On Monday 13 June 2005 09:18 pm, Devraj Mukherjee wrote: > Is there an ebuild that builds like a LAMP architecture for most popular > applications on a Gentoo system?
I can see quite a bit of use for something like this, and I have been wondering about something like this too. I have also been thinking a lot lately about the possibility of Gentoo portage managing packages across multiple hosts. With this metapackage idea, it seems to me that it would be a pretty incredible thing if I could emerge meta-packages where I might answer some simple questions, such as this: # emerge -meta lamp Would you like: A. MySQL B. PostgreSQL Or, I don't know, even a set of configuration files set in place to anwer these questions for us. The USE variable seems to answer these questions, but it may be a bit limited for the concept of metapackages. I mention all of this because I have been working for months on implementing an infrastructure such as the kind described on infrastructures.org. It would be nice to be able to build a set of packages, on only a few terms. Even further it would be even more productive to be able to build across multiple hosts, multiple architectures, etc. We are moving into a day where embedded systems are more available, imagine having 200 embedded controllers you have Gentoo installed on, and you can execute one emerge command across all of them (of course, tested in a non-production environment first...). Or, likewise, modify the USE flags on all of them with a single push of make.conf. A few example metapackages might be: ids: emerges snort, can run multiple sensors, can tie logging mechanisms into external programs that may also be included (ie: prelude, and sguil for both real-time and post analisys). prelude: Network wide logging(securely), hids, nids, and may pull logs and alerts from nagios, samhain, snort, etc. and provide a web frontend authserver: ldap, sasl, heimdal, pam, samba-tng, squid, etc.... avgateway: clamav, pop3vscan, squid, frox, etc... gentoo-postinstall-default: vixie-cron, metalog, sudo, vim, (if needed: reiserfs, etc)... windowing: xorg, gnome, kde, ati, etc. themes: gentoo-artwork, kde-themes, icons, etc.. stage1: downloads tar, unpacks it, bootstraps, emerges system, etc. - I like this one, imagine deploying 100 identical (but, multiplatform) workstations, using one gentoo configuration. Assuming that portage could work across multiple machines, we can define the set of packages, the ways that these sets of packages can interconnect, define which hosts, and define the incompatiblities, then it would not be too daunting a task to supply the admin with a set of options that they can use to implement an entire strategy in a day. As well, there would be use to me, if I wanted to create my own metapackages through something similar to that of the Gentoo portage. I like the idea of one host to manage them all, and I love the idea of stateful configuration. I also love what portage has done to computing (not excluding "ports"), and I will obsess until I can see it all together. Just a few thoughts; I wanted to hear others. Sorry for the lengthy post. Robert Larson -- Is your job running? You'd better go catch it! -- [email protected] mailing list
