In M G Berberich's email, 22-03-2001: > Hello, > > are there any tools/hints/recommendationshow to adminstrate a pool of > debian-systems. > > At the moment we have connected stand-alone-systems sharing some > resources via nfs and nis. From a users view this is O.K. but from > administrators view it is not. Package-installations/upgrades and > configuration has to be done on every machine. > I'm thinking about > > - automatic installation/upgrades of packages on _all_ machines. > without the need to ssh into every machine by hand. > - centralised configuration (nfs-mounted config-files, ...) > > I had a look at cfengine but does not like it very much. > > MfG > bmg Hi! I administrate ~70 machines on the campus here, currently using SSH with rsa keys from a secured computer that all the lab machines trust. This works out quite nicely, but my only problem is configuration (debconf and otherwise).. with just plain text conf-files, I have a simple bash script that copies the common config file via scp to the lab machines. Debconf isn't so easy. My current setup is to use a bash script to download and configure and install the packages with forwarded xterms from each machine. This is a little tedious, but alot better than when I need to update the NT side of things (all of these machines are dual-boot to NT, unfortunately). The most recent incarnation of debconf seems like it is my godsend however.. It has many backends, to use a separate file or a ldap database or sql database or whatever. This is a *very* cool solution for the same debconf answers for many machines, and I am glad for it. Now I just need to figure out how to use it in my labs. :P Anyway - that's what I do, I use SSH with RSA keys (no passphrase, it's useless anyway, as I would have to either a) type it in 70 times or b) keep it in another script, which makes it a moot point). It's alot easier than our RedHat variant a couple years ago, which practically never got updated software. Mike Janssen CNS Lab Admin University of Northern Iowa Michael Janssen - Jamuraa - janssen@cns.uni.edu - jamuraa@debian.org
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