From jcanelas@gmail.com  Wed Nov 16 19:08:54 2005
From: jcanelas@gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9_Manuel_Canelas?=)
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:08:54 +0000
Subject: [Infrastructures] inventory tracking web app. - OCS Inventory
Message-ID: <ecaf22700511161108k74eb8b74pe7afc97022a87d05@mail.gmail.com>

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I remember someone needing a good way to track organization resources and
the list not knowing of a optimal way. This seems to fit the bill:
http://ocsinventory.sourceforge.net/?lng=3Den

jmc

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<br>
I remember someone needing a good way to track organization resources
and the list not knowing of a optimal way. This seems to fit the bill:<br>
<a href=3D"http://ocsinventory.sourceforge.net/?lng=3Den">http://ocsinvento=
ry.sourceforge.net/?lng=3Den</a><br>
<br>
jmc<br>

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From lance@bearcircle.net  Wed Nov 16 22:51:27 2005
From: lance@bearcircle.net (Lance Brown)
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 17:51:27 -0500
Subject: [Infrastructures] ISConf 4 vs. RPM-based LInux distro
Message-ID: <437BB7EF.1000301@bearcircle.net>

Greetings,

I'm considering using ISConf 4 to manage a network of about 50 Linux
desktops running Fedora Core 4 and have a question about RPM-based
updates vs. isconf.

Right now, I have yum running out of cron to install RPM updates when
they appear on the yum repositories.  It seems to me this would not work
well under ISConf, or would it?  Does:

$ isconf exec yum -y update

make sense?  It feels like it wouldn't to me, but I'm not sure.

--[Lance]

-- 
 My LiveJournal  http://www.livejournal.com/users/labrown/
 GPG Fingerprint: 409B A409 A38D 92BF 15D9 6EEE 9A82 F2AC 69AC 07B9
 CACert.org Assurer

From stevegt@TerraLuna.Org  Fri Nov 18 01:48:13 2005
From: stevegt@TerraLuna.Org (Steve Traugott)
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 17:48:13 -0800
Subject: [Infrastructures] ISConf 4 vs. RPM-based LInux distro
In-Reply-To: <437BB7EF.1000301@bearcircle.net>
References: <437BB7EF.1000301@bearcircle.net>
Message-ID: <20051118014813.GB7922@terraluna.org>

Hi Lance!

You don't want to run yum, apt, or any of the dynamic package fetchers
from an isconf exec (or from any other automated build system) because
the distro vendors have a habit of changing things on the FTP servers
when you aren't looking.  The machines you build next month won't be
the same as the machines you build today, and they might not build at
all.  And trying to maintain a local "frozen" mirror is fragile and
inflexible.  What you want to do instead is make something like a
tarball that acts like a "mini mirror" of just the packages you need
for a given operation; this makes things repeatable.

What you want is the moral equivalent of apt-tar -- it grabs all the
packages you need, as well as their prereqs, and bundles the whole
thing up in a tarball rather than actually installing them.  You run
it on an example target machine so it only gets you the prereqs you
need.  It works by running apt in its dryrun mode, recording what it
*would* have done, and then creating the tarball and install script
accordingly.  I just uploaded the latest version (1.3) to
http://trac.t7a.org/isconf/pub/.

Since apt also asks you config questions, uses the debconf db to store
the answers, and then generates the config files from that, apt-tar
uses a *temporary* debconf db, runs debconf to get your answers, and
applies them during the tarball's install script.

This has all worked very well over the last few years.  The only time
I've heard of anyone breaking it was when Ryan Nowakowski threw an
800-package initial install at it; made a 600M tarball and things
didn't scale very well.  ;-)  I never ran into this because I tend to
use systemimager for initial installs, and do upgrades piecemeal.

I moved to Debian from Redhat in large part because the Debian tools
make these things possible.  Last time I looked (it's been a while),
yum didn't have a good dryrun mode, or something, and <flamebait> like
most Redhat-related stuff is just not as well suited to automation
</flamebait>, and then you've got rpm's way of littering .rpmsave
files everywhere rather than using anything like debconf, so config
files aren't as easy to deal with either.  I still think rpm-based
distros could overcome this, it's just going to take more work.  

If I had to maintain Redhat machines today, I'd probably use apt-rpm
rather than yum, and then use apt-tar to drive it.

