[nycbug-talk] enterprise bsd

[Paul Dlug]

On Mar 8, 2005, at 3:51 PM, Bjorn Nelson wrote:

> We have some redhat machines at work and I have been starting to use 
> the up2date and rhn services.  I am impressed with the ease of 
> applying security updates and it made me wonder what comparable things 
> are available to the freebsd (or bsd in general) realm.  For freebsd, 
> I already have an internal cvsup server, I use portupgrade, have 
> exported /usr/ports/distfiles, debated an export of /usr/ports and 
> /usr/src, have looked at freebsd-update, debated an export of all of 
> /usr.  I am trying to find a way to manage a large amount of machines 
> from one place.  I probably could just write something that sends 
> pkg_version output somewhere and then I parse that, but is there 
> something already built?  What have you guys and gals found favorable? 
>  Can anyone recommend the freebsd-update?  Are the sources 
> trustworthy?

We're using radmind, http://www.radmind.org or 
/usr/ports/sysutils/radmind to distribute changes to systems. It's a 
mechanism for layering filesystem changes. This works out really well 
as a total system management solution, we're using it to distribute the 
full OS, OS upgrades, packages and configuration files.

I've been managing systems using radmind for over a year now without 
any problems. It's also great for disaster recovery, just 
backup/replicate your radmind server and you're done.


--Paul