I'm about to embark on this (perilous?) journey and I'm wondering if anyone would make a comment on any of the questions in the last paragraph below. This is basically my plan for setting up a bunch of systems (laptops) in an office which are hardware-identical to my own laptop and creating a framework to manage them all with a bare minimum of time and effort.
Thanks, Grant >>>>>> I see what you desire now - essentially you want to clone your laptop >>>>>> (or big chunks of it) over to your other workstations. > > I've been working on this and I think I have a good and simple plan. > > My laptop roams around with me and is the "master" system. The office > router is the "submaster" system. All of the other office systems are > "minion" systems. All of the systems are 100% hardware-identical > laptops. All of the minions are 100% software-identical. > > I install every package that any system needs on the master and create > an SSH keypair. The only config files that change from their state on > the master are: /etc/conf.d/hostname, /etc/conf.d/net, > /etc/ssh/sshd_config, /etc/shorewall/*. I write comments in those > files which serve as flags for scripted changes. > > I write a script that is run from the master to the submaster, or from > the submaster to a minion. If it's the former, rsync / is run with > exceptions (/usr/portage, /usr/local/portage, /var/log, /tmp, /home, > /root but /root/.ssh/id_rsa_script* is included), my personal user is > removed, a series of workstation users are created with useradd -m, > services are added or removed from /etc/runlevels/default, and config > files are changed according to comment flags. If it's the latter, > rsync / is run without exceptions, services are added or removed from > /etc/runlevels/default, and config files are changed according to > comment flags. > > All user info on the submaster and minions would be effectively reset > whenever the script is run and that's fine. Root logins would have to > be allowed on the submaster and minions but only with the SSH key. > There are probably more paths to exclude when rsyncing master to > submaster. > > That's it. No matter how numerous the minions become, this should > allow me to keep everything running by administrating only my own > system, pushing that to the submaster, and having the submaster push > to the minions. I've been going over the nitty-gritty and everything > looks good. > > What do you think? Is there anything inherently wrong with rsyncing / > onto a running system? If there are little or no changes to make, > about how much data would actually be transferred? Is there a better > tool for this than rsync? I know Funtoo uses git for syncing with > their portage tree. > > - Grant
