FAI update scripts?

[Thomas Lange]

>>>>> On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 13:57:23 +1000 (EST), Matthew Palmer <mjp16 at ieee.uow.edu.au> said:

    > with it's performance.  What I'm after now is some way to ensure
    > that the packages and so forth on all machines are the latest as
    > defined by the classes.  Obviously the easiest way to do this is
    > to reinstall all machines periodically, but it seems to be
    > massive overkill.

FAI in mainly for system installation, not for daily system
administration or configuration. But I think FAI can aid this
task. For eg. by using classes. Look at cfengine and read some papers
about cfegine.

    >> From a quick thought-experiment, it seems the easiest way to do
    >> it is to
    > mount /usr/share/fai from the server, then run the
    > class-defining scripts and parse the package lists for the
    > classes.
    > Do you have any plans for such a script, or already have one
    > written?  I'm not familiar enough with the system to just hack
    > one up quickly, and I'd rather not duplicate effort.

Very good idea, laos if it's not FAI's main aim to do daily
administration. I'm working on this right now. I think the script
should use the classes defined when the installation was performed. If
you like to redefine the list of classes for a host, you should do a
new installation. A first hack will be posted to the mailling list.

    > Also a problem is the difficulty of doing the configuration -
    > running the class scripts will cause problems in the default
    > case,
The class DEFAULT should rarely be used ! Try to avoid using this class.

    >  but scripts (mine, at least) fcopy files, which will
    > probably want to be recopied each time, but other things (like

Try not to use the class DEFAULT in .../files ! fcopy does not copy
files if the source and target are already identical.

    > adding lines to config files) shouldn't be done multiple times.
Cfeninge has a cool function: AppendIfNoSuchLine
Maybe I should create a new command: fappend.

    > Perhaps a new part could be added to the system - class files in
    > .../files, which list the files which should be copied for a
    > given class.  They can then be stored in .../files as they are
    > currently - and the copying can probably be done using fcopy as
    > it is currently.

The real cool feature of classes are, that the corresponding file is
used, when it exists. So you have only to create the file. But your
proposal means, that you have more files to edit, before a class uses
its files. I think a good desoign of your classes and maybe cfegine
can help avoiding this problem.


-- 
 Thomas
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            Thomas Lange
Institut fuer Informatik        mailto:lange at informatik.Uni-Koeln.DE
   Universitaet zu Koeln
            Pohligstr. 1        Telefon: +49 221 470 5303
             50969 Koeln        Fax    : +49 221 470 5317

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