Re: Upgrading thousands of boxes via APT

[bob@proulx.com (Bob Proulx)]

s. keeling wrote:
> Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>:
> >  s. keeling wrote:
> >  I am not sure to which you direction you are referring.  Why would
>   i.   Thousands of machines updating from repositories.
>  ii.   Thousands of machines updating from one/some local mirror(s).

Ah, yes, definitely use a local depot for reliability, performance and
efficiency.  Agreed.

> >  On a server farm of identical machines using system images works
> >  pretty well.  Tools like SystemImager, FAI, Mondo, etc. are great.
> 
> Where did system imaging come into this?

The wording in the original posting is a little ambiguous here.
> Ben wrote:
> > I'm aware that many people would recommend a sync option, where 1
> > machine serves as the master, and the others sync off of
> > that. Perhaps that is the only reliable approach, but

Depending what comes to mind with "sync" I think a lot of people would
think binary imaging.  I was not sure which was meant by it.

For distros that don't handle upgrades binary imaging is a typical
thought pattern.  All upgrades on those systems are effectively
reinstalls from scratch.  But since Debian is all about being able to
upgrade then doing imaging, while useful in many contexts, wastes the
potential of continuous incremental improvement available by apt
driven upgrades.  I prefer apt driven upgrades.

Thanks for the clarification.
Bob