On Sat, 2007-01-06 at 01:16 +1030, Tim wrote: > >> Isn't Anaconda supposed to be able to provide for that sort of thing? > >> You'd still use the same repos, but just a different installation > >> script. > > > Yes, anconda does probe and understand the hardware differences > > during an install, but it isn't involved with subsequent updates. > > Kickstart can do an initial install of a matching set of packages > > on different hardware, but then yum just updates the currently > > installed packages. What I'd like to see is the ability to put > > a large range of packages and package versions in the same > > repositories and have an ongoing ability to track package and > > package version changes to match a chosen master copy. For > > example, if the administrator of the master machine defers a > > kernel update, pulls a few newer packages from the rawhide > > repository, and installs postfix as an alternative to sendmail, > > I'd like the tracking machines to offer to make the corresponding > > changes on their next update run. > > For a follow-the-leader thing, wouldn't you be better off if the leader > was to make a list of things to be pushed onto the followers, manually, > rather than them just copying it blindly? Else one little experiment > would flow onto everything else. Yes, I was leaving a few details for the implementation. I'd expect the master admin to do some sort of 'bless' command after his changes to make them available for propagation - or at least for the master machine to still be operational after the changes are completed there (and a reboot happens for kernel updates). > I could imagine a nightly cron job on clients that looked for a list on > the server of things to be done with the yum equivelent of rpm -Uvh. > With some sort of serial number (ala DNS records), so a client doesn't > try to do it twice. I picture it as a slightly more intelligent version of a yum update where revision levels are stated explicitly and a repeat would not make any changes. It could even permit a mix of explicit revision control on certain packages managed at the master and local additions that do a yum-style "track the latest in the repository" although then you'd have to handle dependency conflicts manually. You can get somewhere close to this with some invocation of 'rpm -qa ...' followed by telling yum to install that list of packages on another machine for the initial setup, but you can't track changes that way. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
