Re: [gentoo-user] Managing multiple systems with identical hardware

[Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com>]

>> 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 actually do want them all to have my stuff and I want to have all
their stuff.  That way everything is in sync and I can manage all of
them by just managing mine and pushing.  How about pushing only
portage configs and then letting each of them emerge unattended?  I
know unattended emerges are the kiss of death but if all of the
identical laptops have the same portage config and I emerge everything
successfully on my own laptop first, the unattended emerges should be
fine.

> 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.

Well, my goal is to minimize the number of different systems I
maintain.  Hopefully just one type of laptop and a server.

>>  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! :)
>
> DO NOT PROVISION GENTOO SYSTEMS FROM PUPPET.

OK, I'm thinking over how much variation there would be from laptop to laptop:

1. /etc/runlevels/default/* would vary of course.
2. /etc/conf.d/net would vary for the routers and my laptop which I
sometimes use as a router.
3. /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf under the same conditions as #2.
4. Users and /home would vary but the office workstations could all be
identical in this regard.

Am I missing anything?  I can imagine everything else being totally identical.

What could I use to manage these differences?

> 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.

I think it will work if I can find a way to manage the few differences
above.  Am I overlooking any potential issues?

- Grant