[CentOS] system management - what do you use to manage your CentOS systems?

[Paul]

On Sat, 2005-04-02 at 21:41 +0100, Lee W wrote:
> Chris Weisiger wrote:
> 
> > Les Mikesell wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 12:57, Enoch West wrote:
> >>
> >>  
> >>
> >>> I wanted to get some feedback to see what other people here use to
> >>> manage their CentOS systems, apply updates, roll out new software
> >>> packages, update unique config files etc.
> >>>   
> >>
> 
> Funny this topic came up now.  I recently been demoing Red Hat Desktop 
> and RHN.
> 
> After a bit of playing around with RHN and looking at the code the the 
> rhn_check client I've found it to be a bit of a mess (IMHO). There are 
> many lines of TODO and I have even (just today) filed a bug as the more 
> recent clients don't even seem to work with the "Remove Package" feature 
> of RHN. 
> 
> I cannot really see any great encouragement from buying a RHN 
> subscription if this is the way the client/server has been coded. If 
> both sides of the configuration we completely open-source I wouldn't 
> have a problem with it as I know the changes / bug fixes even one files 
> would be available to all, but as long as Redhat keeps control of RHN I 
> don't think I will be paying for the subscription.
> 
> Back to the point has anyone found / thought of implementing a kind of 
> Enterprise level YUM with the same sort of manageability of RHN.  I 
> looked at it myself but felt it would involve too much of a rewrite to 
> the YUM clients to do.
> 
> Does YUM even support any kind of authentication HTTP or FTP?
> 
> I believe a companion Management Server type solution would be a great 
> sister project to go along with Centos.  At least that's my opinion

Lee,
There is a project that was started back in the RH 7.3 days to reproduce
an open source version of the server side of the RHN.  This project made
it to the point where it would allow clients to register and pull
updates from it and that is pretty much where it stuck.  A new
maintainer has taken over the project and there is plans to implement
client status tracking, and client management.

You can check it out at http://current.tigris.org/ and help out if you
want.

I used to use it to maintain a hand full of servers and a couple
desktops until RH dropped support for their Retail versions.

Regards,
Paul Berger