[Beowulf] Security issues

[Robert G. Brown]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2008, Jon Aquilina wrote:

> true but if there is something that isnt in there i would be more then
> willing to add it to the repo.

But what is the ADVANTAGE of reducing the number of packages in a
warehouse from which one pulls packages, when the filled warehouse
already exists and is free?

I don't know about Debian so much, but with RPM repos one can set up the
primary full-distro repo, and create as many "local" repos as one wishes
on the side (or link in to e.g. livna -- other repos other humans
maintain and that you trust).  I can only presume that Debianish distros
can do the same.

So create a "cluster distro" as an OVERLAY on TOP of an existing distro.
That way you do far, far less work.  All the distro packages are there
if you need them.  Most of the cluster packages you might need are
already there.  If you need to rebuild them, augment them with
non-distro packages, or e.g. add some custom kernels, build the
replacement/augmentations, package them, pop them in an overlay.  Yum
will (if told to nicely) use them instead of the ones in the regular
distro.

Don't forget, of course, that then YOU are responsible for maintaining
the update stream of any packages you replace -- if the upstream version
is patched, you'd better (re-re-)patch your augmented version.

This keeps the amount of work to the theoretical minimum required to
achieve your goals, costs you "nothing" (what does disk cost per GB
these days -- $0.20 or thereabouts? -- so keeping a full distro costs
you a few dollars, literally), and makes it extremely easy to track
updates and upgrades without YOU doing a ton of work.

     rgb

>
> On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 1:49 PM, Carsten Aulbert <carsten.aulbert at aei.mpg.de
>> wrote:
>
>> Hi Jon
>>
>> Jon Aquilina wrote:
>>> but why waste time sifting through all 26,000+ pkgs in the repos when u
>>> can have a distro with repos focused on clustering pkgs?
>>
>> Because you might/will save time later when you hit user requests which
>> want packages which are not pre-packaged in your cluster distro.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Carsten
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-- 
Robert G. Brown                            Phone(cell): 1-919-280-8443
Duke University Physics Dept, Box 90305
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Web: http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb
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