[Techtalk] Keeping Linux servers up to date

[Mary]

On Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 09:30:21AM +0200, Magni Onsoien wrote:
> We have been using RedHat Network for a while at work and it works ok,
> especially when we decided to go for the Enterprise version in stead
> of Basic (the big difference is the possibility of updating a cluster
> of systems in stead of doing clickety-click on every single box. Or it
> is possible to run 'up2date -u' on each server, but it's noisy and I
> have a few bad experiences with packages not working properly and thus
> breaking systems 500 km away from here). 

There are some advantages and disadvantages to .deb based systems vs.
.rpm based systems here.

.deb packages have interactive installs, which halt to ask you questions
("should I overwrite /etc/postfix/main.cf, you appear to have changed
it?") This lessens breakage due to new packages with old configs or new
packages with new configs that don't contain system-specific
information.

On the downside, it means you have to babysit your updates.

I've heard people sing the praises of cfengine in these type of
environments:

        What is Cfengine?

        Cfengine, or the configuration engine is an autonomous agent and
        a middle to high level policy language for building expert
        systems which administrate and configure large computer
        networks. Cfengine uses the idea of classes and a primitive
        intelligence to define and automate the configuration and
        maintenance of system state, for small to huge configurations.
        Cfengine is designed to be a part of a computer immune system,
        and can be thought of as a gaming agent. It is ideal for cluster
        management and has been adopted for use all over the world in
        small and huge organizations alike. 

        -- http://www.cfengine.org/

but I don't think it tests working-ness and I haven't used it.

-Mary