This implements the "update initiator" pattern suggested by
http://projects.puppetlabs.com/projects/puppet/wiki/Debian_Patterns.
This feature is useful when one does not want to setup a fully automated upgrade
process but still needs a way to manually trigger full upgrades of any number of
systems at scheduled times.
Move this Exec to a dedicated class that is not included by default i.e. we
default not to "apt-get update" on every Puppet run.
We now make use of this class in the apt::upgrade_package define to make sure
APT indexes are up-to-date before attempting package upgrades.
One may now use the following to ensure current packages are installed by
Package resources:
include apt::update
Package { require => Exec[apt_updated] }
... because Exec[update_apt] is currently never run since we set it refreshonly.
Better solutions are being thought of, but in the meantime the least we can do
is somehow repair apt::upgrade_package.
Lenny's APT does not support pinning like this:
Pin: release o=Debian,n=<%= codename %>
We therefore switched (in commit ef2ebdffd) to:
Pin: release o=Debian,a=<%= release %>
With such a pinning setup, when Squeeze is released, systems using this module
with $apt_use_next_release set to true would immediately switch to prefer
packages from Squeeze. If an automated upgrade process is setup, they would be
automatically upgraded to Squeeze.
This does not sound safe to me, so let's use the release version number as an
additional selection criterion to prevent upgrades to Squeeze to happen behind
our back:
Pin: release o=Debian,a=<%= release %>,v=<%= release_version %>*
Note that the trailing '*' is intentional and necessary to match stable
point-releases.
This class installs a daily cronjob that checks if a package upgrade
requires the system to be rebooted; if so, cron sends a notification
email to root.
Why apticron, when we have cron-apt already? Some people have different preferences, we use apticron along with the upgrade_package functionality in this module. I know someone who uses cron-apt to run the upgrades, but apticron for notifications, because apticron's notifications are much nicer (cron-apt just gives you the output of apt-get upgrade)
the templates/Debian/preferences_lenny.erb file checked in with
e2f80db7b7 contains pinning based on codename,
which is not supported in lenny (see #433624 - if you look at the version graph,
you see, "Fixed in version 0.7.21", and lenny has 0.7.20.2+lenny1.)
Just so people are clear that they do not need to specify a $custom_key_dir to manage the debian archive keyring, I've added some clarifying text so you know that this is not necessary
The README described a few things that were not true relating to the
apt/preferences file.
First of all it said you could ship a 'file', but preferences.pp very clearly
uses the 'content => $custom_preferences' parameter, which will not take file
sources, only templates.
Secondly, it seemed to imply that you could just drop the custom preferences
into your site-apt and it would work. But you actually need to set the
$custom_preferences to indicate the content source.
Lastly, it said that you could specify a host-specific file in the site-apt
module, but there is no facility for this (nor can you use files).
Perhaps this is where this module is going eventually, once we have a
preferences.d possibility? Until then, it makes more sense to have it reflect
the current situation.
