Re: adminning mult boxen
* der.hans (deb-user@LuftHans.com) spake thusly:
...
> > Perhaps you can take the hard drives out of most of the boxes and
> > stick them in a single high-powered box. Then make that high-powered
> > box the server and the rest as diskless X terminals. This way the
> > terminals have no config on them to deal with, it is all unified on
> > the server.
>
> We've already done that :). We need the diskless stations to have different
> configs based on their use, though. They are also different architectures,
> e.g. x86, ppc, arm, strongarm and maybe xface, sparc. Running the same
> binaries isn't an option :).
>
> We take boards and put them online for development, hence the name
> DevelopOnline :). We end up with different purposes for the different
> environments. In the end I'll also need a way to keep packages in sync, both
> by what's installed and by what version.
>
> A single config won't work. Plus we have several servers which need to
> remain separate.
>
> This is something that needs to be easy for admins anyway, so we need a tool
> that will do it well and securely.
The only tool I can think of is pen and paper: audit all those computers
and work out which files on which boxen can be distributed as is, which
need to be edited for a particular box, etc.
Once you've figured out what exactly you want to do, you can try to
find something in the usual places (like sourceforge), or write a bunch
of cron + ssh + perl + CVS scripts to do what you want.
Having an all-debian network helps, at least you can use apt's get- and
set-selections to keep packages in sync. <SMILEY type="envious"/>
Dima
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