pkg integration spacewalk question

[Jason Unovitch]

Hi Jason,
Some of the functionality looks similar to what is in Puppet. I've been 
working on finalizing a "how to" running Puppet open source with its 
Dashboard on an Nginx/Ruby on Rails/MariaDB back-end. Unfortunately I 
haven't tried any FreeBSD clients yet and only have experience with 
Linux clients talking to the Puppet on a FreeBSD server. If the pkg 
integration works as well as integration with the Linux package mangers, 
declaring having the latest versions of packages would be enough to 
ensure everything got updated. With a private pkg repo that gets vetted 
and updated when security issues come up I could see this working rather 
well for ensuring tight configuration control. Once I get around to 
testing some FreeBSD clients I'll see how well pkg integration works out.

If Puppet doesn't work for you, other options to look into are Cfengine, 
Chef, and Salt. I've just stuck with the first tool for the job that I 
tried as it worked well. I'd be more than happy to point you to the how 
to guide when I'm done as I'm planning on putting it up on the forums 
for anybody who can benefit from it.

Cheers,
Jason Unovitch

On 09/19/2013 08:00 AM, freebsd-pkg-request at freebsd.org wrote:
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 16:11:14 -0700
> From: Jason Helfman <jgh at FreeBSD.org>
> To: pkg at freebsd.org
> Subject: pkg integration spacewalk question
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAMuy=+gXRcMgy_3eEEX=KP37qZ5=8C7zOUXJjfTkGDZWZ4G0bA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Hello All,
>
> I am mainly using Linux (RedHat) at work, at the moment, however I am using
> FreeBSD as my desktop. A tool I was introduced to recently is SpaceWalk. I
> have already had some thoughts shared regarding this tool, but for doing
> what little we use of it, it is pretty good.
>
> http://spacewalk.redhat.com/
>
> At a basic level, you can have spacewalk subscribe to modern based
> repositories (much like pkg is now), and list the subscribed systems in a
> particular group and how out-of-date they may be with software.
>
> I made a brief inquiry to the development list, and received this feedback:
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/spacewalk-devel/2013-August/msg00064.html
>
> Beyond patching, it is also good for send a remote command to a remote
> host, and there are some other features that are worth looking into.
>
> The reason I bring this up is that I don't know of an Enterprise Level
> software package, or even open source, that gives you a view into your
> FreeBSD systems, and a tool to manage them effectively.
>
> Sure I can create a shell script that goes to each server and does a pkg
> upgrade, but what do I do for say 500 systems, or more?
>
> This tool can even update the system using a newer kernel package. I know
> about updating all to well, as I wrote the article on implementing your own
> FreeBSD Update Server, but could this be done the FreeBSD way with a tool
> such as SpaceWalk, or another tool that we may be able to write.
>
> I believe SpaceWalk could be crafted to handle FreeBSD from a package
> point-of-view, and possibly other items such as remote commands, however is
> SpaceWalk the right tool? Is there a tool out there that I am unaware of
> that does this?
>
> When I was upgrading systems at my previous position, we had to create a
> tool internally that just monitored the kernel versions of the system, but
> going to each system individually to upgrade was required.
>
> Is there a tool that say a business may use for a "dashboard" view of their
> infrastructure, and where they stand from a security and patch
> point-of-view?
>
> Many thanks!
>
> -jgh
>