Re: [gentoo-dev] Managing updates on many identical Gentoo systems

[Joakim Tjernlund <Joakim.Tjernlund@infinera.com>]

On Thu, 1970-01-01 at 00:00 +0000, Anthony G. Basile wrote:
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> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm trying to design an update system for many identical Gentoo systems.
>  Using a binhost is obvious, but there are still problems with this
> approach.
> 
> Unless there's some magic I don't know about (and this is why I'm
> sending this email) each machine still needs to have the portage tree
> installed locally (1.5 GB) or somehow mounted by a network filesystem
> (which is not practical if the machines are not on a local network).
> Furthermore, each machine would have to run emerge locally to do the
> calculation of what packages need updating.
> 
> This procedure is redundant because each machine is housing the same
> data and doing the same dependence-tree calculation.  It should be
> possible to do this calculation on a centralized binhost and simply
> communicate the update information to the remote machines.  They would
> then only have to download the .tbz2's and install them, keeping a tidy
> /var/db/pkg.  Thus they avoid having to house the portage tree and
> burning cpu cycles that just calculate redundant information.
> 
> I'm inspired here by OpenBSD's pkg_add which doesn't require all of
> ports to be installed, and mender which is a
> 
> Any ideas?

No ideas but I am interested in solutions. I am thinking/looking at updating
embedded devices.

Also, I guess you have the common problem with changes in /etc/ files which 
needs to be kept in sync.

 Jocke