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Thierry Carrez wrote: |
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|
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>Hi folks, |
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> |
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>I would like to get your opinion on Enterprise-oriented desktop |
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>deployment tools for Gentoo Linux (or the lack of). |
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> |
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>As a small company CIO, I deployed Gentoo on a small scale here but |
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>quickly ran into scaling problems and the lack of tools to help. |
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> |
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>There is no obvious way to freeze a Portage tree (or to design a |
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>specific profile) for testing on a golden workstation, to build a set of |
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>update packages (ServicePack) and push it to the workstations, or to |
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>have centralized accountability of what's installed where. There is no |
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>easy way to avoid having to keep a synchronized copy of the portage tree |
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>on all systems, even when using yourown-binaries. |
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> |
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>With automatic deployments, would we run into difficult-to-solve |
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>etc-update problems ? Should/could the ServicePack system take care of |
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>that ? |
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> |
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>Even in a simpler setup (preprod > production) we don't have the tools |
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>to push a software configuration change from a test machine to a |
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>production one. |
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> |
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>What tools are missing ? Is it our job to provide them ? Can it |
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>reasonably be done ? Am I just wrong to want to use Gentoo in that |
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>direction ? |
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> |
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>Next week: Gentoo-as-a-metadistribution tools :) |
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> |
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> |
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I'm not sure some of the assumptions you and other posters have made are |
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valid for the specific case of a "enterprise network of workstations and |
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servers" in a Linux environment, or, for that matter, in a Windows-based |
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enterprise. First of all, why would a "workstation" need to have *any* |
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software installed on its hard drive at all? You can boot the OS off the |
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network, load executables off the network, read shared data off the |
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network, and even create a cluster for large computations over the |
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network. The only thing that needs to reside on the workstation's hard |
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drive is the unique data representing the workstation user's |
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*legitimate* business requirements and contributions, and any desktop |
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customizations/unique configuration files. In the ancient days, when |
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workstation hard drives were tiny, that's how it was done. |
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|
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PCs in enterprises, whether Linux, Windows, Macs or other flavors, |
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resemble home computers only because some enterprises think it's |
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necessary to "retain talented employees", not because they actually need |
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to have a browser, OS, office suite, email, virus scanner, etc., loaded |
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on their desktop machines. I work in a Windows environment, and I've got |
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all that stuff on my PC, taking up disk space that could be used by the |
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large amounts of data I work with as a performance engineer. The only |
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software on my machine that needs to be there that wouldn't normally be |
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on everyone's machine in the enterprise is a few high-end analysis |
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packages like R and Maxima. |
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|
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So ... the problem actually reduces to deployment/management tools for |
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*servers*, I think, plus a crew of IT folks who can rescue users who |
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manage to hose up the home directory on their workstation, the only |
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place in the building they can actually write into. :) |
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-- |
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