[mdlug] Centralized package management tools

[Michael ORourke]

Greg,

You have any luck with Spacewalk?
It is not an easy tool to install and configure, that's for sure..  Also, the wiki docs seem a bit disorganized.  It took me several attempts to get it installed and working.  Then I had trouble with the channels.  Mainly adding clients to a channel.  I was finally able to add a client to a channel, populate it with a few RPMs, and push the RPMs to the client.  Also, I noticed that the rhnsd client daemon wakes up every 240 minutes (default) and checks the spacewalk server for any actions.  I had initially thought that was 240 seconds.  So an "apply now" action could really be hours later.

-Mike
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Wojtak, Greg 
  To: MDLUG's Main discussion list 
  Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 9:38 AM
  Subject: Re: [mdlug] Centralized package management tools


  Ah, the holy grail for CentOS/RHEL systems (aside from paying Red Hat
  $13,000 a year for a satellite server!).

  I am looking for the same thing (and I'm sure any other Linux Sysadmin
  is) for years.  I'm still using the strategy of "install updates on dev
  server, keep the rpm's that were downloaded, move them to test, then
  production, and pray to God that the same packages are in sync across
  all environments."  

  Not very efficient.  I've been looking into building a yum server and
  configuring the yum-updatesd to download the packages that I roll out.
  A little better than using cron, but not by much.

  I'd be interested to hear if you find anything.

  Greg Wojtak

  -----Original Message-----
  From: mdlug-bounces at mdlug.org [mailto:mdlug-bounces at mdlug.org] On Behalf
  Of Michael ORourke
  Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 9:29 AM
  To: MDLUG's main mailing list
  Subject: [mdlug] Centralized package management tools

  Lug nuts,

  I'm looking for some recommendations, specifically for the CentOS 5.2 
  distribution, for a centralized package management system or tools.
  I've 
  spent some time doing vaious Google searches, but haven't found what I
  was 
  looking for aside from basic tools such as 'yum' and 'up2date', which
  are 
  designed to run on a single host.  I was hoping that I would stumble
  upon 
  some existing tools that could be leveraged in an existing environment.
  What I would really like is:
  * Gui tools (browser based).
  * Internal centralized server (package repository).
  * Centralized management (for development, QA, & production).
  * Ability to schedule updates and manually push updates.
  * Auditing capabilities (which servers have what packages installed).
  * Ability to manage servers by group (e.g. Dev App servers).

  Running 'yum -update' from cron on each server isn't a good strategy, 
  especially when it comes to production systems.  I would like to have
  the 
  capability to pull down patches to a centralized server, then push the 
  patches/updates to the development/QA environment, and finally out to
  the 
  production systems after testing is completed.
  Is that too much to ask for.  :-)
  Any suggestions/recommendations/ideas?

  Thanks,
  Mike 

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