package versions and external checks

Tim Stoop
Mon, 13 Aug 2007 10:04:15 -0000

Hi all,

I''m looking into a way to centrally manage installed packages on a
fairly fine-grained level. We prefer not to blindly install every new
update, but when a mechanism in which we can "approve" of a certain
version or not. At first I was thinking about something external to
puppet, but then I remembered that it''s possible in puppet to tell
which version needs to be installed.

Now, I''m thinking of a way to have each Package statement check an
external resource. The reason that I can''t simply have a central
template generated by some script that sets something like this:

package { "tcpdump":
  ensure => "3.9.5-2etch1",
}

is that not every package is installed on each server. Also, I have
some machines that can upgrade without a problem, other machines that
are to valuable to upgrade without testing.

In short, is there a way to make Package{} query some external data
source to check which version of which package needs to be installed
on this machine? Or have people other ways to do this?

Essentially, I''m a bit tired of ssh''ing to about 50 machines
each
morning to install the latest version of file or tcpdump. But I don''t
want everything done automagically, because there are some things that
I don''t want upgraded every time. Tips welcome.

--
Gegroet,
Tim