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Alex Schuster wrote: |
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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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You could have a look at app-admin/puppet [1][2] which supposedly takes |
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car of these things. |
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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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These two things would probably be your best selling points for your idea. |
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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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Being 'cool' doesn't count, at least last time I looked. |
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> - I am probably the only one who can administrate them. |
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That is a huge disadvantage. |
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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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[...] |
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If you're using commercial software which is only supported by Redhat, |
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Novell, etc. then you should think twice about replacing it. |
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But I'm guessing that those packages don't have to be installed on every |
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machine. |
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So, I'd suggest that you use Gentoo on those boxes where you'd have the |
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biggest advantage using it and no or minimal disadvantages. |
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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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Please do your colleagues and successors a favor and document your whole |
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setup really good. |
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Regards, |
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Andi |
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[1] http://reductivelabs.com/products/puppet/ |
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[2] http://log.onthebrink.de/2008/05/using-puppet-on-gentoo.html |
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