On of my favorite tools I never get enough time to use is expect.  What is expect?  Expect is a scripting language that let’s you automate responses to scripts or daemons and pretend to be a users.  So you can write a script to say update the passwords on all your systems with just one command.  Another way I am planning to use this in the very near future is to do MD5 Check Sums on a file and compare them.  If the files aren’t then it will the re-copy over the files that are missing.  Over at linux-mag.com they have a great gettings started document you should check out to see if it can make your life easier.