Distributing software
Is there an automatic way of distributing new software and updates to a network of Raspberry Pis ? I notice there is something called ansible for Ubuntu which seems to do this, but is not available on the Pi as far as I know.
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DougieLawson
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Re: Distributing software
What makes you think that https://github.com/ansible/ansible won't run on a RPi?
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Any DMs sent on Twitter will be answered next month.
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Re: Distributing software
How big is the set of devices? Do you have control of all of them?
For something simple, you could set up a master repository (a directory with ssh shell access for some user) and set up a crontab that does rsync from that master on each of the devices at a frequency you decide.
You could also use various configuration management systems, like cfengine, puppet, etcd, or nix, depending on how hard-core you want to go into system configuration management.
It all depends on what your particular requirements and deployment scenarios are!
For something simple, you could set up a master repository (a directory with ssh shell access for some user) and set up a crontab that does rsync from that master on each of the devices at a frequency you decide.
You could also use various configuration management systems, like cfengine, puppet, etcd, or nix, depending on how hard-core you want to go into system configuration management.
It all depends on what your particular requirements and deployment scenarios are!
Re: Distributing software
Simply that I read that it was only available for Ubuntu and Red Hat - although I guess I haven't considered the possibility of compiling it from source which is not something I generally do, although I suppose it's about time I did !DougieLawson wrote:What makes you think that https://github.com/ansible/ansible won't run on a RPi?
Re: Distributing software
I currently have 6 Pis on the same network, and yes I have complete control of them all. The main thing I would like to replicate across them is the installation of software, I want to keep them all identical. It would also be nice, but not essential to replicate changes to configuration files such as crontab and startup files. I have another possible strategy which is to keep a master SD card and every so often duplicate it and physically replace the card in each Pi (the only thing that is different between them is the hostname). This falls down if my users start keeping private files on those cards, although I may use the Windows 7 server as a file server and have all personal files saved there. As you can tell I am still thinking this through.jwatte wrote:How big is the set of devices? Do you have control of all of them?
For something simple, you could set up a master repository (a directory with ssh shell access for some user) and set up a crontab that does rsync from that master on each of the devices at a frequency you decide.
You could also use various configuration management systems, like cfengine, puppet, etcd, or nix, depending on how hard-core you want to go into system configuration management.
It all depends on what your particular requirements and deployment scenarios are!
Re: Distributing software
That's an interesting approach, I'd never heard of PiNet until your post. I've had a quick skim through the user doc and it looks a real possibility. Would you happen to know if there is any significant performance hit loading the OS (and apps ?) across the network ?B.Goode wrote:PiNet? http://pinet.org.uk/