[wplug] Starting From Scratch

[Florin Manolache]

On Mon, 23 Apr 2007, Michael H. Semcheski wrote:

> > * installation/administration: disk cloning, "official" updates, a set of
> > scripts doing automatic targeted patches.
> > 
> 
> Lots of great ideas in that message, Florin.
> 
> Anybody have any specific recommendations on how to accomplish these types
> of things?  They are definitely things I think I'd be able to implement, but
> it could take some time to get it right.

I am sure there is software like cfengine that is very competent into 
doing disk cloning. For historical reasons I am using a set of scripts I 
have developed over the years and I'm familiar with. Basically  you have 
a reference system and use tar to create an archive out of the files, 
then get a new disk,  partition it, and a matching script will untar the 
archive re-creating the original filesystem. A few more lines will adjust 
the boot sector,  hostname, ssh keys, and maybe software which is 
particular to that group of users. It takes less then 1 hour from the 
moment you get a computer out of the box to the moment everything is 
installed and configured and the user can start clicking around :-)

Targeted patches are even simpler: 

* a webserver keeps the patches and a target host list for each patch, 

* each patch is an archive containing a script, a serial number, and some 
data, 

* each client check every hour with the webserver and if there are new 
patches for itself they are retrieved and the script is run.

I have a home-grown set of scripts to implement that, but you can do it in 
different ways. If it would be to do it from scratch, I'd use a collection 
of local rpm repositories and integrate that with the "official" updates.

Florin