[wpkg-users] Ugly perl script to check if packages are installed on a set of

[Rainer Meier]

Hi Jens

Jens Geile wrote:
> 1. I've written my own webinterface which combines Unattended and WPKG and is linked to the webinterface for the DHCP configuration.
> 2. My packages.xml, hosts.xml, profiles.xml files are actually stored in the PSQL database and WPKG just downloads the .xml files from a password-protected website.
> 3. WPKG is writing the wpkg.xml files for each computer onto the server instead of the local harddrive of the client.
> 4. My webinterface parses the <hostname>.xml files in the status directory and compares the revision number in the .xml files with the revision numbers in the database.
> 5. The webinterface then shows which packages should be installed, which packages should be installed through dependencies, which packages are actually installed on the system and also shows the revision of the software on the client and in the database along with a short text message telling the admin that there is something wrong.
> 6. To make it a little easier I've added small icons on the overview page to show whether something is wrong or everything is alright. (little lightbulb = everything ok, warning symbol = somethign wrong; see attached images)
> 
> I've attached two pictures to show you the overview page for my profiles (Unattended settings, Hosts->Profile relation, Software->Profile relation) and the status report window which is available for every client.
> 
> The different status messages available are the following:
> - "Not installed and not in profile"
> - "Not installed"
> - "Not in profile but installed"
> - "Package not updated"
> - "Installed package is newer than in the profile"
> - "Ok"

Wow, impressive feature list. Looks like it could be some kind of 
replacement for the WPKG web GUI. I also like the vistual representation 
very much. Just the light bulb I would replace with a typical green tick 
mark and a failure with a typical red cross. The warning symbol I like :-)


> And before anyone asks, I cannot make my webinterface public because its completely integrated into the webinterface of our server and fully depends on it. I've given Thomas access to it in the past so he could check it out but I think it kinda overwhelmed him. :p

Too bad.


> Anyway, I hope you can get some ideas out of my solution and distribute it to the public, Chris.

Would be great to turn it into a stand-alone situation. I guess you did 
not have to do changes to the wpkg.js script as it allows you to store 
wpkg.xml anywhere. Probably you needed to change the naming scheme? When 
I think about it probably a naming pattern like for the logfile could be 
introduced to evaluate the name of the settings file. At least 
[HOSTNAME] and [PROFILE] could be helpful here. The same applies to the 
settings storage path. A least environment variables are already 
expanded. So something like %COMPUTERNAME% probably already works.

In any case it looks very promising. However it would most likely need a 
lot of manpower to turn it into a generic solution including 
documentation to set it up properly. Currently it looks like we don't 
have this manpower but who knows...

br,
Rainer