Re: Administration (+apt-get dist-upgrade) of 100s of machines
Here goes this term "package breakage" again. Do you know what it is
and how it arises? Most of the time, dist-upgrade just decides to
install a couple of extra packages. But some other times... I just
never figured out what makes the difference and what the possible
problems and solutions are. I just pray and try my best...
Packages can break your system for a number of reasons;
-- Bad package which dies during upgrade, unlikely with Stable but not
impossible, that leaves the system in an inconstant state.
-- Apt/Dpkg depend on Perl a fair bit and it's not uncommon for perl to
zombie out during a big apt run, lock a bunch of files and leave you
with a system that's in a pretty broken state and is difficult to repair.
... etcetera.
Basically, I wouldn't wish manually repairing 100 broken boxes on
anyone. I gave a possible solution to your problem yesterday but by the
look of it my mail didn't get to the list...
So.. apt-get has a simulate option, I'd run an upgrade in simulate mode
automatically, get the logs emailed to some dump account and check over
things... Then, you send a signal to all the machines that they can run
a real upgrade, maybe using a little webserver and curl. You could even
automagically push out updates to the sources.list, which would be handy
in my opinion.
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