Review of USENIX Systems Administration (LISA VIII) Conference
proceedings
I would like to point out
that this is a highly subjective review. I attempt to both
summarize the important points of each paper and also review the
general applicability of the various tools or techniques described.
Central System Administration in a Heterogeneous Unix Environment: GeNUAdmin
- Automates updating of configuration files.
- config files are kept on a single master server.
- distribution by rsh and NFS.
- consistancy checks on modification of databases,
creation of config files, and distribution of config files.
- databases use defaulting and inheritance to simplify administration
of common information.
- updates are done by standard editors except for user updates.
- user updates can be done through usermgr and rpasswd programs
- usermgr allows delegation of updates to the user database
- rpasswd allows users to change their password on the central database
- doesn't require modifications to running system or access to internals
- uses only standard unix programs on clients
- can have some configuration files managed and not others
GeNUAdmin borrows ideas from Moira from MIT,
and Tivoli's Management Environment.
Config: A Mechanism for Installing and Tracking
System Configurations
- based on rdist, make, cvs, and perl
- rdist master tree contains files that need to be changed
- GNU make generates machine/group specific files from sources
- Includes option to distribute files and then perform an action
- cvs logs provide information of previous versions of files
- cvs update actions allow people to be informed of changes
- cvs sanity checks allow some files to be checked on update
- use tripwire to find files that should be undef config control
(tripwire can check to see what files have been modified)
- cvs access control provides per-file granularity access for different
users.
Bibliography