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

[Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com>]

>>>>> I see what you desire now - essentially you want to clone your laptop
>>>>> (or big chunks of it) over to your other workstations.

I've been working on this and I think I have a good and simple plan.

My laptop roams around with me and is the "master" system.  The office
router is the "submaster" system.  All of the other office systems are
"minion" systems.  All of the systems are 100% hardware-identical
laptops.  All of the minions are 100% software-identical.

I install every package that any system needs on the master and create
an SSH keypair.  The only config files that change from their state on
the master are: /etc/conf.d/hostname, /etc/conf.d/net,
/etc/ssh/sshd_config, /etc/shorewall/*.  I write comments in those
files which serve as flags for scripted changes.

I write a script that is run from the master to the submaster, or from
the submaster to a minion.  If it's the former, rsync / is run with
exceptions (/usr/portage, /usr/local/portage, /var/log, /tmp, /home,
/root but /root/.ssh/id_rsa_script* is included), my personal user is
removed, a series of workstation users are created with useradd -m,
services are added or removed from /etc/runlevels/default, and config
files are changed according to comment flags.  If it's the latter,
rsync / is run without exceptions, services are added or removed from
/etc/runlevels/default, and config files are changed according to
comment flags.

All user info on the submaster and minions would be effectively reset
whenever the script is run and that's fine.  Root logins would have to
be allowed on the submaster and minions but only with the SSH key.
There are probably more paths to exclude when rsyncing master to
submaster.

That's it.  No matter how numerous the minions become, this should
allow me to keep everything running by administrating only my own
system, pushing that to the submaster, and having the submaster push
to the minions.  I've been going over the nitty-gritty and everything
looks good.

What do you think?  Is there anything inherently wrong with rsyncing /
onto a running system?  If there are little or no changes to make,
about how much data would actually be transferred?  Is there a better
tool for this than rsync?  I know Funtoo uses git for syncing with
their portage tree.

- Grant