Re: Maintaining multiple Debian boxes

[Martin Konold]

I just made a debian-sysadmins Mailing list.

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-- martin

// Martin Konold, Muenzgasse 7, 72070 Tuebingen, Germany  // 
// Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  // 
   Linux - because reboots are for hardware upgrades 
   -- Edwin Huffstutler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- 

   Just go ahead and write your own multitasking multiuser os !
 Worked for me all the times.
 -- Linus Torvalds --


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Re: Maintaining multiple Debian boxes

[Loic Prylli]

Ami Ganguli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> 
> Has anybody used GNU cfengine?  I don't really know what it's capable of, but 
> it's
> a free part of Debian.  I was considering using it myself, but I haven't had 
> time
> to investigate it properly.
> 
> ... Ami.

I use it on a small network with just 6 machines, but I find that it
is a big time saver (as soon as you have 3 machines I think).

It takes some time to configure it to your need, but after that it is
really great.

Loic


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Re: Maintaining multiple Debian boxes

[Michael Shields]

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Arrigo Triulzi  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>   I have now reached a count of 56 for the number of Debian
> boxes under my control and keeping them in sync (with rdist and lots
> of hacking) is beginning to get out of hand.

I've been doing multiple-box management for a while and eventually
I realized that I really don't want them in perfect sync.  I want to
be able to do gradual rollouts when new packages appear.  That way if
something is broken, I break it on just one machine and will notice it
before the rollout gets too far.

What I do, then, is just to run dselect every now and then and install
new packages.  I test whatever I've upgraded a bit, and then I let it run.

Your situation may be different -- I'm only dealing with about twenty
machines, and they are mostly servers rather than workstations.

The kernel is not in-place upgradable so you will need to give it
some special-case handling.  A postinst that does a shutdown -r is
a possibility...

Also, many postinst scripts are interactive; you will need to think
about how to handle that.
-- 
Shields, CrossLink.


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Re: Maintaining multiple Debian boxes

[Brian C. White]

> Has anybody used GNU cfengine?  I don't really know what it's capable of, but 
> it's
> a free part of Debian.  I was considering using it myself, but I haven't had 
> time
> to investigate it properly.

We use it here to maintain about a half-dozen Debian machines.  It
works great for managing package configuration (with a little work),
but currently doesn't have support for keeping package installation
lists the same.
 
  Brian
 ( [EMAIL PROTECTED] )
 
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Re: Maintaining multiple Debian boxes

[Arrigo Triulzi]

Martin Konold scripsit:
|A free Anrew File System like setup would be nice to deal with these kind 
|of nfs perfomrance problems.

I don't know, I have never used it, and it doesn't seem to be very
widespread.

|We do use a commercial tool called venus for administering our linux
|Ppro Cluster together with Iri, Ultrix and VMS machines. This tool does
|the distribution of new software, home dirs, passwd

How good is it? Does it deal well with the issues of, for example,
Debian packages?

Arrigo


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Re: Maintaining multiple Debian boxes

[Arrigo Triulzi]

Dale Scheetz scripsit:
|Wow! Bet that keeps you busy ;-)

Less than you would think, honest, I am doing a PhD at the same time
;-)

|You might want to check out DoList in the upgrades directory. This script
|runs dpkg from a list of packages that have been properly ordered to
|resolve the dependency issues. Once you have a working list (check out the
|base.list file as an example) you can run DoList against it and your
|package archive to do repetative upgrades. If your 56 machines are
|networked together, then you only need to keep the archive on one machine
|and mount it nfs on the target machine, run DoList and you are done. 
|At the moment this is still not effortless, because of the various
|questions that packages ask during installation. But this problem is being
|worked on by others and should be resolved soon.

I have: it is almost there but not quite what I want. One of the
problems is the way upgrades need to be done. I understand that 99% of
the developers don't have more than 4-5 machines on which Debian is
running so the problem isn't felt but please try and go into
multi-machine mode as you read on.

dselect is out: interactive, hence useless. dpkg via rsh from a single
trusted host (or ssh) isn't bad, only needs the packages to be NFS
mountable and our local mirror allows NFS mounts for hosts within the
UK (the academic net is a 33Mb/s ring over the UK so we don't have
bandwidth problems as long as we don't leave our cosy
neighbourhood). The problem, as you mentioned, is the answering of
questions, a real pain, _and_ the fact that some configuration files
are modified without telling the user (cf. my mail on /etc/X11/Xservers).

Also, most packages, once upgraded need a reboot to be running clean,
e.g. sendmail which isn't stopped during upgrade (this is criminal BTW
since you then proceed to modify the .cf file...), this is not good
for multi-machines 'cos I have jobs running and people to take care
of...

Finally, what about the extras? For example, without /etc/environment
with LD_PRELOAD set to the GNU malloc I couldn't get xrdb to work in
the first incarnation of X 3.2 - changing it on all machines meant an
rdist, no problem...

Basically my real problem is that I cannot find a coherent upgrade
strategy, something which would be very nice is a dry run option to
dpkg and dselect, i.e. pretend and show me problems, then I can see it
before I mess up... Also a verbose mode where it shows me file
modifications, this would have helped me catch the /etc/X11/Xservers
problem before it hit me.

Once I have an "optimal dry run" I can then write a script which does
the nifty things by hand, like upgrading the libc first to save
dependencies or something along those lines.

Arrigo

P.S.I added debian-users in the Cc: field 'cos I think it is of
interest over there.

