Managing configuration via RPMs

rhel5rpm

I need to provide some configuration customization to several servers in our small department network. We are using RHEL5 currently and since I don't want to repeat work, I'd like to create RPMs with that configuration and upload them to our RHN.

Now the problem: assuming I want to distribute NTP configuration via /etc/ntp.conf. Sadly, there is no /etc/ntp.d/ to put my files into, thus I'd have to overwrite the ntp.conf with my RPM. How do I do that properly, i.e. without losing that configuration when ntp is updated and also without possible configuration files conflicts?

Best Answer

Go with David's solution of using puppet instead. Really.

However, if you're determined, what you can do is create a package rassie-ntp-conf that contains "/etc/ntp.conf.rassie". In the spec file, you'll need a %post that copies your config over the default config and also a "%triggerin -- ntp-server" that does the same. That way if a later upgrade overwrites the config, the trigger will copy back over it. Maybe drop something into /etc/cron.daily to do the same to be really sure... Probably need to have all those scripts do a service ntpd condrestart after the cp, too.

That's the basics. If you want to do it for more packages, you might instead build a standard script that runs through /etc/rassie/ to find configs to copy over into /etc and have the %post and %triggerin stuff run that instead.

But, really, ignore that and use puppet or Chef or cfengine... This kind of "pushing configuration out via RPM" scheme is fraught with subtle problems stemming from the fundamental problem that RPM isn't designed to have two different packages fight over a single file. Hard to test, hard to debug, exactly the sort of clever solution that will make you later wish you'd gone with puppet in the first place.

Related Solutions

Centos – Python 3.0 RPMs for CentOS 5 (RHEL 5)

You can try package from ActiveState http://www.activestate.com/activepython/downloads. It doesn't depend on package manager (just unpack and run "install.sh").

Or you can compile Python and create package by yourself

Here is how to create RPM by yourself:

Here is how you can compile it:

./configure
make
make test
sudo make install    # or "make altinstall"

Redhat – Updating Samba From RPMs

I wouldn't be scared of building from source: it's fun and rewarding. The only big problem you'll have is the same problem you're already having: dependencies. To get around the dependency problem, you'll need a package manager.

Hmmmm. You can install Yum, which is what'd you'd get on Fedora instead of up2date...It's pretty good at handling dependencies, and googling Yum and RHEL and Repository gives a good number of hits, so there are repositories out there which will have RPMs built for your system.

If it were me, I'd probably go ahead and upgrade KDE and Gnome, if it was that important to install the newer version of samba (that's a lie actually. I love the command line, so I'd just go ahead and break kde and gnome and not look back). Resolving this sort of dependency problem is what it's all about.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Centos – Python 3.0 RPMs for CentOS 5 (RHEL 5)

Redhat – Updating Samba From RPMs

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