Re: [gentoo-user] Managing multiple systems with identical hardware

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
>On 30/09/2013 19:31, Grant wrote:
>>>> Keeping all of the laptops 100% identical as far as hardware is
>>>> central to this plan.  I know I'm setting myself up for big
>problems
>>>> otherwise.
>>>>
>>>> I'm hoping I can emerge every package on my laptop that every other
>>>> laptop needs.  That way I can fix any build problems and update any
>>>> config files right on my own system.  Then I would push config file
>>>> differences to all of the other laptops.  Then each laptop could
>>>> emerge its own stuff unattended.
>>>
>>> I see what you desire now - essentially you want to clone your
>laptop
>>> (or big chunks of it) over to your other workstations.
>>
>> That sounds about right.
>>
>>> To get a feel for how it works, visit puppet's web site and download
>>> some of the test appliances they have there and run them in vm
>software.
>>> Set up a server and a few clients, and start experimenting in that
>>> sandbox. You'll quickly get a feel for how it all hangs together
>(it's
>>> hard to describe in text how puppet gets the job done, so much
>easier to
>>> do it for real and watch the results)
>>
>> Puppet seems like overkill for what I need.  I think all I really
>need
>> is something to manage config file differences and user accounts.  At
>> this point I'm thinking I shouldn't push packages themselves, but
>> portage config files and then let each laptop emerge unattended based
>> on those portage configs.  I'm going to bring this to the 'salt'
>> mailing list to see if it might be a good fit.  It seems like a much
>> lighter weight application.
>
>Two general points I can add:
>
>1. Sharing config files turns out to be really hard. By far the easiest
>way is to just share /etc but that is an all or nothing approach, and
>you just need one file to be different to break it. Like /etc/hostname
>
>You *could* create a "share" directory inside /etc and symlink common
>files in there, but that gets very tedious quickly.
>
>Rather go for a centralized repo solution that pushes configs out, you
>must just find the one that's right for you.
>
>2. Binary packages are almost perfect for your needs IMHO, running
>emerge gets very tedious quickly, and your spec is that all
>workstations
>have the same USE. You'd be amazed how much time you save by doing
>this:
>
>emerge -b on your laptop and share your /var/packages
>emerge -K on the workstations when your laptop is on the network
>
>step 2 goes amazingly quickly - eyeball the list to be emerged, they
>should all be purple, press enter. About a minute or two per
>workstation, as opposed to however many hours the build took.
>
>3. (OK, three points). Share your portage tree over the network. No
>point in syncing multiple times when you actually just need to do it
>once.
>
>
>>
>> I'm soaking up a lot of your time (again).  I'll return with any real
>> Gentoo questions I run into and to run down the final plan before I
>> execute it.  Thanks so much for your help.  Not sure what I'd do
>> without you. :)
>
>I'm sure Neil would step in if I'm hit by a bus
>He'd say the same things, and use about 1/4 of the words it takes me
>;-)
>
>
>--
>Alan McKinnon
>alan.mckinnon@×××××.com

Grant,

Additionally. You might want to consider sharing /etc/portage and /var/lib/portage/world (the file)
I do that between my build host and the other machines. (Along with the portage tree, packages and distfiles)

That way all workstations end up with the same packages each time you run "emerge -vauDk world" on them.

And like Alan said, it goes really quick.

--
Joost

-- 
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