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Updating Free Software in the Enterprise?
wallykeyster asks: "I'm an IT Director for a small private university in the U.S., and we are largely a Microsoft shop. We pay over $15,000 each year for our Campus Agreement so that we can upgrade the desktop OS to our version of choice, run Office, and have some Client Access Licenses. I would like to move to FOSS solutions, but I'm having trouble finding support for Enterprise management. For example, OpenOffice and Firefox (both of which I use personally) would be easy first steps, but IE is updated automatically via our SUS server (and settings pushed to clients via group policies) and Office updates will be included soon. How are other larger organizations (i.e. more than 200 desktops) dealing with software deployment and updates? Is anyone using Zen with Novell Desktop Linux?"
Run a local Debian package repository, only put updates you want in it, point your system's sources.list at the local repository, and add the following to the crontab for every system you deploy:
/usr/bin/apt-get update; /usr/bin/apt-get upgrade -yq
0 3 * * *
They cancelled the show people. Enterprise is not getting an update. Let's stop kicking the dead horse already!
Very easy. Create Rapid install package and deploy. We updated firefox to 1.0.4 the other day to 80 clients in a matter of minutes.
would pay for a lot of students to do the work by hand.. And they'd learn something.
OK.. there are better ways, but at least the money is not going to the Evil Empire.
rsync, rdist, and yum. Well yum is not to standard.
Guys, he said he was an IT Director. Please don't go confusing him with crontab this or apt-get that...
At least tell him to find his favorite geek to explain it to him...
What I did for other schools was having /usr/local mounted on a file server with all the Linux applications installed so we just installed it once and they were all uptodate. But that may not work for all casses. Companies such as IBM have tools that can help keep Linux systems uptodate as well as Windows systems. Like IBM Director. Or you can find an OSS project and see if you can get a contact with a smaller consulting firm to help keep your OSS up to date and well managed.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
......You're getting off EXTREMELY cheap. If you switch to a different OS, or OSS, you'll easily spend more than that (many times more) in hiring people to support the new infrastructure.
-Randy
I've used GNU cfengine for automated updates at a company I used to work for. Basically, you write rules about how the system shoudl look and cfengine enforces them.
However, we used to automate updates, apply system patches and rebuild the world if necessary. With about 5 lines changed to a single server, I could force all the workstations to re-install themselves overnight.
We also used this system to push out passwd file updates (poor-man's centralized auth).
http://www.cfengine.org/
Zenworks for Desktops (ie Windows) is now a pretty advanced and mature product. It works pretty damn well. Zenworks for Linux is pretty immature by comparison. I've seen Novell making LOTS of noise about it, but then again, they would. From what I've seen though, its the only enterprise-grade software from a major vendor to offer a central control system. Most others are very fragmented.
I'm in the same boat where I work. I'm trying to get Firefox officially supported, the biggest sticking point is the lack of an easy method to push updates. I think this is one of the biggest reasons Firefox isn't widely deployed in the corporate environment yet, sure it's easy to install it yourself and update it yourself - but that's not a solution in a controlled environment.
We currently use Zenworks 6.6 to manage ~2000 NLD and SLES systems for system patching. It works great for that purpose. It doesn't offer more than very basic inventory management and reporting yet. I say yet because I'm on the beta for the next version and it is amazing. It makes managing Linux dekstops and servers ridiculously easy. If you've used Wen for Windows, they've basically pulled all the same functionality into the Linux realm. Imaging, patching, configuration management, security policies, reporting, inventory/asset management, remote access (vnc or ssh), everything is all wrapped into one bundle. Some of the other pieces we use are at our site if you're interested in other open source and commercial packages we use. It's not much more than basic marketing material at this point but feel free to ask any questions.
This website has downloadable MSI packages that will integrate Firefox into AD and GPO, as well as a howto.
This thread will show you how to do the same for OO.o, but only for the 2.0 beta version.
"For every right, an equal responsibility..."
Believe it or not, some IT management rises from within, some have undergrad degrees in Comp Sci, and some run FreeBSD, OS 10.3, Windows 2000, and Windows XP on boxes at home.
I repackage Firefox into an msi for group policy deployment. I used to use Winstall LE that came with Win2k server, but eventually I learned enough about how msi works to be dissatisfied with that (it often gets lots of unrelated registry changes since so much background crap always happens in windows). Now I just build them by hand.
MakeMSI is a good tool for rolling your own, though it's best if you have some knowledge of how the tables work. Often I'll use Orca to tweak/double check things.
Firefox was a bit of a pain to package the first time because of all the subdirs, but it's really light on the registry keys and for updates it's mostly a matter of just dropping in the new files.
Your IT director is an idiot. How much does it cost to do updates by hand? Ask him to quantify it. Ask him to quantify ZEN Works. I was able to get a high school I used to work for to buy it. The support guys couldn't be happier when patches were done with a couple of clicks in ConsoleOne and boom...the whole directory is updated on next reboot. Mass deployments? Use multicast. Aplications assigned to users that are installed automatically on the workstation when the user logs in? Check . The cost was about one month of my salary. But then I understand you, they changed the IT Director and put an ass kisser that stopped us from using ZEN Works (and backup exec, so backups were done with "copy /s", and saddly I'm not kidding) so it all went down the drain. ZEN Works is worth it, believe me.
please excuse my apathy
You're getting Windows and Office on 200+ desktops for only $15,000 and you consider that too much? Are you on CRACK? That's like quibbling over whether you'll pay three peanuts here or walk 1000 miles to pay two peanuts.
Since it's impossible to reason about security except with respect to a given configuration, this is a subject which deserves close attention, especially at larger sites where economies of scale are most effective.
Mark Burgess at the University of Oslo developed a mechanism called cfengine as a solution to the configuration management problem. It's multiplatform, mature, stable, comprehensive, secure, and it scales very well. I recommend it.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
I just love you guys that spout off without knowing one thing about which you speak! He clearly stated that he presently uses SUS, as in System Update Server. You clearly know nothing about Microsoft systems newer than perhaps Windows 95.
The SUS server, free from Microsoft, automatically downloads all of the updates from Microsoft's Windows Update server and stores them on a local server. The administrator, one only, then reviews the downloaded patches and authorizes which ones he wants to be installed on the workstations. Using Group Policies, the administrator reconfigures the Automatic Update service on all of the Windows 2000 or greater systems on his network and points it at the SUS server, rather than the default Windows Update site. The next morning, ALL SPECIFIED systems have been updated.
It only needs ONE FRIGGING GUY to manage 10 machines or 50,000 machines and he doesn't have to leave his desk! The entire setup from start to finish can be setup and configured in an hour or less.
Now, the next level is to do this with applications beyond the Windows Operating system. But, hey, they have solutions for that too. Microsoft Operations Manager(MOM) and Microsoft Systems Management Server(SMS) provide complete management control over the Windows systems on the network. MOM is for smaller scale operations while SMS is the full on enterprise package. No, they aren't free but, organizations that require them can easily afford them.
No. Put it somewhere else.
If you want to learn how to scale unix systems management a good start is infrastructures.org. You don't have to follow their ideas slavishly but it'll get you into the right mindset, and that's what matters.
Keeping Unix boxes up to date is simple once you understand how, the effort required to manage 1000 machines is only marginally more than 100 which is only marginally more than required for 10.
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