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mercy

Member

Registered: 2004-04-24

Posts: 62

Central administration of several */linux-servers

i have 10 */linux server wich are at the moment not rly "properly" set up as servers...

i would now like to set up one of em as a "central administration unit" so i can easily handle EVERY administrative stuff directly from that machine...

my first look was at kerberos+scripts running with rsh but... well...

anybody knows a "nice, comfortable" solution ??

ghostwalker

Member

From: Tacoma, WA

Registered: 2004-07-28

Posts: 140

Re: Central administration of several */linux-servers

I don't know but you may want to look a webmin, http://www.webmin.com

Walt

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cactus

Taco Eater

From: t͈̫̹ͨa͖͕͎̱͈ͨ͆ć̥̖̝o̫̫̼s͈̭̱̞͍̃!̰

Registered: 2004-05-25

Posts: 4,622

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Re: Central administration of several */linux-servers

Well, I know some people that use various scripts, and a read only nfs server, to manage their server farm.

Each machine has a few crons that run customized scripts. These scripts check a specific directory on the nfs share (/share/ip-address-of-client so it is specific to each server asking for updates) to see if a certain file exists (we will call it new-stuff).
If new-stuff exists, then new-stuff contains a few lines like so...
etc/exports
etc/httpd/httpd.conf

The scripts then pull the new files (/share/ip-address-of-client/etc/exports for example), and restart the daemons. Of course, with this system, they have to have excellent backups. If they make too large a mistake in their config files, poof..there goes a server.

But, it is a somewhat novel approach to administering a large number of boxen. They also have a central package repository on the nfs share, so after testing packages on a test server, they can just be dumped into that directory, and the servers will update themselves periodically.

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Michel

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2004-07-31

Posts: 286

Re: Central administration of several */linux-servers

Heya,

I'm not a serveradmin, but maybe this will interest you:

http://www.systemimager.org/

I found it while searching for reliable multicast.

Hope it helps,

Michel