Steve

On Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 05:51:27PM -0500, Lance Brown wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I'm considering using ISConf 4 to manage a network of about 50 Linux
> desktops running Fedora Core 4 and have a question about RPM-based
> updates vs. isconf.
> 
> Right now, I have yum running out of cron to install RPM updates when
> they appear on the yum repositories.  It seems to me this would not work
> well under ISConf, or would it?  Does:
> 
> $ isconf exec yum -y update
> 
> make sense?  It feels like it wouldn't to me, but I'm not sure.
> 
> --[Lance]
> 
> -- 
>  My LiveJournal  http://www.livejournal.com/users/labrown/
>  GPG Fingerprint: 409B A409 A38D 92BF 15D9 6EEE 9A82 F2AC 69AC 07B9
>  CACert.org Assurer
> _______________________________________________
> Infrastructures mailing list
> Infrastructures@mailman.terraluna.org
> http://mailman.terraluna.org/mailman/listinfo/infrastructures

-- 
Stephen G. Traugott  (KG6HDQ)
UNIX/Linux Infrastructure Architect, TerraLuna LLC
stevegt@TerraLuna.Org 
http://www.stevegt.com -- http://Infrastructures.Org

From lance@bearcircle.net  Fri Nov 18 02:52:25 2005
From: lance@bearcircle.net (Lance A. Brown)
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:52:25 -0500
Subject: [Infrastructures] Re: ISConf 4 vs. RPM-based LInux distro
In-Reply-To: <20051118014813.GB7922@terraluna.org>
References: <437BB7EF.1000301@bearcircle.net> <20051118014813.GB7922@terraluna.org>
Message-ID: <437D41E9.2090007@bearcircle.net>

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the feedback and recommendations.  I was worried there would
be problems and it turned out to be worse that I feared. :-(

Almost enough to make me consider flipping my desktops to debian, but
that would be a HUGE culture change where I'm at.

--[Lance]


-- 
 Celebrate The Circle   http://www.celebratethecircle.org/
 Carolina Spirit Quest  http://www.carolinaspiritquest.org/
 My LiveJournal  http://www.livejournal.com/users/labrown/
 GPG Fingerprint: 409B A409 A38D 92BF 15D9 6EEE 9A82 F2AC 69AC 07B9
 CACert.org Assurer

From architect@webalive.biz  Mon Nov 21 01:41:25 2005
From: architect@webalive.biz (Tim Nelson)
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 12:41:25 +1100 (EST)
Subject: [Infrastructures] ISConf 4 vs. RPM-based LInux distro
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.60.0511211240500.3248@tnelson.webalive.biz>

  This message is in MIME format.  The first part should be readable text,
  while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 12:40:18 +1100 (EST)
From: Tim Nelson <tim.nelson@webalive.biz>
To: Steve Traugott <stevegt@TerraLuna.Org>
Subject: Re: [Infrastructures] ISConf 4 vs. RPM-based LInux distro

On Thu, 17 Nov 2005, Steve Traugott wrote:

> I moved to Debian from Redhat in large part because the Debian tools
> make these things possible.  Last time I looked (it's been a while),
> yum didn't have a good dryrun mode, or something, and <flamebait> like
> most Redhat-related stuff is just not as well suited to automation
> </flamebait>, and then you've got rpm's way of littering .rpmsave
> files everywhere rather than using anything like debconf, so config
> files aren't as easy to deal with either.  I still think rpm-based
> distros could overcome this, it's just going to take more work.

 	Just for the record, I found yum fairly inflexible, but I'm using 
Redhat.  up2date can actually be used with yum repos, so you can do it that way 
if you try.

 	:)

-- 
Kind Regards,
 
Tim Nelson
Server Administrator
 
P: 03 9934 0888
F: 03 9934 0899
E: tim.nelson@webalive.biz
W: www.webalive.biz
 
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Level 1, Innovation Building
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From wildfire@progsoc.uts.edu.au  Mon Nov 21 06:49:41 2005
From: wildfire@progsoc.uts.edu.au (Anand Kumria)
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 17:49:41 +1100
Subject: [Infrastructures] a day in the life of isconf
Message-ID: <20051121064941.GA31155@eve.kumria.com>

Hi,

I'm in the process of setting up a greenfield infrastructure site, so I
thought I'd try something different to managing each individual machine.

I'm currently evaluating FAI, cfengine and, or course, ISconf.

While I understand the concepts and design decision behind ISconf I was
wondering if someone could explain:
	- what happens once you branch from the base.

