Cross-Distro Remote Package Administration?

tobiasly writes "I administer several Ubuntu desktops and numerous CentOS servers. One of the biggest headaches is keeping them up-to-date with each distro's latest bugfix and security patches. I currently have to log in to each system, run the appropriate apt-get or yum command to list available updates, determine which ones I need, then run the appropriate install commands. I'd love to have a distro-independent equivalent of the Red Hat Network where I could do all of this remotely using a web-based interface. PackageKit seems to have solved some of the issues regarding cross-distro package maintenance, but their FAQ explicitly states that remote administration is not a goal of their project. Has anyone put together such a system?"

Comments

Aptitude is THE DEVIL!

[Anonymous Coward]

I used aptitude for a few months after reading that it installed recommended packages in addition to true dependencies. Well, bollocks to that. There are more times when I don't want "recommended" packages (installing exim sucks when postfix is desired, for example).

As to the script to maintain servers ... below a trivial example for debian/ubuntu -based systems. Setup ssh keys to make life easier from an internal, protected system. If you have more than 6 systems, you probably want to mirror the repositories locally. Also, set your TERM environment variable to make interactive install/updates nicer to use.

===== Weekly Updates ======
#!/bin/sh

SRVS="s1 s2 s3 s4 s5 s6 s7 s8 s9"
for D in $SRVS ; do

    ssh root@$D "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade;"

done