# \[SURVEY\] Sysadmin Stupidity Check **URL:** \ **Category:** Deployment\ **Created:** [April 5, 2007, 8:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/survey-sysadmin-stupidity-check/91230 "2007-04-05T20:16:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/f475e1/32.png) [@Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_ASShaw)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 8:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/survey-sysadmin-stupidity-check/91230/1 "2007-04-05T20:16:21Z")
Not really a survey on whether sysadmins are stupid, but more a question about how people are doing things with their Mongrel management. Do you have different management commands in your monit configuration vs. your /etc/init.d/ configuration? Do you have your monit configurations setup to run another script like /etc/init.d/mongrel\_cluster or do you put raw “mongrel\_cluster start --clean …” commands with extras in the monit config? Do you follow DRY in your code? Why not your sysadmin? I’m asking since I just realized a bunch of people are probably doing this, and I’ve kind of been telling them to do it. I might need to work up a course correction but need to see what the level of damage is. Thanks for the time. – Zed A. Shaw, MUDCRAP-CE Master Black Belt Sifu > **[Zed A. shaw](https://zedshaw.com/)** > > Personal essays and writings by Zed A. Shaw. [http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0321483502](http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0321483502) – The Mongrel Book [http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/) ---
**Author:** ![Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/f475e1/32.png) [@Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_ASShaw)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 8:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/survey-sysadmin-stupidity-check/91230/2 "2007-04-05T20:36:22Z")
On 4/5/07, Zed A. Shaw [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > like /etc/init.d/mongrel\_cluster or do you put raw “mongrel\_cluster > start --clean …” commands with extras in the monit config? > > Do you follow DRY in your code? Why not your sysadmin? > > I’m asking since I just realized a bunch of people are probably doing > this, and I’ve kind of been telling them to do it. I might need to > work up a course correction but need to see what the level of damage is. How about this one: How many people have extensive SCM, project tracking, and CI for their Rao;s code, but then configuration changes (mongrel, apache, crontab, whatever) are still handled manually using vi or by copying files around? If anything config files are _more_ critical then rails code, so why aren’t they in SVN, automatically deployed, and even (gasp) tested automatically somehow? - Rob – [http://robsanheim.com](http://robsanheim.com) [http://seekingalpha.com](http://seekingalpha.com) ---
**Author:** ![Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/f475e1/32.png) [@Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_ASShaw)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 8:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/survey-sysadmin-stupidity-check/91230/3 "2007-04-05T20:37:22Z")
On 4/5/07, Zed A. Shaw [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Do you have different management commands in your monit > configuration vs. your /etc/init.d/ configuration? Putting everything in mongrel.config and using ‘monit start all’ to start all services on reboot. Not using mongrel\_cluster at all. Alex ---
**Author:** ![Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/f475e1/32.png) [@Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_ASShaw)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 8:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/survey-sysadmin-stupidity-check/91230/4 "2007-04-05T20:42:26Z")
> How many people have extensive SCM, project tracking, and CI for their > Rao;s code, but then configuration changes (mongrel, apache, crontab, > whatever) are still handled manually using vi or by copying files > around? If anything config files are _more_ critical then rails code, > so why aren’t they in SVN, automatically deployed, and even (gasp) > tested automatically somehow? Yes… and since we’re all using capistrano to deploy (we are aren’t we?) then this becomes even easier as you can not only track things in svn, but write simple tasks to deploy them right out of SVN. Which also means you’re less likely to forget a server… which you will do as soon as you have more than one 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/f475e1/32.png) [@Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_ASShaw)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 8:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/survey-sysadmin-stupidity-check/91230/5 "2007-04-05T20:58:29Z")
On Apr 5, 2007, at 11:53 AM, Philip H. wrote: > Yes… and since we’re all using capistrano to deploy (we are > aren’t we?) > then this becomes even easier as you can not only track things in > svn, but > write simple tasks to deploy them right out of SVN. > > Which also means you’re less likely to forget a server… which you > will > do as soon as you have more than one 🙂 I keep a directory for each server with all the generated config files for nginx,monit,mongrel, etc… and tasks to build all gems and packages required to run the app, keep this all in subversion. And I deploy the config files with capistrano as well. The lesser you have to ssh to your servers the better imho. CHeers- – Ezra Z. – Lead Rails Evangelist – removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid – Engine Y., Serious Rails Hosting – (866) 518-YARD (9273) ---
