SiteXYTools

GOALS

1. Completely unattended customisation.
2. ability to install packages as part of OS install. Either by shipping package lists to a node telling it which packages to install from a particular location; or by installing packages into a fake root of the system's siteXY-.tgz
3. ability to add users as part of the OS install. How to integrate into NIS/LDAP/etc? For now, just parse a plain text file and add users accordingly.
4. rm and touch arbitrary files touch_list and rm_list contain paths to files that need to be deleted or touched (created) during install. Handy for creating dummy ssh/isakmpd keyfiles on slow machines that won't need them anyway.
5. Arbitrary roles for hosts For every /.role- that exists, see if ../roles/ exists, and if so, include the contents of that directory at the root of the tarball. Maintain one copy of, say, DNS data files, but easily copy them to four systems.

Compatibility

siteXYtools 1.x is incompatible with siteXYtools 0.x

OVERVIEW

The suite of siteXYtools consist of a number of tools for OpenBSD that aid in managing host-specific configurations, deploying such configurations to live hosts and generating siteXY.tgz (e.g. site40.tgz) files for customized OpenBSD installations.

The tools implement three phases that are interchangable at any time, meaning the method of generating files or distributing files can be changed completely without affecting any other part of the suite.

Note however, that while the particular method of generating may change, the output of the generate process must be understood by the install process.

We provide a single, standard siteXY.tgz file which fetches and extracts the host-specific tarball and performs various magic depending on the contents.

1. Generate configuration files

Tools: sitectl
Copy complete configuration files based on common files,
and per-host override files. 
Minor changes to existing files are implemented by diff/patch.

Imagine the following disk layout:

siteXY-work/
	_siteXYrc
	_roles/
		dns/
		mx/
	common/
		etc/
			ssh/
				authorized_keys/
					holsta
			doas.conf	
			sysctl.conf
			wsconsctl.conf
		patches/
			sshd
	host1/
		etc/
			pf.conf
			bgpd.conf
		patches/
		rm_list
		pkg_add_list
		pkg_path_list
		touch_list
		user_list
	host2/
		_role-mx
	host3/
		_role-dns

In the above 'common' example, all machines managed will receive some sysctl and wsconsctl config files and a doas.conf file.

It seems holsta's ssh key is stored in etc/ssh/authorized_keys/holsta - and it's safe to assume that patches/sshd contains a patch against the stock sshd_config which disables protocol 1, points to /etc/ssh/keys/ for authorized_keys and more.

Invoking 'generate host1' will cause the script to first of all parse .siteXYrc in the current directory. If not found, the script will halt. The .siteXYrc should contain at least a pointer to where final siteXY tarballs are to be dropped:

ballDir=/var/www/users/pub/OpenBSD/siteXY

generate will descend into 'host1' and build $ballDir/siteXY-host1.tgz based on its content. Finally, a master site39.tgz is updated so it contains the latest contents of 'common' plus install.site and manage scripts. This means that, if a host fetches just site39.tgz all the common files are installed to that host.

$ generate host1
/tmp/site39-host1.tgz: Configured as tftpd  Updated.
/tmp/site39.tgz: Including common directory

Invoking 'generate' with no arguments will build a siteXY tarball for each machine directory, skipping known administrative directory names such as 'roles', 'common', '.svn' and 'CVS'.

Suggested testbed for making sure we can handle many requirements:
	regular nic, gif0 and carp setup
	httpd.conf
	sshd_config & ssh_host_{dsa,rsa}
	user listing 
	package listing
	crontabs

2. Distribute configuration files

Tool: ssh+rsync, http fetch, ssh+role account.

For new hosts, build a new siteXY-hostname.tgz for each change so new
	hosts always get the latest change.
For other hosts, each host may http download or rsync from staging
	area. 

Distribution may happen as pull via ftp/http/rsync; or
	as push via rsync/ssh role account.

3. Install configuration files

Tool: install.site and manage (sh scripts)

For new hosts, siteXY.tgz and siteXY-hostname.tgz is downloaded and
	extracted to the root of the drive, the file /install.site is
	executed as part of the standard OpenBSD install. The box is
	rebooted once installation has completed.
For live hosts, copy files from temporary location to correct
	location with correct permissions, ownership and restart any
	daemons as required. The 'manage' script handles this for
	now.

In both cases, an mtree specification of file paths, owner, group and permissions is required to enforce a proper permissions policy. For usability reasons, configuration files have 'normal' permissions while being managed. At install time, the permissions, owner and group is set as required to prevent security leaks, etc.

RELATED PROJECTS

See Andrew Fresh' sxxu, who took the idea further. https://github.com/afresh1/sxxu