Suggestions for centralized application server?

jeff at smithicus.com jeff at smithicus.com
Wed Aug 3 19:30:10 UTC 2005


> On wo, 2005-08-03 at 08:55 -0700, jeff at smithicus.com wrote:
> > I'd like to find an easy way to manage an install image across all the
> > workstations.
> 
> http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOnCluster -- if you have PXE booting or
> netboot floppys available

I wasn't aware of PXE booting. I'll definitely look into it, but
it seems to me that this solution would allow me to have a
consistent base install, but not actually a shared application
image.

What I'd *LIKE* to have happen is this:

I'm working away on workstation A, minding my own business.
Suddenly, for whatever reason, I realize that I don't have
package FOO installed. I jump to the server and quickly issue 
a "apt-get install FOO". Voila. My own workstation and all the
other workstations are now enabled for FOO'ing.

I'd envisioned this being done by having a /opt directory on the
server into which all non-base packages are installed. By
NFS-mounting that directory as /opt on each workstation, and adding
/opt/bin to the default path for all the accounts, that should
work. I don't know enough about package management to know if it
would be easy to redirect all installed config files from /etc
and have them go to /opt/etc instead. (Not much value in having
all the apps in /opt if the workstations can't also see the
associated config files.)

Has anybody tried anything like this?
-- 
Jeff Smith
Computer Science Dept.
University of Saskatchewan




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