Steve,
Rollings RPMs seems like a pain, especially since you can do a lot of
the install stuff using yum (CentOS).
After looking at the CFM tools, I think that I am going to just write
some scripts that will do the loading, because in the end I just need
to push config changes. And will need to come up with a way to do
application (Hadoop, HBase, etc) updates.
But my particular cluster is not that big yet, so that might change
when I have more nodes.
-John
On Dec 10, 2009, at 9:59 AM, Steve Loughran wrote:
Edward Capriolo wrote:
system to ignore this file.
So now that I am done complaining, what do I think should do?
1 clearly document your install process
2 make you install process fully script-table
--or--
3 role your own rpms (or debs, tar etc) for everything not in
someone else RPM
4 run 1 nightly backup for the each server class
5 revision your config files
6 (optionally) use tripwires/MD5s only to check for unauthorized
changes
Anyway, my long short point, get something that works the way you
want
it to. Look out for systems that offer you "new" and "exciting" ways
to do things that only take 10 seconds, like edit /etc/fstab, or
install an RPM.
RPMs are not actually that bad for getting stuff out, especially if
you can do PXE/kickstart stuff and bring up machines from scratch.
One problem: the need to rebuild and push out RPMs for every change,
if you push out configuration that way.
Other problems:
* its possible for different RPMs to claim ownership of things, much
confusion arises
* the RPM dependency model doesn't work that well with Java. I say
that as someone who has outstanding disputes with the JPackage
scheme, and who also knows that the maven/ivy dependency model is
flawed too (how do you declare in any of these tools that you want
"an xml parser with XSD validation" without saying which one.
* spec files are painful to work with, so is their build and test
process. You do have a test process, right ?
* The way RPMs upgrade is brain dead; they install the new stuff
then decide whether or not to uninstall the old stuff, makes it very
hard to do some upgrades that change directory structure
-Steve
