Tip: A virtual package to do my basic setup

[ToeiRei]

Motivation:
When I had to install a few gentoo boxes in a row, I was looking for a simple way to install a basic set of packages and came up with this approach, using a virtual package pulling in the packages I wanted.

First approach:
The easiest thing is an ebuild, named virtual/myprefpack-0.ebuild, being a virtual package pulling in my stuff as RDEPEND:

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DESCRIPTION="Virtual for pulling in my default packages"
HOMEPAGE=""
SRC_URI=""

LICENSE=""
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="alpha amd64 arm hppa ia64 m68k ~mips ppc ppc64 s390 sh sparc x86"

DEPEND=""
RDEPEND="
        app-admin/rsyslog
        app-portage/gentoolkit
        app-portage/layman
"

My actual RDEPEND list is bigger than the example listed here, as I want to keep them short for the example.

Adding some jobs and a reminder:
Now as we are lazy, we could perform basic things like updating the mlocate database and remind us of some stuff we shouldn't forget. I did it using einfo/elog messages in pkg_postinst()

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pkg_postinst() {
        einfo "Updating mlocate database...";
        updatedb

        echo -e "\n\n\n"

        elog "********************************************************************"
        elog "Do not forget to:"
        elog "   - add the startup scripts to the runlevels"
        elog "********************************************************************"

}

Introducing USE-Flags for different machine types:
What we did so far was pulling in our packages and running an easy batch job and giving some useful messages. Looking at my systems here, I can sort them into 3 groups: generic clients, generic servers and machines having a the linux/apache/mysql/php stack on them. Introducing USE flags for doing that is pretty simple.

My definition of a pure server machine (USE='server') is, that it's powered on 24/7 while clients are turned off at times, which is why I use vixie-cron there, while using fcron on clients. Servers which are switched off as clients may have both flags set, so I am using a little exclude here:

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DESCRIPTION="Virtual for pulling in my default packages"
HOMEPAGE=""
SRC_URI=""

LICENSE=""
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="alpha amd64 arm hppa ia64 m68k ~mips ppc ppc64 s390 sh sparc x86"
IUSE="client lamp server"

DEPEND=""
RDEPEND="
        app-admin/rsyslog
        app-portage/gentoolkit
        app-portage/layman
        client? (
                media-sound/alsa-utils
                net-irc/irssi
                net-misc/keychain
                sys-process/fcron
        )
        lamp? (
                dev-db/phpmyadmin
                dev-lang/php
                www-servers/apache
        )
        server? (
                app-admin/logrotate
                app-misc/screen
                net-misc/ntp
                sys-fs/xfsdump
                sys-fs/xfsprogs
                !client? (
                        sys-process/vixie-cron
                        mail-mta/ssmtp
                        )
                )"

And for our reminder in pkg_postinst(), we can do it that way:

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 elog "   - add the startup scripts to the runlevels"

        if use server ; then
                elog "   - set up ssmtp"
                elog "   - set up rkhunter"
        fi

I am sure there are better ways to do this, but this one seems to be an easy one which worked for me

[j4miel]

Nice idea, do you manually configure from this point or do you have an easy way to patch configs to your liking?

[ToeiRei]

My current config files are fetched from a git repository which could be implemented in pkg_postinstall(), as sandbox isn't interfering there anymore. Sadly this does not honor CONFIG_PROTECT

[avx]

interesting, thanks. i'd add support for adding required users, setting up services, maybe backups, etc. in theory, could be a nice way to have a simple thing like redhat's kickstart.

[xaviermiller]

Nice idea !

For the moment, I reinstall using something like

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scp workingmachine:/var/lib/portage/wold todo
$EDITOR todo
emerge -av $(cat todo)

Your trick is more scalable and parametrable.

[ToeiRei]

interesting, thanks. i'd add support for adding required users, setting up services, maybe backups, etc. in theory, could be a nice way to have a simple thing like redhat's kickstart.

adding users is possible - even if I would consider that as a waste sometimes:

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enewuser <user> [uid] [shell] [homedir] [groups] [params]

but due to the nature of ebuilds, I wouldn't add service stuff as they can be emerged more than once. Backups could be handled via /etc/cron.daily.

[avx]

Why'd you consider it as a waste? I mean to do it in a dynamic way, ie have some loop-function with a custom variable, so one could do something like

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CREATE_USERS="foo bar baz" emerge my_setup

.

[ToeiRei]

Keep in mind that this setup isn't just for 1 box. You don't want to have too many user accounts around. If you are in a bigger network, you might already use LDAP

[face]

puppet could be an alternative to this approach.

[ToeiRei]

but why using additional software?

[face]

convenience

Its way easier to configure a system with puppet than with portage only. portage is primarily a package manager.

[ToeiRei]

Not sure if you got the idea here, as it's about providing a basic install using onboard tools as much as possible. I don't see the need of depending on a greater infrastructure here for 'home use' or 'small business' - sure, your toy might come in handy as soon as the number of machines you have to maintain exceeds 10 boxes...

[yngwin]

This is what sets are for, though I think that requires portage-2.2.

[ToeiRei]

I disagree with that sets would be sufficient for a 'basic setup task' as you cannot add users using sets or performing other scripted tasks like I do using the example.