on Mon, Oct 30, 2000 at 01:47:08PM -0500, Walter Tautz (wtautz@math.uwaterloo.ca) wrote: > I would like some feedback on people's experience administering large > groups of machines which do not have individual people administering > them. in particular suppose one wanted to configure a given package > in the same way on a 100 hosts, say, exim. In other words, can one > automatically configure packages with a preset set of answers. In > turn these `answers' could be administered on a single host and then > apt-get could perhaps suck down these configurations once a week via > a cronjob and reconfigure itself. The configuration should also be > flexible enough to allow local admins on the machine to override the > defaults I have set without clobbering my general changes... > > let me know of your setups....I am trying to convince certain manager > types (in a university setting) that debian is an appropriate > solution. > > > for an idea for what we are doing here have a look at > > ftp://ftp.math.uwaterloo.ca/pub/xhier/LISA91/paper.ps > > to see what the packaging system used here under solaris....it is a > bit dated but has nice features. Not personally. You might want to chat with the good folks at VA Linux -- they've configured some good-sized farms, and have some cool hat tricks to do this. Largely based on package push-type technologies. There's also LISA, the Large Installation System Administrator's group, with various local chapters. Here in Silly Valley, it's BayLISA, though I believe others exist. This also sounds like a possible task for clustering, if you're after single-system image type stuff. "Diskless", in one of its several guises, is another option. I'd be interested in hearing of alternatives in which there is local state, but it's slaved off of a centrally administrated server or core. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://www.netcom.com/~kmself Evangelist, Opensales, Inc. http://www.opensales.org What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
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