Gradual installation of debian packages

[Elazar Leibovich]

How exactly you connect to the server is not in the scope of the
discussion, and I agree that ansible is a sensible solution.

But what you're proposing is to manually update the package on a small
percent of the machines.

Manual solution is fine, but I would like to hear experience of people who
actually did that on many servers.

There are many other issues, for example, how to you roll back?

apt-get remove exposes you to the risk that the uninstallation script would
be buggy. There are other solutions, e.g., btrfs snapshots on root
partitions, but I'm curious to hear someone experienced with it to expose
issues I didn't even thought of.

Another issue is, how do you select the servers you try it?

You suggested a static "beta" list, and I think it's better to select the
candidates randomly on each update.

Anyhow, how exactly you connect to the server is not the essence of the
issue.

On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 9:30 AM, Evgeniy Ginzburg <nad.oby at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello.
> I'm assuming that you have paswordless ssh to the servers in question as
> root.
> Also I assume that you don't use central management/deployment software
> (ansible/puppet/chef)
> In similar cases I usully use parallel-ssh (gnu-parallel is another
> alternative).
> First stage install the package manually on one server to see that
> configuration is OK, daemons restart, etc...
> If this stage is ok second step will be creating list of servers for
> "complain" list and install package on them trough parallel-ssh.
> Instead of waiting for complains, one can define metrics to check and use
> some monitoring appliance for verification.
> I case of failure remove package from repository and remove-install again.
> Third will be parallel-ssh install on all the servers.
>
> P. S. In case of few tens of servers I'd prefer to work with ansible or
> alternative, it's worh it in most cases/
>
> Best Regards, Evgeniy.
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 8:50 PM, Elazar Leibovich <elazarl at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm having a few (say, a few tens) Debian machines, with a local
>> repository defined.
>>
>> In the local repository I have some home made packages I'm building and
>> pushing to the local repository.
>>
>> When I'm upgrading my package, I want to be sure the update wouldn't
>> cause a problem.
>>
>> So I wish to install them on a few percentage of the machines, wait for
>> complaints.
>>
>> If complaints arrive - roll back.
>> Otherwise keep upgrading the whole machines.
>>
>> I'll appreciate your advice and experience of similar situation,
>> I'll appreciate if someone who had actual real life experience with this
>> situation would mention it in the comments.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Linux-il mailing list
>> Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
>> http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> So long, and thanks for all the fish.
>
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