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From: Andrew Heybey <ath@bellcore.com>
To: "Karl Denninger, MCSNet" <karl@mcs.com>
cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard), hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: And the winner is! 
In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 02 Feb 1996 10:19:32 -0600.
             <m0tiOCz-000IDUC@venus.mcs.com> 
Date: Sat, 03 Feb 1996 09:14:56 -0500
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[Please excuse the preceding fumble-fingered screw-up sent to the
list.  C-c C-c (mh-send-letter) is very close to C-x C-x on the
keyboard.]

  karl> No, we want to be able to have a "code server" which can load,
  karl> and keep updated, multiple machines.  That is, when I have
  karl> system #15 to load, I want to plug in the Ethernet, point the
  karl> new box at the server, and say "go fetch your load, kid".

  karl> Also, the ability to somehow have this update process
  karl> automated (so that I only have to make a code change on *ONE*
  karl> machine) would be nice.

When I was running 1.1.5.1, I had something like this set up using a
program called reconcile (ftp://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/pub/shep/reconcile-*).

Reconcile is sort of like rdist in reverse (client pull instead of
server push) only better (IMHO).  I hacked the boot floppy to (after
newfs'ing the disk(s)) ask for enough information to configure the
network interface then NFS mount the server and build the file system.
[BTW I can't take any credit for this idea--Tim Shepard wrote
reconcile and he and several others set up a network full of uVaxen
this way at LCS.]

This is all broken now that I'm running 2.something, but I'll be
getting a few new machines soon so I might be motivated to resurrect
it.  If anyone is interested (and if I actually do it) I would be
willing to give away the reconcile config files and boot floppy hacks
that I do.

andrew