force copy question

[Bettilyon, Allen]

Hello,

I'm wondering if there is a way to force all copies for a specific run. 
My problem is this:

We've got a directory tree containing conf files for the cluster.  Some
files set 'hooks' for shell commands to be ran, and than there is a
general recursive copy.  Essentially, the cfagent script looks like
this:


control:
  actionsequence = (
        copy
        copy.full_copy
        shellcommands


copy:


   some_box::
     $(hostbase)/etc/snmp/snmpd.conf   dest=/etc/snmpd.conf
                                        server=$(fileserver)
                                        define=refresh_snmpd


      $(hostbase)/etc/ssh/sshd_config
                                dest=/etc/ssh/sshd_config.preswap       
                                server=$(fileserver)
                                define=reload_sshd



   full_copy::
        ## The rest of the config files 
        $(hostbase)/etc/        dest=/etc/
                                server=$(fileserver)
                                recurse=inf




shellcommands::
        reload_sshd::   
                "/bin/kill -HUP `cat /var/run/sshd.pid`"

        refresh_snmpd::
                "/usr/bin/killall -HUP snmpd"




This works quite well, but seems to have a problem when we are
installing a new box.  Our automated install runs cfengine, but the
files do not get copied over because the ctime on the box is newer than
the ctime on the repository version.  I do not want to perform and MD5
check on every file every time, as this seems to be too expensive.

What I would like is a way to force the copies for an initial run.  We
have considered adding

   full_copy.force::
        ## The rest of the config files 
        $(hostbase)/etc/        dest=/etc/
                                server=$(fileserver)
                                recurse=inf
                                force=yes

to the config, and than invoking cfagent -D force.  This works, but we
don't want to maintain 2 copy sections for every file that needs a
shellcommand associated with it.

Anyone have any suggestion, comments about this?  How expensive are the
MD5 or byte copy checks?  Is anyone doing something similar? 


- Allen