We run a network of 300+ debian servers and desktops with a few Mac OS X clients thrown in for good measure. Having hundreds of machines means that there's usually a lot of installing and upgrading going on.
I'm mostly happy with the dpkg system, but there are a couple of things that have been bothering me for a while, and I'm wondering if anyone has come up with satisfactory solutions to the following issues, which basically boil down to automated installs with site-specific configuration and auxiliary files. For many packages we have site-specific configuration files we want set up on all the machines, and with this many machines we don't want to be editing configuration files by hand on every machine, for every new install of a package. The solution we've come up with is to have a package whose preinstall script simply copies the correct configuration files to the system *before* the packages which use these configuration files get installed. Obviously this is not optimal, since, for example, it's already happened several times that a machine has gone out when someone accidentally forgot to run the "conform" package, and all the configuration files are wrong. A less easily solved problem has to do with auxiliary files. We are heavy TeX users, and consequently have various TeX gadgets that are not packaged by Debian. OK, so we have our own tex-utm package containing these things. What do you do, though, if you want to actually replace a file from, say, the tetex package with one you've customized yourself? The package system breaks down at this point, since the local and debian packages will conflict. There are ways to get around this (forced installs, etc.) but these complicate package installation considerably. The optimal scenario would be to have some kind of mechanism which would automatically allow for an adjunct configuration/auxiliary file package to be installed with the parent package on request. For example (and I'm obviously just making this up) apt-get install tetex-base would work as always. apt-get install --adjunct tetex-utm tetex-base would install tetex-base along with a local package containing site customized configuration files, additional stuff, and even customized replacements for specific package components. And of course the latter installation method would assume no user intervention; i.e. the install would be completely automatic with no debconf questions regardless of how debconf has been configured, allowing for fully automated remote installs. Since a mechanism such as the one described above currently is not part of the dpkg system, I wonder how other people handle automation and site-specific configuration file issues? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
