From: ccooke_at_globalvision.com
Date: Mon 13 Oct 2003 - 12:15:06 BST
On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 06:30:16PM +0200, Herbert Poetzl wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 05:08:53PM +0100, ccooke_at_globalvision.com wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 01:29:09PM -0500, Darryl Engle wrote:
> >
> > Leaving aside the contentious issues...
> >
> > Would allowing the list to use a mail server that's virus checked and
> > spamassassinned be useful?
>
> the new list _is_ on such a server ...
> we'll migrate soon ...
>
> best,
> Herbert
Need any backups? Mirrors?
I'm running vservers commercially as a server farm. Might as well offer
to give something back...
Hell, might as well ask this:
I have a system for managing vservers in an automated fashion. It's
deployed on our live servers and has been running them stably for months,
but I can't release it into the wild yet - too many special cases and
hard coded defaults in the current system - but I will as soon as I can,
if people are interested.
I'm including a description here, to see if I *should* try to make it
releasable sooner tather than later. (It will happen anyway, since hell -
it's fun to be able to release stuff. But I'm quite prepared for nobody
else to *care*.)
The system splits everything down into services and slots. That is, each
task is divided into services such as www, mail, firewall, desktop etc.
Each client computer, when you tell it to care about a service, creates
two slots (live and test) for that service. Hence, www-live, www-test and
so on. Multiple versions of the service are stored on a master server, and
can be installed into slots on client computers easily.
Specs of the system are:
imagetool:
Finds a master server, runs operations on local and remote
images, including:
Showing service types on the master, showing versions of a
service on the master, downloading a version into a slot,
booting that slot, rebooting a slot, shutting down a slot,
uploading a slot to the master server (possibly overwriting
/updating the copy on the master. This is used a great deal
for development and first-stage testing)
A bootable CD:
Automatically partitions the hard disk, detects a method for
getting network access, finds a master server, downloads
updated boot scripts.
Copies itself into a partition, then runs imagetool to update
the CD image from the master (for any software upgrades that
are needed).
Queries the master for an imagetool script for that MAC
address, downloads and runs it.
If the MAC is unknown, the CD can query the user or select a
config automatically (the default here is webserver).
Currently, I'm adding monitoring stuff to make each server report to the
master any variable you like to keep track of - load, disk space and so on.
-- Charles Cooke, Sysadmin