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Ask HN: How do you manage your *nix binary package updates? (first post. eek)

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Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your *nix binary package updates? (first post. eek)

#11

Post by technomancy »

dkarl wrote: post #8

We manage our own dists. We package our own software as .debs, so everything gets managed the same way. All security updates, release deployments, rollbacks, etc., are managed with apt-get. I don't exactly understand pinning, but it's also important to how we manage packages. Depending on the release and the kind of server we're deploying to, we may do them all in one night or in batches of a few hundred over a week.…

I would love to deploy via apt-get, but I don't want to lose the ability to have multiple versions installed at the same time. How do you handle this? Do you have to name the package for each version something different a la python.2.4, python2.6, etc?

This is the one thing I hate about apt vs tools like rubygems; the workarounds for this missing functionality are heinous.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your *nix binary package updates? (first post. eek)

#12

Post by TuaAmin13 »

rdtsc wrote: post #9

Create a custom repository of your packages and point all the machines in your cluster to it? If it is CentOS or RHEL just add a new repo to /etc/yum.repos.d. If you are upgrading system repos then just set the priority of your repo to be higher. Of course this implies that you have successfully rpm-fied your packages. We did that to all our packages and configuration.

If you run the Red Hat family (Fedora, CentOS, SL, whatever else) you could also run Spacewalk. Machines periodically check in and get config files and packages that it needs. If you configure it to do so you can also push.

At my last job we ran Spacewalk on our Koji box. Koji will let you build packages that you can then put in your repo to yum install.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your *nix binary package updates? (first post. eek)

#13

Post by nodata »

You can do two things.

1. Mirror a yum repository plus updates. For each day create a hardlinked directory of updates named reponame.YYYYMMDD. On the hosts you wish to update sed -i to the new day in your yum repo config file and run yum -y upgrade. When you know it works, do it on the other hosts too.

2. Use a configuration management tool like Puppet.

For your sized infrastructure you probably want the first.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your *nix binary package updates? (first post. eek)

#14

Post by mikemaccana »

TuaAmin13 wrote: post #12
rdtsc wrote: post #9

Create a custom repository of your packages and point all the machines in your cluster to it? If it is CentOS or RHEL just add a new repo to /etc/yum.repos.d. If you are upgrading system repos then just set the priority of your repo to be higher. Of course this implies that you have successfully rpm-fied your packages. We did that to all our packages and configuration.

If you run the Red Hat family (Fedora, CentOS, SL, whatever else) you could also run Spacewalk. Machines periodically check in and get config files and packages that it needs. If you configure it to do so you can also push. At my last job we ran Spacewalk on our Koji box. Koji will let you build packages that you can then put in your repo to yum install.

+1. Yum and apt and the like are awesome for individual machines, but pull based. Spacewalk and RHN are centralized push, which you need for any decent amount of machines.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your *nix binary package updates? (first post. eek)

#16

Post by locci »

aspitzer wrote: post #3

I used to manage around 300 servers myself. The only way it was possible was to have a completely stripped OS. All apps we used I installed under: /apps/ / example: /apps/perl/5.8.12 then I would symlink /apps/perl/5.8.12 to /apps/perl/current The profiles on the machine would add /apps/*/current/bin to the path. This allowed upgrades and roll backs just by changing the symlink to the one I wanted to be current. This…

This sounds a lot like what gobolinux is doing [1] with its filesystem/package manager. Did you ever incur in more trouble than it was worth with that approach?

Making the filesystem the actual package database rather than a snapshot of what should be installed is quite tempting.

[1]http://gobolinux.org/index.php?page=at_a_glance

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your *nix binary package updates? (first post. eek)

#18

Post by briandoll »

I was at devopsdays in Mountain View CA a week ago and one of the panel discussions was on package management. I was a bit surprised to see it as a topic, as there are numerous known ways to solve the problem.

It turns out, that's exactly the problem. The topic was hotly debated and yes, there are endless possible ways to distribute packages across a large environment.

I think choosing a pattern involves deciding for yourself how secure/auditable you need your environment to be and how tightly you want to couple your deployment process to your current architecture (ie. some package managers only work on some systems, etc.). That will narrow your choices down to a handful, and then you get to dig into the implementation details and decide from there.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your *nix binary package updates? (first post. eek)

#19

Post by drivebyacct2 »

BCM43 wrote: post #7
bretthoerner wrote: post #4

Isn't this what people run their own apt mirrors for?

Yep. At my work we have a apt repository, and push packages to in, then issue an apt-get update on all the machines.

Hopefully an upgrade too, as an update alone wouldn't do anything.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your *nix binary package updates? (first post. eek)

#20

Post by drivebyacct2 »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #19
BCM43 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. At my work we have a apt repository, and push packages to in, then issue an apt-get update on all the machines.

Hopefully an upgrade too, as an update alone wouldn't do anything.

So, do you guys not know what you're talking about is there some legitimate reason for downvoting this? Please, by all means, `update` to your heart's content with aptitude. It won't do a damn thing, but OKAY.
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