MassMaintenance
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Launchpad Entry: edubuntu-mass-maintenance
Packages affected:
Summary
Edubuntu is often used in situations with large numbers of systems and users; we will provide tools to maintain these large networks.
Release Note
Rationale
Maintaining 10.000 thin clients, 17.000 desktops/laptops, and 80.000 users dispersed over 10.000 square kilometers is very difficult when you only have the Gnome user manager and you have to ssh into every system to do maintenance.
Use Cases
Assumptions
Design
Implementation
UI Changes
Code Changes
Migration
Test/Demo Plan
Outstanding Issues
BoF agenda and discussion
- User Management
LDAP: We need a bulk import tool, and, even more, the gnome user/group admin tools need ldapification (see https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/edubuntu-user-management)
Open Account Provisioning System (OAPS) tries to do this kind of thing. It's used to automatically create accounts, deactivate them and so on. https://svn.revolutionlinux.com/OpenRevolution/OAPS/
Tools
General information about management software : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_configuration_management_software
Puppet: http://reductivelabs.com/trac/puppet
looks like this is the tool of choice
- upstream development will be monitored to watch for a 1.0 release
- we will wait and see if it becomes sufficiently mature before hardy feature freeze to move it into main
ogra will monitor the puppet & puppetmaster packages in universe
- good for ensuring a small number of particular users exist locally on a large number of systems
- great for mass BOX management
- can do very well in a remote situation, such as a WAN
upstream is VERY receptive & responsive
- Reductive Labs (upstream) sells support for puppet
- 2/3 of the code in puppet is for testing
- Cfengine
- largely being abandoned at this point; syntax problems, extensibility problems, difficult to set up and begin using
sensitive to time sync btw client & server; easily broken in this way
Bcfg2 : http://trac.mcs.anl.gov/projects/bcfg2 This tool models really well a system so it's possible to get a declarative spec, not a procedural one.
- webmin (note that we will use ebox by default for web-based maintenance it provides similar functionality)
- has security problems, bad reputation
- has good bulk-import and user management interfaces that even work for Samba/LDAP
Lanscape (http://www.canonical.com/projects/landscape)
- This is a service from Canonical, and can offer much of this functionality.
- This is not the primary solution for solving these issues in Edubuntu.
- dsh
- clusterssh
fanout/fanterm (http://www.stearns.org/fanout/README.html)
- The next sessions should be attended by a person from the server and the landscape team, ogra will care for them to be subscribed.
- Also, moquist has contacted Luke Kanies (puppet project lead) to see if he can attend remotely
- Jorge Castro has put puppet into production as well; would be good to get his input