UPDIAN 0.6

Description:

UPDIAN 0.6

RobHost GmbH [[email protected]], 2007-2013
License: GPLv2+
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY!

What is it good for?
Updian is a minimalistic update-engine for DEBIAN GNU/Linux based machines
(and other flavours like Ubuntu based on APT) and, since v0.4, for machines
with YUM such as CentOS. You can use it to maintain all your machines
remotely over a simple web interface written in Python. There are 2 cronjobs,
one checks for updates, another does them. You can choose from the
webinterface which servers to update (it shows up the packages) and read
logs after the updates are done.
Updian does not need any databases, all data is stored in (mostly empty)
flatfiles. It can manage a high number of servers, we’ve tested/used it with
100+ servers without any problems…
Actually, Updian only does apt-get upgrade, not dist-upgrade. So it’s a
good idea to run apticron or anything in parallel on the remote machines to
keep informed about upcoming dist-upgrades. Apticron is also good for checking
the correctness of Updian - it mails you the updates every day including
changelog. These you can now install with Updian. If Updian is working
correctly, apticron should mail you the same update-infos (except
dist-upgrades) as Updian shows up in the webfrontend.
For every server Updian creates an logfile, so you’re always informed about
updates made. The logfiles are available through the webfrontend.


Requirements

Any Linux distribution on the machine which runs Updian (local-side)
Debian GNU/Linux or other apt-running systems (Ubuntu, Knoppix …) or
yum-running systems (CentOS, RHEL, Fedora Core …) on the remote-side
Python 2.6 or newer (local-side)
Fabric and pip for
automated installation (local-side)
a crond if you want to automate updian’s checking and updating (local-side)
Access as root to all involved machines (gaining root via sudo is also
supported)
Exchanged SSH-publickeys between the local machine running Updian and the
remote servers

that means you can login from the machine running Updian to the remote
server via ssh <remote-server> without entering a password
Howto: On the machine running Updian:
ssh-keygen -t rsa
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh remote-user@remote-server cat - ">>" ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
# or 'ssh-copy-id remote-server'



Optional: Web server with WSGI support or
a separate WSGI application server (local-side, see below)



Installation

Using Updian’s fabfile (recommended)

Change directory to where Updian shall be installed (Updian’s home directory)
Download the latest fabfile
Run fab and follow the onscreen instructions.
Add cronjobs for fully automated updates (see Example crontab entries).



From snapshot archive (manually)

Extract the files to a folder on your server (the machine where Updian should
run).
Run updiancmd init_cfg to create an example configuration file.
Edit the file config.ini according to the instructions inside the file.
Install Updian’s dependencies listed in requirements.txt
(e.g. via pip: pip install -r requirements.txt).
Note: It is recommended to use a virtual environment for production usage (see
virtualenv documentation).
Optional: Use updiancmd setpw to create one or more users for basic
authentication. If you skip this everyone on the network you serve Updian on
will be able to access it without restriction as long as you don’t add any
protection upstream.
Run updiancmd runserver <local ip address> (omitting the ip address
argument leads to serving Updian on the loopback interface).
Open http://yourhost:5000/ in your web browser.
Click on “Servers” and add your servers.
For testing purposes run updiancmd collect on your shell.

You should see some output and (if there are updates) the updates should
be visible via the web interface.


Run updiancmd update if you want Updian to update your chosen servers.
Add cronjobs for fully automated updates (see Example crontab entries).
If you plan on serving Updian’s web interface on an untrusted network
configure your web server or a WSGI container to serve it using the file
updian.wsgi. For further information see Flask Deployment Options.



Example crontab entries
0 8 * * * /var/www/updian/updiancmd collect > /dev/null 2>&1 # (collect updates daily at 8 am)
0 9 * * * /var/www/updian/updiancmd update > /dev/null 2>&1 # (run updates daily at 9 am)


Example configuration using Apache HTTPd 2.x with mod_wsgi
To use mod_wsgi on the Apache2 web server you can use something along the
following lines in your virtual host configuration (Assuming you installed
Updian in /var/www/updian):
<IfModule mod_wsgi.c>
WSGIScriptAlias /updian /var/www/updian/updian.wsgi
WSGIPassAuthorization On

WSGIDaemonProcess updian-webif python-path=/var/www/updian home=/var/www/updian
WSGIProcessGroup updian-webif

Alias /updian/static /var/www/updian/static

<Directory /var/www/updian/static>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</IfModule>
If you have installed Updian’s dependencies into a virtual environment you
should add its site-packages directory to the python-path of the daemon
process:
WSGIDaemonProcess updian-webif python-path=/yourvenv/lib/python2.6/site-packages:/var/www/updian home=/var/www/updian
You can also use WSGIPythonHome to set an alternative Python interpreter for
mod_wsgi to use globally (see: WSGIPythonHome documentation).


Updating from old server.txt format (used in UPDIAN v0.4 and older)

Run updiancmd convert_sl
For v0.5 only: Update your config.php to point to the newly created file




Checkrestart for updated services on remote machines
Since v0.3 Updian can check if there are services running on remote machines
that need to be restartet. That is often needed if libs used by many
programs (libssl i.e.) have been updated on the remote machine. After that
it is i.e. required to restart apache or postfix.
Updian uses the script checkrestart from the package debian-goodies for
that. Just apply apt-get install debian-goodies on the desired remote
machines.
It does, in short, anything like this to find out which procs using
deprecated libs: lsof -n | egrep -i "(DEL|inode)"
Updian writes the output from checkrestart to <server>_checkrestart.log
(see “Logs” in webfrontend).


UPDIAN restricted shell - updian-rsh
Updian’s default mode of operation gives the updian server unlimited root access
to all servers.
updian-rsh is a shell script that can be used with ssh’s forced command feature
to limit the commands updian can execute over ssh. Then, even if the updian
server is compromised, the intruder can only do one thing with your other
servers: Update them.
To use it, copy updian-rsh to the machines you want to update, for example to
/usr/local/bin.
Prefix the line in /root/.ssh/authorized_keys with
command="/usr/local/bin/updian-rsh"
so that it looks like this:
command="/usr/local/bin/updian-rsh" ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEA8Yf[...]
Now when you try to connect to that server with ssh root@remote_server
you should get the message
Updian Restriced Shell: Interactive shell not allowed
and the connection is closed.