Chris's Wiki :: blog/sysadmin/ChecklistsVsAutomation Commentshttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/ChecklistsVsAutomation?atomcommentsDWiki2011-08-15T07:34:16ZRecent comments in Chris's Wiki :: blog/sysadmin/ChecklistsVsAutomation.From 195.26.247.141 on /blog/sysadmin/ChecklistsVsAutomationtag:CSpace:blog/sysadmin/ChecklistsVsAutomation:7f5ed5b3c152ad8ba9ee245440adc65c2240126dFrom 195.26.247.141<div class="wikitext"><p>I find version control and checkouts to somewhere like /opt/<app> useful for avoiding making packages, but this is still painful if you have lots of very different machines (very different OS and package versions, or different architectures).</p>
</div>2011-08-15T07:34:16ZBy Chris Siebenmann on /blog/sysadmin/ChecklistsVsAutomationtag:CSpace:blog/sysadmin/ChecklistsVsAutomation:4a6bcb3033190e4ccd9219b1221bc4b4481ee40dChris Siebenmann<div class="wikitext"><p>If the goal is to be able to recreate an identical machine to go with
your current ones (or an identical duplicate of a specific machine) then
yes, you do have to update existing machines when you change the install
checklist. And of course you also have to update the checklist when you
change the current machines.</p>
<p>This doesn't scale if you have lots of machines or if you reinstall them
regularly. But if you have a relatively small number of machines and you
reinstall them very rarely it works fine.</p>
<p>In our situation, the overhead of building OS packages is not justified.
We install a handful of programs on a handful of machines and do so very
infrequently; we would spend more time learning how to do packaging and
doing so than it takes to do the process by hand.</p>
<p>(By the way, of course we only do this for things that are not already
available as packages.)</p>
</div>2011-08-12T16:31:15ZFrom 71.183.242.227 on /blog/sysadmin/ChecklistsVsAutomationtag:CSpace:blog/sysadmin/ChecklistsVsAutomation:4209126dcdb7f033c86627bbdbc440ce2263acacFrom 71.183.242.227<div class="wikitext"><p>I currently use checklists as well, but I'm always hoping to find time to get to automation. I think some of the keys here are making sure you do the right thing in the right place. It's been a while since I ran OpenBSD, but your example of running 'configure' is an indication to me that you're not doing it in the right place. Compilation and packaging should be done in a separate process, and the automated install should only be applying the packages using the built-in package management system.</p>
</div>2011-08-12T15:16:15ZFrom 195.26.247.141 on /blog/sysadmin/ChecklistsVsAutomationtag:CSpace:blog/sysadmin/ChecklistsVsAutomation:a1d0f672a0ecb85e6c414024d18999f0fdaf7673From 195.26.247.141<div class="wikitext"><p>Ouch. No really.</p>
<p>How does this possibly scale?</p>
<p>Do you use checklists whenever you have updates to apply (rather than just at first install)?</p>
<p>What happens when a change is made to the install checklist? Do you go around all the machines one by one and make those changes?</p>
</div>2011-08-12T08:11:17Z