-- 
Arrigo Triulzi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, http://www.ma.ic.ac.uk/~agbt
Mathematics Dept. Imperial College of Science & Technology - London - UK


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Re: Maintaining multiple Debian boxes

[Arrigo Triulzi]

Ben Gertzfield scripsit:
|Ick. :) Yes, that would be slow on a slow net. I've heard wonderful
|things about a Linux distribution out there that will cache NFS files
|on a local hard drive, but I forget which it is. There must be some
|way to to it and save bandwidth...

Well, think about it from a different perspective: you have local
disks which are now almost always in the Gb range for new PCs, why use
NFS? It is much faster to have the system on the local disk. The
question is: how do I upgrade and maintain them in sync, even NFS
isn't perfect. Upgrading breaks machines, almost inevitably...

Arrigo


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Re: Maintaining multiple Debian boxes

[Martin Konold]

On 7 Jan 1997, Ben Gertzfield wrote:

> Why not just pop /usr and /home on one machine and NFS mount them out
> to all the other boxes?

There a simple performance reason not to use nfs that extensively, I
think!

A free Anrew File System like setup would be nice to deal with these kind 
of nfs perfomrance problems.

We do use a commercial tool called venus for administering our linux
Ppro Cluster together with Iri, Ultrix and VMS machines. This tool does
the distribution of new software, home dirs, passwd


Yours,
-- martin

// Martin Konold, Muenzgasse 7, 72070 Tuebingen, Germany  // 
// Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  // 
   Linux - because reboots are for hardware upgrades 
   -- Edwin Huffstutler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- 

   Just go ahead and write your own multitasking multiuser os !
 Worked for me all the times.
 -- Linus Torvalds --


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Re: Maintaining multiple Debian boxes

[Hakan Ardo]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

Hi, 
I have a few idea that might work for you. I have not tested it, so I
can't guarentee a thing. 

Exekuting "dpkg --get-selections" will give you all the package
selectinons on a machine. Piping that into "dpkg --set-selections"  on an
other machine will set the selections there. You could the invoke the
dpkg-ftp scripts for example to preform the actual retrival of the new
packages, and then the adding, uppdatin and  romaval could be done with a
few dpkg calls. If all this where to be done regually, as cron jobs, the
procedure would only need attention for packages asking questions in there
setup scripts.

A maby easier way would be to have a central disk nfs mountet by all your
clients, and then have a cron job on the clients installing all packages
found in that directory. But that would not give you any way to purge
packages.

As for packages asking questions it should not be to hard to construct som
kind of databse containing what to awnser to which question, and the run
the instalation process through a perl script that look up the questions
in the db and awnsers the quiestions.

- --
 Name:   Hakan Ardo
 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 WWW:http://www.ub2.lu.se/~hakan/sig.html
 Public Key: Try "finger [EMAIL PROTECTED]"
 Interests:  WWW, Programming, 3D graphics

 Thought for the day: As long as one understands, the
 spelling does not matter :-)
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Re: Maintaining multiple Debian boxes

[Ben Gertzfield]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

Arrigo Triulzi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Speed - this would be a killer, local disks are at 2-4 Mb/s with fast
> EIDE, the net just can't keep up with this. Propagation of local
> binaries is done via rdist, as long as they are placed in /usr/local.
> Of course this means having rules for programs which require
> machine-specific configuration using the "special", for example Condor
> (batch processing), etc.

Ick. :) Yes, that would be slow on a slow net. I've heard wonderful
things about a Linux distribution out there that will cache NFS files
on a local hard drive, but I forget which it is. There must be some
way to to it and save bandwidth...

- -- 
Brought to you by the letters U and J and the number 3.
"Atatakaku natta kara, otaku to uchi no kazoku de, nani ka shimasen ka?" -- JSL
Ben Gertzfield  Finger me for my public 
PGP key. See me on FurryMUCK, as Che, and EFNet and YiffNet IRC as Che_Fox.

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Re: Maintaining multiple Debian boxes

[Arrigo Triulzi]

Ben Gertzfield scripsit:
|The more, the merrier! ;)

Indeed, unless the natives get restless ;-)

|Why not just pop /usr and /home on one machine and NFS mount them out
|to all the other boxes?

Speed - this would be a killer, local disks are at 2-4 Mb/s with fast
EIDE, the net just can't keep up with this. Propagation of local
binaries is done via rdist, as long as they are placed in /usr/local.
Of course this means having rules for programs which require
machine-specific configuration using the "special", for example Condor
(batch processing), etc.

Arrigo

-- 
Arrigo Triulzi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, http://www.ma.ic.ac.uk/~agbt
Mathematics Dept. Imperial College of Science & Technology - London - UK


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Re: Maintaining multiple Debian boxes

[Ben Gertzfield]

Arrigo Triulzi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>   I have now reached a count of 56 for the number of Debian
> boxes under my control and keeping them in sync (with rdist and lots
> of hacking) is beginning to get out of hand.

The more, the merrier! ;)

>   Is anyone out there in a similar situation and cares to share
> some views/opinions and hints or perhaps put together a group to add
> suggestion to the main Debian developers for supporting installations
> with lots and lots of boxes?

Why not just pop /usr and /home on one machine and NFS mount them out
to all the other boxes?

-- 
Brought to you by the letters U and J and the number 3.
"Atatakaku natta kara, otaku to uchi no kazoku de, nani ka shimasen ka?" -- JSL
Ben Gertzfield  Finger me for my public 
PGP key. See me on FurryMUCK, as Che, and EFNet and YiffNet IRC as Che_Fox.


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