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Alan McKinnon wrote: |
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|
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> clusterssh will let you log into many machines at once and run emerge |
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> -avuND world everywhere |
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|
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This is way cool. I just started using it on eight Fedora servers I am |
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administrating. Nice, now this is an improvement over my 'for $h in |
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$HOSTS; do ssh $h "yum install foo"; done' approach. |
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|
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What do you guys think about using Gentoo for servers? At the institute I |
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partially work we chose Fedora. There is no special reason for that - we |
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already had some Fedora machines, the setup seemed to work, the reputation |
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was good, so we kept it. That was okay for me, why choose many different |
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environments and learn everything again. I mentioned Gentoo, but did not |
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really suggest to actually use it. Maybe I should have. |
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|
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These 8 servers I mentioned are basically clones of the one I installed |
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manually. Instead of doing this again, I boot a live-cd on a new one, |
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create partitions, and extract tar files of the first server's partitions. |
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Then I do some extra configuration, like hostname and network setup. Done. |
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|
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My plan for updating them is to take the first server down, and upgrade |
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the installation (if that works - I had some trouble with that before, so |
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maybe it will be better to reinstall from scratch). Then I will create a |
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snapshot of the new setup, transfer that to the other hosts, and unpack it |
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in new logical volumes. I plan to script this so I do not have to do it |
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manually every time - but that was before I knew ClusterSSH. When all is |
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done and there is some time to take the servers down, I will reboot into |
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the new system. |
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|
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Now I am thinking about a Gentoo installation instead. |
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|
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Pros: |
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- Continuous updates, no downtime for upgrading, only when I decide to |
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install a new kernel. This is really really cool. I fear the upgrade from |
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Fedora 10 to 12 which has to be done soon. |
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- Some improvement in speed. Those machines do A LOT of numbercrunching, |
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which jobs often lasting for days, so even small improvements would be |
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nice. |
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- Easier debugging. When things do not work, I think it's easier to dig |
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into the problem. No fancy, but sometimes buggy GUIs hiding basic |
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functionality. |
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- Heck, Gentoo is _cooler_ than typical distributions. And emerging with |
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distcc on about 8*4 cores would be fun :) |
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- I am probably the only one who can administrate them. |
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|
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Cons: |
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- If something will not work with this not so common (meta)distribution, |
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people will say "always trouble with your Gentoo Schmentoo, it works fine |
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in Fedora". Fedora is more mainstream, if something does not work there, |
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then it's okay for the people to accept it. |
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- I fear that big packages like Matlab are made for and tested on the |
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typical distributions, and may have problems with the not-so-common |
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Gentoo. I think someone here just had such a problem with Mathematica |
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(which we do currently not use). |
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- I am probably the only one who can administrate them. I think Gentoo is |
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easier to maintain in the long run, but only when you take the time to |
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learn it. With Fedora, you do not need much more than the 'yum install' |
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command. There is no need to read complicated X.org upgrade guides and |
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such. |
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|
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I think I already made my decision, but I am still interested in your |
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opinions, maybe some of you are in a similar position and like to share |
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your experiences. Whether I will be allowed to use Gentoo is another |
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question, I guess my boss will not like my idea at first, and I am not |
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even sure if he is right. But maybe I can test-install Gentoo on one |
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machine in a chroot, and see if things work fine. |
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|
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Wonko |