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Accepted
Andrew Smith
Asked: 2012-08-26 12:32:11 +0800 CST

How to assure that Redhat and Ubuntu servers have the same packages and configuration?

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I am looking for a way to assure that all Redhat boxes have same packages and configuration. For example, when I add new server, it is configured and the packages installed.

Same for Ubuntu.

I can make manually script which will replicate the master server, but I need to know if there is any other solution to accomplish this in a way that clueless operator can handle it, or it's fully automatic without need of command-line.

On Windows, I use Domain Controller, it works OK - it configures and updates all systems. I have only two Linux boxes, hence the issue is not big versus hundreds of Windows ones, but eventually I will scale the setup globally, so I need to prepare some plan for Linux too.

ubuntu

2 Answers

  1. Sounds like you need a Configuration Management tool - most popular are probably Puppet and Chef, but there are a whole lot of options out there.

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  2. Best Answer

    You will eventually want a full configuration-management setup as described in another answer. The best first-step solution is to use Kickstart files for your server installations. These were a Red Hat innovation, but luckily, Ubuntu uses a similar format.

    Take a look at an existing Red Hat server and examine the anaconda-ks.cfg file in the root user's home directory. This will show you how the server was initially installed and could form a basis for a new kickstart file. You can also download the system-config-kickstart utility. On Ubuntu, the same utility is available via sudo apt-get install system-config-kickstart

    Red Hat-style instructions

    Ubuntu instructions

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