**Author:** ![Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/f475e1/32.png) [@Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_ASShaw)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 9:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/survey-sysadmin-stupidity-check/91230/6 "2007-04-05T21:05:30Z")
On Thu, 5 Apr 2007 13:35:26 -0500 “Rob S.” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > On 4/5/07, Zed A. Shaw [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > How many people have extensive SCM, project tracking, and CI for their > Rao;s code, but then configuration changes (mongrel, apache, crontab, > whatever) are still handled manually using vi or by copying files > around? If anything config files are _more_ critical then rails code, > so why aren’t they in SVN, automatically deployed, and even (gasp) > tested automatically somehow? Really? Wow! You’ve got a blog post on this? A book? I’d love to see how your particular solution works for everyone. That’d be awesome. See, I keep running into this problem where svn pollutes my whole server with ass loads of .svn directories. Oh, and I’m not able to prevent some dumbass from putting crap in the svn which I have to accept. Do you happen to know how you check that an svn update won’t clobber my whole system because Joe Fucktard forgot that he was editing the database server’s hosts.deny and blocked the whole network off? Also, how do I prevent someone from putting sensitive stuff into the svn repository? I know svn’s really super secure and all, what with it’s fantastic tagging-everything-permanently-forever backup mechanism and all, but I kind of don’t like my passwords and .pem secret key files in the svn repo. – Zed A. Shaw, MUDCRAP-CE Master Black Belt Sifu [http://www.zedshaw.com/](http://www.zedshaw.com/) [http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0321483502](http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0321483502) – The Mongrel Book [http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/) ---
**Author:** ![Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/f475e1/32.png) [@Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_ASShaw)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 9:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/survey-sysadmin-stupidity-check/91230/7 "2007-04-05T21:10:31Z")
On 4/5/07, Zed A. Shaw [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > with it’s fantastic tagging-everything-permanently-forever > backup mechanism and all, but I kind of don’t like my passwords and .pem > secret key files in the svn repo. Obviously we don’t keep key files and the like in svn. I’m talking about things like vhost files and the like. Right now I’m working out a way to export them and/or symlink them to the right spot via capistrano. It definitely beats tweaking your vhost, scp’ing it to 4 servers, repeat, etc…or having the nightmare of trying to rollback a config change made 2 days ago when its all done manually. Also, Joe Fucktard doesn’t work for us - and if he does, I’d rather see his change go thru svn then have it happen silently. Or just dont give him permission to the config repository, if you really have people you can’t trust. - Rob ---
**Author:** ![Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/f475e1/32.png) [@Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_ASShaw)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2007, 6:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/survey-sysadmin-stupidity-check/91230/8 "2007-05-01T18:54:06Z")
We have a ruby script that does every for us - “daemon\_control start” brings up the mongrels for our various rails apps up, starts backgroundrb & various daemons, enables cron jobs etc… Fred ---
**Author:** ![Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/f475e1/32.png) [@Zed\_ASShaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Zed_ASShaw)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2007, 9:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/survey-sysadmin-stupidity-check/91230/9 "2007-05-01T21:46:47Z")
Philip H. wrote: > Yes… and since we’re all using capistrano to deploy (we are aren’t we?) > then this becomes even easier as you can not only track things in svn, but > write simple tasks to deploy them right out of SVN. > > Which also means you’re less likely to forget a server… which you will > do as soon as you have more than one 🙂 Speaking of Capistrano. Since, most of my configurations are built out of templates anyway I’ve used the Capistrano render and put methods to generate my init and config files at deploy time and upload them to all servers. My cap recipe of course stays under version control. recipe/code snippet task :upload\_mongrel\_conf do mongrel\_cluster = render :template =\> \<\<-CONF prefix: /\<%= application %\> cwd: /webapps/\<%= application %\> port: \<%= (core\_port.to\_i + 10).to\_s %\> environment: \<%= rails\_env %\> pid\_file: /global/\<%= application %\>/shared/pids/mongrel.pid servers: \<%= mongrel\_count %\> CONF put mongrel\_cluster, mongrel\_conf end –R