	Let's say a security update comes out, I can immediately put
that on the base image -- can I then have the branch attempt to apply
that same change to itself?

	Or would I have to apply the change to each 'branch'? Perhaps a
sequence of commands would be instructive?

	- /etc/is/main.cf

	How are people managing this?  It seems it needs to be
hand-constructed for each machine.  In my case this site is small (~10
machines), so it isn't too big a deal but what about for larger sites?

Thanks,
Anand

From bet@rahul.net  Mon Nov 21 13:24:28 2005
From: bet@rahul.net (Bennett Todd)
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:24:28 +0000
Subject: [Infrastructures] a day in the life of isconf
In-Reply-To: <20051121064941.GA31155@eve.kumria.com>
References: <20051121064941.GA31155@eve.kumria.com>
Message-ID: <20051121132428.GB15466@rahul.net>

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2005-11-21T06:49:41 Anand Kumria:
> 	- what happens once you branch from the base.

It's as though you created a completely separate domain, with two
differences. First, all patches applied to the base up to the point
of branching are included in the branch, as the start of it's
transaction log. And second, if any base machines haven't had any
further transactions applied, they can be moved to the branch.

> 	Let's say a security update comes out, I can immediately put
> that on the base image -- can I then have the branch attempt to apply
> that same change to itself?

The base _image_ is never touched after you begin using isconf; all
changes from when you start using isconf are applied with isconf,
and a run of isconf at boot-time updates any new-built machine.

If you get a security update, and you've branched, you'll probably
want to apply the security update onto the base, and onto every
branch as well. N branches will probably mean N+1 applications of
the security update.

> 	- /etc/is/main.cf

I use a separate one for each isconf domain I set up. I've not yet
found any use for branches. All machines in the same domain have the
same main.cf.

-Bennett

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From wetenschapper@gmail.com  Wed Nov 30 13:07:36 2005
From: wetenschapper@gmail.com (Jan Lenaerts)
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 14:07:36 +0100
Subject: [Infrastructures] isconf configuration
Message-ID: <704e18b60511300507o54c3267al711ac47fc44f2edb@mail.gmail.com>

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hello,

I just started to with isconf. I think I understand the concepts,  I manage=
d
to install it but I can't figure out how to configure /etc/is/main.cf the
only documentation I found was this:
http://trac.t7a.org/isconf/pub/doc/latest/isconf.html#toc2.
is there more documentation about how to configure and use isconf.

of does someone have an good explained example?

Thanks in advance,
Jan Lenaerts

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hello,<br>
<br>
I just started to with isconf. I think I understand the concepts,&nbsp;
I managed to install it but I can't figure out how to configure
/etc/is/main.cf the only documentation I found was this:
<a href=3D"http://trac.t7a.org/isconf/pub/doc/latest/isconf.html#toc2">http=
://trac.t7a.org/isconf/pub/doc/latest/isconf.html#toc2</a>. <br>
is there more documentation about how to configure and use isconf. <br>
<br>
of does someone have an good explained example?<br>
<br>
Thanks in advance,<br>
Jan Lenaerts<br>

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From stevegt@TerraLuna.Org  Wed Nov 30 20:36:58 2005
From: stevegt@TerraLuna.Org (Steve Traugott)
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 12:36:58 -0800
Subject: [Infrastructures] isconf configuration
In-Reply-To: <704e18b60511300507o54c3267al711ac47fc44f2edb@mail.gmail.com>
References: <704e18b60511300507o54c3267al711ac47fc44f2edb@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20051130203658.GE3123@terraluna.org>

Hi Jan,

Did you see the CONFIGURATION section of the man page?  There's a
commented example in there.

Keep in mind that the only things you need to put in this file are the
environment variables which you need -- you might just start off with
an empty one, or even no file at all.

Steve


On Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 02:07:36PM +0100, Jan Lenaerts wrote:
> hello,
> 
> I just started to with isconf. I think I understand the concepts,  I managed
> to install it but I can't figure out how to configure /etc/is/main.cf the
> only documentation I found was this:
> http://trac.t7a.org/isconf/pub/doc/latest/isconf.html#toc2.
> is there more documentation about how to configure and use isconf.
> 
> of does someone have an good explained example?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Jan Lenaerts

-- 
Stephen G. Traugott  (KG6HDQ)
UNIX/Linux Infrastructure Architect, TerraLuna LLC
stevegt@TerraLuna.Org 
http://www.stevegt.com -- http://Infrastructures.Org