rsync vs installworld

[Helge Oldach]

M. Warner Losh:
>I'm contemplating a binary distribution system for some systems that I
>have.  I'm ignoring kernel updates for the moment, and concentrating
>on userland deployment.
>
>I'm thinking of doing something like:
>
>make buildworld
>make installworld DESTDIR=/big/disk/freebsd/image
>make mergemaster -D /big/disk/freebsd/mergemaster
>
>And then on each machine I want to update I'd do something like:
>
>sudo rsync --exclude etc --exclude usr/local --exclude boot \
>	--delete -av host-server:/big/disk/freebsd/image /
>sudo rm -rf /tmp/mergemaster
>sudo scp host-server:/big/disk/freebsd/mergemaster /tmp/mergemaster
>sudo mergemaster -someargs
>
>My question is: has anybody else tried this?  If so, what bumps along
>the way are there going to be?

Rsync doesn't deal with file flags (chflags(2)). Thus my personal
preference for updating machines is making installworld on a file system
exported by the build server.

Helge