From owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jan 13 06:11:42 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C8E4E16A41F for ; Fri, 13 Jan 2006 06:11:42 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mike@lanline.com) Received: from mail.lanline.com (mail.lanline.com [216.187.0.22]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 65AC543D45 for ; Fri, 13 Jan 2006 06:11:42 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mike@lanline.com) Received: from localhost (mike@localhost) by mail.lanline.com (8.11.6/8.11.2) with ESMTP id k0D6Bfc09350 for ; Fri, 13 Jan 2006 01:11:41 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 01:11:41 -0500 (EST) From: To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: Re: management X-BeenThere: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Internet Services Providers List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 06:11:43 -0000 sorry, just to be a little more specific. when i say i'm looking for server farm management stuff, i just mean freebsd specific stuff. i'm not a new admin, i just have to do a migration fairly quickly and i'm trying to get a feel for the best way to handle patches and upgrades for freebsd in this type of environment. as you already know freebsd's upgrade and patch system is fairly unique among the *nix's. this last e-mail was helpful with the info. about some of the customizable variables and such. thanks and don't go crazy, just what ever you guys suggest, then i'll pick what seems best for my setup. -mike Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 23:51:45 -0600 From: Matthew D. Fuller To: mike@lanline.com Cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: management On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 05:49:32PM -0500 I heard the voice of mike@lanline.com, and lo! it spake thus: > > I posted a question recently about upgrades (having one server w/ > the source and NFS mounting the source dirs to all the other > machines and building that way), but I feel like some minor details > are missing. Like, can I or should I redirect the obj code to a > directory on the local machine so I don't have to do a make clean as > I go from server to server (and if so, can I do this through > make.conf)? Well, if the machines are all roughly the same architecture-wise, you don't need to do any cleaning; just do the buildworld/buildkernel on one machine, and the installworld/installkernel individually on each (you could even build different kernels for each machine if you wanted, with a little scripting to make it easier on your fingers). If they were different archs, you'd probably want to just share /usr/src and leave /usr/obj locally on the other machines. > Same thing with ports. I've NFS-shared /usr/ports before. You have to either be careful to build only on one machine at a time and always `make clean`, or set a local $WRKDIRPREFIX. I tend to go for the former most of the time, just 'cuz it's easier. Particularly when you're dealing with smaller (<15 machines, say) situations, and you're the only one doing admin-type stuff, simple can often be better than exhaustively-robust. > Also, I know about portupgrade, but is that the best way to manage > ports? I managed ports for years without portupgrade. I'm told the scars heal eventually, though. There are some other tools that do similar things (portmanager is one, I believe); I've been pretty happy with portupgrade in general. It's no substitute for understanding ports a bit to solve occasional edge cases, but very handy. > [ports] but there doesn't seem to be any documentation about what > variables can be set or anything (e.g. can I force the binary to get > installed in a certain dir?) I know I could look in the makefiles > and stuff, but I really don't have See some vars like PREFIX and LOCALBASE and X11BASE. There's a lot of documentation of various variables in comments at the top of /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk; a lot of them are mostly variables you'd use in writing/editing a port, but it covers things like PREFIX that you might set on the command-line when installing. Usually, I've found it best to leave those sort of things alone in most cases. The more you customize, the more you end up HAVING to customize, until it all blows up at 3am. > I mean the handbook is great for general config. questions, but I'm > more interested in server farm management and maintenance. A lot of it is just general admin experience (i.e., not FreeBSD specific). It's hard to distill one person's experience into an email (or a 5-volume reference manual, for that matter). It's often relatively easy to give at least some advice on a specific question, but trying to handwave an entire gestalt of admin philosophy is impossible. -- Matthew Fuller (MF4839) | fullermd@over-yonder.net Systems/Network Administrator | http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/ On the Internet, nobody can hear you scream.