Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 12:08:17 -0500 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> To: Gabriel Ambuehl <gabriel_ambuehl@buz.ch> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: "Cluster" administration software... Message-ID: <3C2F4A01.4030207@potentialtech.com> References: <94174320199.20011230143124@buz.ch> <3C2F3EAD.6090809@potentialtech.com> <50184864380.20011230172708@buz.ch>
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Gabriel Ambuehl wrote: >>>I'm looking for tools to facilitate the administration of a >>>FreeBSD server farm, mainly tools to push package updates over the >>>whole farm but other things like globals configuration file >>>updates would be nice >>> >>NIS might be what you're looking for. It will push >>user/group/hosts/ services files to clients. >> > > Last time I looked into NIS it was for stuff like keeping /etc/passwd > etc in sync, but not updating packages on hosts. No, I was suggesting it for the purpose of "globals configuration" which I had assumed would include passwd, groups, hosts. It appears I misunderstood. > Basically, I want to have some sort of daemon, to which I can send a > package (as the ones used by pkg_add) which will then install it for > me, > taking care of dependencies etc pp or prior versions of the package > that are eventually already installed. > > >>You could mount your ports tree via NFS, which would allow you to >>keep all machines up to date while only needing to update one >>machine. >> > > Well, mounting the ports tree via NFS and using portupgrade provides > some flexibility, but still, you'd need to execute it manually on all > machines since I don't trust portupgrade enough to run it unattendend > as it still f*cks up its own dependency database if you use stuff > like > WITHOUT_X11 for libungif and then stops working until you fix it by > hand. Hmmm ... well, portupgrade is the best tool I know of currently, there's an interesting article by Michael Lucas that may give you some ideas on how to make it work better: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2001/11/29/Big_Scary_Daemons.html but I don't know of anything better. > Ideally, FreeBSD should have something like Debian's apt-get upgrade > which > upgrades the whole system automatically (downloading packages from > some custom package repository, preferably). I've got some friends > who > run Debian at home and they told me that apt-get never did any bad to > their system... Sounds "too good to be true" but if it really works that well, it might be worth porting (if possible I don't understand that from a server perspective. I mean, what happens if something automatically upgrades something that no longer works? I always want to be involved when upgrades are in the works. > I've been thinking about implementing some SOAP based small server, > that takes the package and calls portupgrade on it... That would probably be a useful project, something like an enhanced portupgrade program that worked across the network via ssh or something. I don't know of anything that does it right now. >>Webmin provides a nice front-end to a lot of this. I don't think >>you're going to find *1* tool to take care of this for you, but NIS >>in concert with webmin might do the trick. >> > > Hmm. I just installed webmin (haven't used it for a long time) and > the > Cluster User administration for sure looks cool but I don't really > need to keep passwd in sync (actually, this would probably be counter > productive from a security point of view with our system). Doesn't sound like NIS will work for you then. -- Bill Moran Potential Technology http://www.potentialtech.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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