# $Id: README,v 1.6 2005/03/10 16:33:32 jalet Exp $ debsync v2.00 - March 10th, 2005
(c) 2002,2003,2004,2005 Jerome Alet <alet@librelogiciel.com> You're welcome to redistribute this software under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence version 2.0 or, at your option, any higher version.
You can read the complete GNU GPL in the file COPYING which should come along with this software, or visit the Free Software Foundation's WEB site http://www.fsf.org
debsync is a program which helps to synchronise the installed packages lists on existing Debian GNU/Linux machines.
debsync gets a list of installed packages from a master host, and installs or removes packages on several hosts to match the master's package list.
debsync can do its work either over ssh (default) or rsh.
debsync is different from fai (Full Automated Installation) because AFAIK fai works with machines you plan to install automatically and identically, while debsync's goal is to update a bunch of existing and different machines to the level at which they both have the same packages installed as those installed on a master host.
You don't have to install debsync on any of the machines you want to manage, just put it on your laptop for example, and synchronise all your racks in one (long) go.
Of course you'll benefit by using ssh in a such a way that it doesn't ask for any password, especially if you've got more than five machines :-)
Hint : use ssh-agent, ssh-copy-id and ssh-add to greatly simplify debsync's usage.
WARNINGS :
You can use the -S | --Simulate command line option to see what debsync would do. In this case nothing dangerous is done.
If you don't use -S | --Simulate, please understand that you receive this software with absolutely NO WARRANTY. While this is highly improbable, this software may render your system unstable.
If your machines use different versions of Debian, final result may not match what you expect. Currently you have to ensure that all your machines use the same Debian version.
You have been warned.
- INSTALL
1 - If you don't have Distutils installed (e.g. python version <= 1.5.2) then first download it from:
http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/
then follow the installation instructions for Distutils and install it on your system.
NB : In Debian, you can install Distutils by installing the python-dev package
2 - Download the latest debsync version from:
http://www.librelogiciel.com/software/
Extract it:
gzip -d debsync-x.xx.tar.gz | tar -xf -
where x.xx is debsync's latest version number.
Go to debsync's directory:
cd debsync-x.xx
Just type:
python setup.py install
You may need to be logged in with sufficient privileges (e.g. root)
This will generally install debsync in /usr/bin or an equivalent path depending on your system, and debsync.py in /usr/lib/pythonX.XX/site-packages/
To learn how to use it, type the following :
$ debsync --help
NB : you may want to pipe the output into more
(or preferably less)
or :
$ man debsync
Again, you can use the -S | --Simulate command line option to see what debsync would do. In this case nothing dangerous is done.
Please e-mail bugs to: alet@librelogiciel.com (Jerome Alet)