partial/gradual softupdate?

[Henning Sprang]

Andreas Schuldei wrote:
> how can i do this best, with the config space in svn and as
> little special cases for servers as possible?

I can think of many possible ways:

* In the evening (so, before the nightly run) only change system configs
that should run in the nightly run.
Other changes are being made(and committed to you config repository)
only short before doing the manual run

* use tags and branches in your version control system for the config
space. Let the automatic nightly script only checkout "stable" or
"nigthly" tagged version, while when running by hand, you can check out
the "manual" tag.

* Some simple variable you set with the manual call. And your nameserver
reconfiguration script just exists if it is not set - like
#$ DOCRITICALSTUFF=true fai -N softupdate

* have a central database (and a GUI, e.g. web for it) that let's you
define classes with advanced rules (and things like "exceptions", for
example, "all hosts named web-* get the stable web app, but
web-sometestmachine gets the testing stuff"

* I don't know how complex your setup is, but the example of installing
"unstable" application packages only on some test machines could even be
made simply by just adding a
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/sometestingrepository.list file only for some
specific hosts

Henning


-- 
Henning Sprang
http://www.sprang.de
+49 (0) 176 82188257