On Tuesday 09 September 2008 17:01:08 David Mathog wrote: > This is a bit off topic, but I'm looking for a convenient way to manage > N "identical" Windows PCs, using as much as possible 1 command to do the > same thing on all of them. The capabilities I'm looking for, preferably > in a single tool are, given a designated master machine and N clones of > that master: > > 1. Compare all (or to a specified depth) files below some directory on > the workstations, displaying differences. For instance, compare the > directory tree below C:\Program Files. > > 2 After determining which subset of the differences from (1) need to be > pushed, designate those files and "put", whereupon all such files are > copied from the master to the N remote machines. > > 3. Select a .bat file in the synchronized directory tree, invoke "run", > whereupon it runs inside a DOS shell on all remote machines. The output > from that run is saved and diffed, so that anything that went wrong on > one of the machines may be spotted. > > 4 Run a program on the master (using Windows GUI), and it runs > on all the other machines at once, applying the same key strokes and > mouse events to all of them at once. For instance, do an install on the > master and everything happens the same way on the other N machines. > If something different happens along the way, the option to address that > machine specifically would be provided. This one is sort of the holy > grail for Windows administration, I'm not entirely sure that the Windows > GUI even provides a place to hack in between the mouse and keyboard to > achieve this. > > I already have a collection of tools for doing bits and pieces of this, > > but nothing that covers all of these bases: > >From Samba there is smbclient, which if buried in a script can be used > > for the file transfers, so long as port 445/tcp is open on each > workstation. That isn't too bad a security hole since it can be > restricted through the firewall to only talk to one controlling machine. > It is relatively easy to make it talk to N machines by addressing them > sequentially within a script, although it also requires one more machine > running Linux to perform all the smbclient operations. Tar can do > the directory traversals, but there seems not to be any way to generate > checksums on the remote machines, so for a directory comparision one > would have to move all the relevant data over the net back to the > central machine. Not very efficient if N is large and the disk space > being traversed is also large. > > UltraVNC lets me do any console operation remotely, but only one machine > at a time. If there was some way to run UltraVNC in parallel it would > almost do what (4) requires, but currently all one can do is switch from > display to display, and then repeat the same commands on each. > > Disk cloning (ghost and the like). Massive overkill when just a few > files need to be tweaked. Plus on Windows if the partition being copied > includes C:\Windows (and it always does for me) the whole sysprep etc. > dance must be carried out. > > md5deep generates a tree'd md5sum report, which could be used for the > file comparisons in (1), but it just runs on one machine at a time. > > Boot all machines under linux. This lets me use ssh to run scripts, > and since NTFS can be mounted read/write these days, access to the > XP directories is possible from linux. That makes the file > synchronization relatively straightforward, but at the cost of having > to run a completely different OS, and the loss of the ability to run > programs within Windows. > > Thanks, > > David Mathog > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
Have you considered doing these types of updates from a logon script? There are a number of tools you could use to do intelligent processing from a logon script environment. Check the Samba3-HOWTO for info on logon scripts. Cheers, John T. -- John H Terpstra "Don't do as I do; Show me better!" - Anonymous. -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
