Re: Large install and roll-out

[Mark . Burgess]

Would anyone mind if I take some of these comments and add them to the
hints/tips page?

Mark




On 11 Mar, Adrian Phillips wrote:
>>>>>> "Rune" == Rune Mossige <runemo@stavanger.geco-prakla.slb.com> writes:
> 
>     Rune> In about 4-6 weeks, we will install a 128-node dual-CPU
>     Rune> Linux cluster, running RedHat Linux 7.2, and I'd like to
>     Rune> install cfengine on all those hosts at the same time....
> 
>     Rune> I guess that I am not the first, so I'd like to hear how
>     Rune> others have done a similar thing.
> 
>     Rune> One think that I noticed, is that the cfengine install docs
>     Rune> advises to first install cfenvd, and let it run for a week,
>     Rune> before cfkey is run to generate the keys....this is not
>     Rune> going to work for us, as we need to start using cfengine
>     Rune> asap.
> 
> I don't even run cfenvd and it works. Note I would assume this has got
> more to do with OSes that don't have /dev/random, but I am no security
> expert.
> 
>     Rune> Also, after this initial rollout, we will need to update the
>     Rune> kernels on all hosts very early after the initial
>     Rune> bootstrap. How do others update a large number of RedHat 7.2
>     Rune> machines with a new kernel? Is it OK to compile on one host,
>     Rune> and then just tar up the /lib/modules and /boot directories,
>     Rune> and re-run lilo on each host after untarring?
> 
> Well, I don't know Redhat, but with my Debian machine I have the
> following lines in one of conf. files :-
> 
> control:
>       linux.!smp::
>               smp_up = ( up )
>               kernel_image = ( kernel-image-2.2.20+up )
>       linux.smp::
>               smp_up = ( smp )
>               kernel_image = ( kernel-image-2.2.20+smp )
> 
> shellcommands:
>       # Upgrade the kernel if specifically requested
>       linux.upgrade_kernel::
>               # Make sure grub is updated as well as update-grub
>               # didn't get the kernel order right in an earlier
>               # version
>               "/usr/bin/apt-get -q -q -y install grub $(kernel_image)"
> 
> 
> Then I run cfagent -Dupgrade_kernel. I don't do this automatically
> because I don't like automatic kernel upgrades but there would be no
> problem removing the upgrade_kernel check then apt-get would be run
> each time (although, of course it doesn't do anything if the latest
> kernel is installed). The difference maybe that apt is setup to pickup
> some packages from a local spool on a central server. If I wanted to
> do automatic upgrades then I could just compile up a new kernel, copy
> it to the spool on the server and next cfagent run would do the
> upgrade. Does Redhat have something similar (I understood that
> somebody had ported apt to support rpm which maybe one way of doing
> it),
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Adrian Phillips
> 



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