From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F4901381F3 for ; Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:46:39 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 43806E0CF8; Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:46:32 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-wg0-f51.google.com (mail-wg0-f51.google.com [74.125.82.51]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 22E43E0AD1 for ; Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:46:30 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-wg0-f51.google.com with SMTP id c11so1751037wgh.18 for ; Thu, 26 Sep 2013 13:46:29 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to:subject:references :in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=LcP4Rl7V1o26XnPNyZIDjMz+pESCVbIsRfFiJMICOYk=; b=LWSE3NTmSwT7zPGCHRLI3ILwi+huTknvIckODWHSAhcDGmVopNXg8k6fELUZxS+ite l2/BBSagwZuWtmixkkVl6g+00VJHv331x9dEZXyRHIazqpi7eI4HqycDhPnqfSeD9kyI UYhwS5sZYcleExpX5hzsTTbPRtGq1ZvL9mTY5Nj58KNlAybWqmuSthVNALRlB6qHsswN hzuifZJAjxCZruBkO9BZYGJkyDnreddycEMwOV0aNVOb5Y0VFYV8x3IdevXTvQMtZGxW PhueDpCKpo6kCK1URjZGB8GEHJbkivbrfuB1gTmHraPHSHTwRCPQJD82TiPQpC30vCuh DI6Q== X-Received: by 10.194.176.163 with SMTP id cj3mr2685710wjc.8.1380228389765; Thu, 26 Sep 2013 13:46:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [172.20.0.40] (196-210-126-33.dynamic.isadsl.co.za. [196.210.126.33]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPSA id u15sm31719446wib.5.1969.12.31.16.00.00 (version=TLSv1 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA bits=128/128); Thu, 26 Sep 2013 13:46:28 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <52449C1A.5000306@gmail.com> Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 22:42:02 +0200 From: Alan McKinnon User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.0 Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Managing multiple systems with identical hardware References: <524358B0.1060000@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 1b76a800-9790-45cc-904a-c00a356db92b X-Archives-Hash: c0be6916381bb42b19854bc55ceaccd9 On 26/09/2013 11:08, Grant wrote: > I'm thinking of a different approach and I'm getting pretty excited. > > I realized I only need two types of systems in my life. One hosted > server and bunch of identical laptops. My laptop, my wife's laptop, > our HTPC, routers, and office workstations could all be on identical > hardware, and what better choice than a laptop? Extremely > space-efficient, portable, built-in UPS (battery), and no need to buy > a separate monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, camera, etc. Some > systems will use all of that stuff and some will use none, but it's > OK, laptops are getting cheap, and keyboard/mouse/video comes in handy > once in a while on any system. Laptops are a good choice, desktops are almost dead out there, and thin clients nettops are just dead in the water for anything other than appliances and media servers > What if my laptop is the master system and I install any application > that any of the other laptops need on my laptop and push its entire > install to all of the other laptops via rsync whenever it changes? > The only things that would vary by laptop would be users and > configuration. Could work, but don't push *your* laptop's config to all the other laptops. they end up with your stuff which might not be what them to have. Rather have a completely separate area where you store portage configs, tree, packages and distfiles for laptops/clients and push from there. I'd recommend if you have a decent-ish desktop lying around, you press that into service as your master build host. yeah, it takes 10% longer to build stuff, but so what? Do it overnight. > Maybe puppet could help with that? It would almost be > like my own distro. Some laptops would have stuff installed that they > don't need but at least they aren't running Fedora! :) Errr no. Do not do that. Do not use puppet for Gentoo systems. Let me make that clear :-) DO NOT PROVISION GENTOO SYSTEMS FROM PUPPET. You will break things horribly and will curse the day you tried. Basically, puppet and portage will get in each other's way and clobber each other. Puppet has no concept of USE flags worth a damn, cannot determine in advance what an ebuild will provide and the whole thing breaks puppet's 100% deterministic model. Puppet is designed to work awesomely well with binary distros, that is where it excels. Keep within those constraints. Same goes for chef, cfengine and various others things that accomplish the same end. > If I can make this work I will basically only admin my laptop and > hosted server no matter how large the office grows. Huge time savings > and huge scalability. No multiseat required. Please shoot this down! Rather keep your laptop as your laptop with it's own setup, and everything else as that own setup. You only need one small difference between what you want your laptop to have, and everything else to have, to crash that entire model. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckinnon@gmail.com