PACC: Week I & II

Past two weeks I've worked on remote administration and software deployment on OS Linux computer networks.

Stages:

  1. Exploring the way how rsync script works & finding alternatives

  2. Finding software that meets project criteria ( CFEngine & m23)

  3. Installation and testing CFEngine

  4. Switching to m23

  5. m23 VM & network configuration

During 1st week of PACC, I've searched for alternatives for rsync, as the way of deploying software and files to client machines. Initially I found programs "Chief" and "Puppet", but they are not meet project criteria. So the next step was seeking for open source alternatives, that was showed CFEngine software. CFEngine showed itself a bit complicated, and absolutely impossible to work with it without learning it's script language and it's syntax, in addition you need to install client part manually on every machine.

Therefore next step was finding more convenient programs, that meet project requirements. After some time of searching program called m23 was found. Main advantages of it: only server-side installation and GUI. I've found that after installation of m23 on Ubuntu running machine it completely removes all system command applications (for example apt and etc). Two machine systems was completely destroyed,  and recovered with rsync from other machine. By that effect on hosted OS, it was decided to create following architecture: server system running VM(Virtual Machine) with pre-installed Debian image configured with m23, and that VM connected with server machine network via bridge mode. That scheme show itself working when I've tried it on my own laptop, with virtual network across two VM without bridging. But when I tried to apply that in class, that VM was unreachible.

The last step before completion of that task is figuring out how to configure bridge to make m23 VM interact with other computers.

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