Re: [gentoo-user] Managing multiple Gentoo systems

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Thursday 07 July 2011 11:23:15 kashani did opine thusly:
> On 7/2/2011 3:14 PM, Grant wrote:
> > After a frustrating experience with a Linksys WRT54GL, I've
> > decided to stick with Gentoo routers.  This increases the
> > number of Gentoo systems I'm responsible for and they're
> > nearing double-digits.  What can be done to make the management
> > of multiple Gentoo systems easier? I think identical hardware
> > in each system would help a lot but I'm not sure that's
> > practical.  I need to put together a bunch of new workstations
> > and I'm thinking some sort of server/client arrangement with
> > the only Gentoo install being on the server could be
> > appropriate.
> > 
> > - Grant
> 
> 	You may want to look at something like a config management 
system.
> I'm using Puppet these days, but Gentoo support isn't spectacular.
> It would be a bit complex to have Puppet install the packages with
> the correct USE flags. However you could use Puppet to manage all
> the text files and then manage the packages somewhat manually.

Give chef a try.

It overcomes a lot of the issue puppet ran into, and of course makes 
new ones all of it's won, but by and large chef is more flexible.


> 
> Here's a snippet of a template for nrpe.cfg
> 
> <% if processorcount.to_i >= 12 then -%>
> command[check_load]=<%= scope.lookupvar('nrpe::params::pluginsdir')
> %>/check_load -w 35,25,25 -c 35,25,25
> <% elsif fqdn =~ /(.*)stage|demo(.*)/ then -%>
> command[check_load]=<%= scope.lookupvar('nrpe::params::pluginsdir')
> %>/check_load -w 10,10,10 -c 10,10,10
> <% else -%>
> command[check_load]=<%= scope.lookupvar('nrpe::params::pluginsdir')
> %>/check_load -w 10,7,5 -c 10,7,5
> <% end -%>
> 
> If you were managing a make.conf you could set -j<%=
> processorcount*2 %> or whatever as well as pass in your own
> settings etc. Once you have things working it's pretty good at
> keeping your servers in sync and doing minor customization per
> server based on OS, hardware, IP, hostname, etc.
> 
> kashani
-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com