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

Uninstall that trash with FDISK

[Tiber]

You're probably looking for:
http://www.novell.com/products/zenworks/linuxmanagement/

And yes, it does support some flavors of RedHat. Nigbuntu you're SOL on. If you're developers are running that you should fire them anyway.

Re:Remote admin of a UNIX box?

[SiChemist]

The first comment on this page: http://www.debian-administration.org/article/Use_ssh_on_multiple_servers_at_one_time is a cool little tip:

If you're using KDE, just use Konsole, open a tab for each server, and on the tab you're working on, click 'Send input to all sessions'.

Thanks, vegiVamp!