ASIS (Application Software Installation Server) and SUE (Standard Unix Environment) are two (non-trivial!) systems used in managing the computing infrastructure at CERN.

Automated SysAdmin; Dot Files:

By Mike Peterson:

``The automated system administration scripts, which are copies of the scripts in active use on our HP (HP-UX 9.X), SGI (IRIX 5.X and 6.X), SunOS 4.1.X, Solaris 2.X, Linux RedHat 5.X and FreeBSD 3.X systems...''

``The dot file scripts, which are copies of the .cshrc / .login / .profile / etc scripts in active use on our HP (HP-UX 9.X), SGI (IRIX 5.X and 6.X), SunOS 4.1.X, Solaris 2.X, Linux RedHat 5.X and FreeBSD 3.X systems...''

(GNU) Cfengine:

"Cfengine, or the configuration engine is a very high level language for building expert systems which administrate and configure large computer networks. Cfengine uses the idea of classes and a primitive form of intelligence to define and automate the configuration of large systems in the most economical way possible."

CIS security benchmark scanner:

The `Center for Internet Security' has a free security scanner that some people have found useful; insofar as good security goes with good (system) housekeeping, it is ARK-related.

City - The MCS Large Cluster System Software Toolkit;

``City is the set of software, tools, and procedures that we have developed to help run the clusters in the MCS Division.'' See also: `Msys' (below).

ClusterIt tools:

Do things in parallel on a motley collections of machines; admittedly, the idea of a `vi' that runs simultaneously on 40 hosts scares me...

Supposely based on PSSP (Parallel System Support Programs) from IBM, for AIX.

Encap Package Management System:

From University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign...

eCos CDL (Component Definition Language):

Defines the options and how-to-build-it for an eCos (embedded OS) component. Mature and implemented example of how to do a stick-lots-of-things-together system.

Ganymede

A GPL'd "portable and customizable network directory management system"; can feed a NIS/LDAP/whatever system; notably allows for "local intelligence" -- or, as they say, "very sophisticated data checking and inter-object relationship maintenance. The Ganymede server does a lot to keep everything sane.. if you delete a user, the user is automatically removed from all groups, email lists, systems, etc., that refer to the user."

GConf (GNOME configuration library):

Windows registry done right (?)...

Global:

A simple written-in-Perl run-something-on-many-machines tool, written by the venerable Ed Finch. See also: Mr Shell.

Gromit:

You create the config files, and Gromit will put them in the right place (on multiple machines) for you.

LUDE:

"Logithèque Universitaire Distribuée et Extensible: a distributed software library."

MATtool -- the Monitoring and Administration Tool.

``MAT is an easy to use network enabled UNIX configuration and monitoring tool. It provides an integrated tool for many common system administration tasks. The GUI interface hides much of the differences between UNIX varieties in a heterogeneous environment. [...] From a single MAT console you can manage every UNIX host on your network where the MAT agent is installed.

Metaconf:

Basically a wrapper around RPM that adds (a) automatic dependency resolution; (b) snapshot and restore functions for package-related settings; and (c) a scripting language for creating custom configurations.

MPKG:

``MPKG is a ports collection. ... Each port contains the information necessary to automatically download and install a specific program. ... So what's new or different [about MPKG]? ...

Installs all programs in separate directories. Never touches /usr for example.
Several versions of the same program can be installed simultaneously.
Portable. It should be portable to all Unix-like operating systems. It is currently used for Linux/PC, Digital Unix/Alpha and Solaris 8.
Integrated with modules to automatically handle the user's environment variables.''

Mr Shell:

A run-something-on-many-machines tool; um, quickly... Written in C++. See also: Global.

Msys - The MCS Systems Administration Toolkit ;

``Msys is a set of systems administration utilities and tools, collected into a toolkit.'' See also: `City' (above).

