[LinuxUsers] Puppet and Viper

[Todd Lyons]

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Pat O'Brien <pat at petta-tech.com> wrote:
>> 2. It is client server architecture, which is very cool.  Any
>> suggestions as which distro works really well as an etch server?  We
>> use CentOS exclusively here so would like to stay within it, however,
> We use CentOS at work for practically everything, including our etch
> servers.

That's a useful statement, at least for me and my purposes :-)

> For the etch-client (living on hosts) there should be rpm spec files already
> made for ease of deployment which we just have installed, along with other
> things, during the post section of our kickstart files.

So you're saying I need to roll an rpm for etch client.  Should be
doable, and I see it's even made easy because there's an etch-client
spec file in the tarball.

> As for the server, we don't roll it out using a package manager, so the
> instructions on the wiki would be the best bet to follow.
>> 3. Any "cut and paste" or "quick script" suggestions for quick client
>> installation on CentOS 4.x and 5.x servers?  The wiki introduction had
>> a lot of commands that manipulated files outside of the package
>> management system, so I wanted to see if there was something more
> As for the Server itself, unless you were to roll your own rpms for
> the gems, you would be stuck with using gems. I don't really have a problem
> with this, personally.

I have some things that I do (courier-imap specialties) for mail
servers, so I guess I'm not above this either.  I'd _rather_ it the
other way, but wish in one hand... :-)

>> 4. Is my understanding correct that I could do something as simple on
>> the etch server as a local DB file all the way up to a backend like
>> mysql/postgres?
> We have mysql providing the backend db for the etch server. I see no reason
> why something like sqlite wouldn't work.

I'm going to do it that way then, thanks for the confirmation.

> So you would want to have a "gold" server, where you would edit say,
> /etc/sysctl.conf, etch would see the change submit it to svn or git and then
> push that "gold" /etc/sysctl.conf file out to all of the hosts you permit it
> to? I've never tried that but I wouldn't imagine that behavior exists in
> etch.

With support for scripts, I can see a couple solutions to pull the
file from a central repository (or symlink to file in an nfs mounted
directory), but I don't see a way to detect that the file is changed
from the template and push the changes back to the central location.

> If I misunderstood the question, let me know. Hope this helped.

Understood it perfectly.  Yes, it did greatly, thanks so much.  Hope
to see you at a SRCLUG meeting if you ever get a chance to make it out
that way.
-- 
Regards...      Todd
Real Integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that no body's going
to know whether you did it or not.