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

[Alan McKinnon]

On 13/12/2013 01:54, Grant wrote:
> I'm about to embark on this (perilous?) journey and I'm wondering if
> anyone would make a comment on any of the questions in the last
> paragraph below.  This is basically my plan for setting up a bunch of
> systems (laptops) in an office which are hardware-identical to my own
> laptop and creating a framework to manage them all with a bare minimum
> of time and effort.

There's nothing inherently wrong with rsyncing onto a running system,
that's what portage (and every make install in the world :-) ) does
anyway. Maybe the scale of what you want to do is bigger

This is Unix, and is knows how to deal with replaced files properly
(unlike our friends over in Redmond)

You will find app-admin/checkrestart very useful to run on the laptops
if you don't already have it. Essentially, it looks for all files that
are in use and have been deleted then tells you which process are
involved so you can restart them.

The only other issue that comes to mind is connectivity, do beware of
network connections going away while you're in the middle of updates.
Proper sensible error handling code in your scripts should take care of this





>
> Thanks,
> Grant
>
>
>>>>>>> I see what you desire now - essentially you want to clone your laptop
>>>>>>> (or big chunks of it) over to your other workstations.
>>
>> I've been working on this and I think I have a good and simple plan.
>>
>> My laptop roams around with me and is the "master" system.  The office
>> router is the "submaster" system.  All of the other office systems are
>> "minion" systems.  All of the systems are 100% hardware-identical
>> laptops.  All of the minions are 100% software-identical.
>>
>> I install every package that any system needs on the master and create
>> an SSH keypair.  The only config files that change from their state on
>> the master are: /etc/conf.d/hostname, /etc/conf.d/net,
>> /etc/ssh/sshd_config, /etc/shorewall/*.  I write comments in those
>> files which serve as flags for scripted changes.
>>
>> I write a script that is run from the master to the submaster, or from
>> the submaster to a minion.  If it's the former, rsync / is run with
>> exceptions (/usr/portage, /usr/local/portage, /var/log, /tmp, /home,
>> /root but /root/.ssh/id_rsa_script* is included), my personal user is
>> removed, a series of workstation users are created with useradd -m,
>> services are added or removed from /etc/runlevels/default, and config
>> files are changed according to comment flags.  If it's the latter,
>> rsync / is run without exceptions, services are added or removed from
>> /etc/runlevels/default, and config files are changed according to
>> comment flags.
>>
>> All user info on the submaster and minions would be effectively reset
>> whenever the script is run and that's fine.  Root logins would have to
>> be allowed on the submaster and minions but only with the SSH key.
>> There are probably more paths to exclude when rsyncing master to
>> submaster.
>>
>> That's it.  No matter how numerous the minions become, this should
>> allow me to keep everything running by administrating only my own
>> system, pushing that to the submaster, and having the submaster push
>> to the minions.  I've been going over the nitty-gritty and everything
>> looks good.
>>
>> What do you think?  Is there anything inherently wrong with rsyncing /
>> onto a running system?  If there are little or no changes to make,
>> about how much data would actually be transferred?  Is there a better
>> tool for this than rsync?  I know Funtoo uses git for syncing with
>> their portage tree.
>>
>> - Grant
>
>
>


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com