From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Apr 5 03:13:58 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 370C11065673 for ; Sat, 5 Apr 2008 03:13:58 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F20A98FC0C for ; Sat, 5 Apr 2008 03:13:57 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (smmsp@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dan.emsphone.com (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id m353Dt0r079209 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Fri, 4 Apr 2008 22:13:55 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.14.2/8.14.2/Submit) id m353Dtwi079193; Fri, 4 Apr 2008 22:13:55 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dan) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 22:13:55 -0500 From: Dan Nelson To: Steel City Phantom Message-ID: <20080405031354.GD8981@dan.emsphone.com> References: <5c99941f0804041923t1e6e9cdbue40e782805fa34f6@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <5c99941f0804041923t1e6e9cdbue40e782805fa34f6@mail.gmail.com> X-OS: FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.17 (2007-11-01) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: building a distribution server X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2008 03:13:58 -0000 In the last episode (Apr 04), Steel City Phantom said: > i have about 10 production servers that i want to upgrade to bsd 7 > and update all their ports in one shot. the problem is the down > time. im wrapping up upgrading a 6.3 to 7 and its taken over 7 hours > so far. thats way too long for our machines to be down. > > the biggest slow down is the downloading of files. just sitting > watching things i would say 70% of the time is downloading files. is > there a way where i can build a distribution server that has > everything i could possibly need to upgrade a machine from any 6.x to > 7.0 and redo all the ports on that machine and have a cron job keep > everything up to date on that server and when i upgrade a new > machine, it simply goes to my internal distribution server to get the > files. Just make a symlink that points /usr/ports/distfiles to a common directory over NFS. To save space you can symlink all of /usr/ports. This also makes it much easer to maintain local modifications. One way to speed up the build process itself is with ccache. Symlink ~root/.ccache on each server to a common location, so only the first machine has to compile anything. If you wanted to get fancy, you could even build packages on one server, then use portupgrade -P to install them on the rest of the machines. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com