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David McNett _ __ ___| |_ ___| | _____| |
| '_ \ / _ \ __/ __| |/ / _ \ |
http://macnugget.org/ | | | | __/ |_\__ \ < __/ |
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netskel environment synchronizer
INTRODUCTION
netskel is an http(s) based file synchronization tool which can be used to
mirror a central repository of files to multiple UNIX shell accounts. It was
built to create a simple and automated mechanism for users to push out their
various shell environment config files to all the machines where they have
shell accounts.
In particular it's useful for pushing out a common .cshrc, .bashrc, or ssh
authorized_keys file to all your hosts. Using netskel will allow you to make
centralized changes and updates to your unix enviornment without suffering
through the tedium of applying those changes to the multitude of hosts where
you have an account.
Multiple users (repositories) can all use the same server.
REQUIREMENTS
The client-side code is written is vanilla bourne shell (/bin/sh) and relies
on as few local binaries as possible. This means that you can reliably use
netskel not just on your crazy, bleeding-edge, high-zoot, dev-branch Linux
hosts but also on your "salt of the earth" SunOS and HPUX accounts that
haven't seen new software in a decade.
The server side is implemented in php, but it's quite lightweight and doesn't
need a database or any fancy php modules. It does expect apache to be set
with AllowOverrides and to have a working mod_rewrite module (see .htaccess).
You'll also need to have this installed on a server which is accessible via
http (proxying should be fine) to all the machines you wish to use as netskel
clients.
INSTALLATION
1. Place these files in a web-accessible directory with a static URL.
Edit the .htaccess file and set the RewriteBase line to correspond to the
externally-visible path to your install directory. So, if you're installing
the files to http://www.example.com/~user/netskel/ you'd want to set the
RewriteBase to /~user/netskel/
2. create a "db" directory.
3. create a directory named after your desired username. It is not
necessary that this username match the unix account name on a client
machine.
4. Create any files you wish to sync within this ./db/username/ directory.
For example, mine contains something like this:
./db/nugget/.cshrc
./db/nugget/.vimrc
./db/nugget/.ssh/authorized_keys
5. Make sure the permissions on the db tree allow your web server to read
them.
6. Now we have to "prime" the first netskel client host by grabbing a custom
copy of the netskel client shell script. Do this by downloading the file
at an URL resembling this:
http://www.example.com/netskel_directory/username/bin/netskel
This will emit a configured script for your configuration. Stick that in
~/bin/ on your remote host.
7. Now run a "netskel init" to set up the netskel working directory and
add netskel to your local crontab (to run a sync nightly at midnight).
8. Lastly, do a full sync to grab all the files in your netskel repository by
running "netskel sync".
9. Once you've got a netskel client host that's successfully synchronizing
with your server, it's really simple to propogate netskel out to other
hosts. Just issue a "netskel push <hostname>" from a configured netskel
machine to replicate the sync client onto that second hostname. This
is done via ssh, so it's presumed you can ssh from host a to host b.