear Perl makes scripting a whole new level above that again.
Note, I know of .vbs but I've always done my VB VC++ coding in studio or used a nice small third party macro/scripter I picked up (an old copy of Hotkey macro recorder).