NSBD (Not-So-Bad Distribution):

``NSBD (Not-So-Bad Distribution) is an automated Web-based distribution system that is designed for distributing free software on the internet, where users cannot trust the network and cannot entirely trust the maintainers of software.'' (I.e. it takes the security side of this sort of thing seriously.)

OpenPKG:

A cross-platform RPM-based Unix software packaging system; notable open-source hacker Ralf Engelschall is behind it.

OSD:

Open Software Description format (XML).

PIKT:

"Problem Informant/Killer Tool. (PIKT rhymes with `ticket'.)"

pir's jumpstart configs:

A let's-get-serious set of Solaris JumpStart scripts, plus documentation and mailing-list. By Peter Radcliffe.

PowerAdmin:

A service provided by a group within University of Michigan to departments and other organizations to help run Unix machines; they provide `templates' and presumably consulting, so that service users end up with top-notch Unix setups very quickly. See also: Synctree.

RACE:

"RACE is short for `Remote Administration in distributed Computing Environments'. It is a system designed to help system administrators in the distribution and configuration of software on a huge number of distributed computers over a TCP/IP network." By Nils Philippsen.

radmind:

``radmind - A suite of Unix command-line tools and a server designed to remotely administer the file systems of multiple Unix machines.

radmind is a client/server package for file system management, with an eye to the creation of loadsets for any number of client machines, the selected files of which are stored and retrieved at need from the server running the radmind daemon.''

SEPP:

"SEPP is an application installation, sharing and packaging solution for large, decentrally managed Unix environments. SEPP can be used without making modifications to the organizational structure of the participants' servers. It provides consistent application setup, documentation, wrapper scripts and usage logging as well as version concurrency and clean software removal."

SIMON:

A wide-ranging suite of tools to manage the site configuration at RPI; the best reference is Jon Finke's papers.

Site Assure (commercial):

``A scalable and reliable communications infrastructure that collects and correlates dynamic resource information from distributed agents [either via SNMP or its own collectors]. Such information is used for near real time site monitoring and automated/manual management actions.''

SLINK:

Tool to ``maintain virtual images of installed software packages.''

Scalable UNIX Tools (SUT) for Clusters:

``SUT is a collection of standard UNIX utilities like ls, rm, cp, etc. that are targeted at cluster use.'' See also `City' and `Msys'.

Slashpackage by Dan Bernstein:

Package naming and management.

(GNU) Stow:

"A program for managing the installation of software packages..."

Tetre2:

"Template Tree 2 [tetre2] is a software system for efficiently managing the configuration of large and heterogeneous Unix installations." By Tobias Oetiker.

Unattended:

`Unattended' is an open-source system for doing unattended installs of Windows boxes. The web pages include references to other such tools.

Usepackage:

By Jonathan Hogg: ``Usepackage is a tool for managing the Unix environment for a multi-tool, multi-platform site. It is designed to simplify login scripts and allow administrators to control users' environments centrally.

``This tool should be considered primarily designed for sites where users have to deal with a number of different tools, or versions of tools, that are installed into different locations and require environment variables to be set. This is particularly a problem for developers or anyone who has to manage a large toolset across multiple platforms - e.g. different versions of the Sun JDK which require various environment variables to be set correctly, like JAVA_HOME, CLASSPATH, and J2EE_HOME.''

Verdad:

``Verdad is a system for centralizing configuration information for all the hosts at a large site. It provides tools like inheritance and versioning to let you build a central configuration database.''

WBEMsource Initiative:

An industry-plus-pals initiative to do `Web Based Enterprise Management' (WBEM); includes some open-source projects.

xml2hostconf:

xml2hostconf is a collection of XSLT scripts that generate RPM packages, dhcpd.conf, GRUB files, Kickstart files and HTML documentation. A system administrator of a Red Hat Linux network can specify the setup of all the computers in a single XML file. Each computer will be given its own "virtual" RPM package. The generated RPM packages might have dependencies and they might also contain configuration files. Plus: their comparison to ARK...