Keeping Systems Updated and Synchronized
These days many people manage multiple computers. A common desire is keeping systems updated and synchronized.
With laptops outright cloning disks is not a great approach because of unique hardware and firmware requirements.
There are convenient ways to help sync systems. Large scale includes configuration management tools such as Ansible. Small scale includes tools such as Syncthing and Unison.
For many years I've had a primary office desktop, a secondary laptop, and a living room media player. I run Slackware on everything.
For years I have worked from home. My office desktop is my primary computer.
I seldom use the laptop for real work. I use the laptop for web browsing and reading RSS feeds in the comfort of the living room easy chair or screened back porch. Or when I travel to visit family. Yet I use the laptop daily. I am motivated to keep the laptop updated and in sync.
I resolved the problem many years ago with my own custom sync shell script. The script is a wrapper to rsync, but handles exceptions with running Slackware and differences with hardware. For example, while the script updates packages, the script does not blindly sync all /etc files or automatically install new packages.
With new packages I diff the installed package list of the computers. Normally I don’t need to do this because I use the computers daily and I know what happens everywhere.
I wrote the script long ago before certain tools like Syncthing existed. Basically I had to scratch my own itch. To this day the script is functional. My scripting skills and understanding of Linux systems have improved and I see ways I could improve the script. Yet part of me is lazy and I don’t bother. Not broke — don’t fix.
Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: General
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