On 2/3/06, Ian P. Christian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've currently got about 30 gentoo servers that I need to maintain, and this > number will increase significnatly shortly. > > I would like to move to an automated way of keeping these servers up to date. > > Firstly, I would like to use binary packages. I initially thought about having > a repository pre architecture, and standardising on cflags and use flags - > however this isn't feasable if you need to alter the use flags on just one > server - installing from the binary package will result in the wrong package > being installed. > > Ideally, there would be a way to make emerge make a hash of the use flags and > cflags it's using to compile a package, and then look > for /repository/package-<hash> as the binary package - however I'm quite sure > this kind of feature doesnt' exist. Perhaps there is an alternative? > > Also, if I upgrade 30 servers, I certainly don't want to log into each one to > do an etc-update on 101 files which I've not ever modified in the first > place. > > How do you manage your servers effectivly?
I've written and maintained and used since 2 years custom made software for this process. It;s called portki available on dev.gentoo.org/~radek/portki/ - unfortunately there is no good documentation to it. We can arrange an irc or skype session as I'm a quite busy person if You want me to describe it to You. In short: * designed to run in fully automated way * uses master/slave portage replication mode with separate _own_ master portage repo * additional own repos for home made software * allows different upgrade cycles per machine (weekly/monthly/yearly, glsa only) * allows automatic cfg upgrade _if_ file was not touched by human. * does all necessary cleaning * extensive logging * does revdep-rebuild and other necessary portage tricks * allows central configuration (useflags, make.conf etc.) * it used binpkg in early version but I discarded this idea because of: .. problems generated even on compatibile hosts .. necessity to have all the same cfg (which is often not the case) .. small gain (on todays servers compilation is fast) .. much harder individual changes to the machines * its just an integration work (mostly bash and python) around standard gentoo tools, although its in highly automated state. * easy to extend * many bugs :) and still in -home-made-specialized software. -- radoslaw. -- [email protected] mailing list
