[wpkg-users] Remote site repositories

[Rainer Meier]

Hi Donny,

On 14.05.2012 18:14, Donny Brooks wrote:
> I understand. So what I was thinking of doing with the clients still going back to the centralized wpkg server for configs but pulling software from local servers should work if I read correctly. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't mess anything completely up before I started testing a small group. Thanks again.

Yes this is supposed to work. But there are other possible solutions as well.
You could also set up a local DNS server (or use hosts resolution or whatever 
you prefer to redirect users to the right "local" WPKG Server.

Especially nowadays many clients are portable/mobile and often carried from one 
location to another. When a client is carried from location A to location B it 
would still access servers from location A (this time remotely).

So if you can (local DNS servers available) I would recommend setting up a 
hostname dedicated for WPKG like wpkg.domain.tld and then configure all clients 
the same way. So if a client on location A connects to 
\\wpkg.domain.tld\wpkg-share then it connects to the local server in location A 
and if the client is temporary moved to location B then it uses the local WPKG 
server on location B without re-configuration.

Of course this only works if you can either have a server with the same IP in 
both locations or with the same hostname resolved differently in different 
locations.


If you are fine with hard-wiring a client->server association, then you might 
also consider defining the SOFWARE variable on profile level. Grouping all hosts 
of one location into a profile and defining SOFTWARE at profile level. This way 
you can even change the hostname any time without having to roll out new WPKG 
configuration to the clients.
Although even in this method roaming clients would not automatically connect to 
the corresponding local server automatically but always try to connect to the 
WPKG server which is hard-wired in profile.


Well, thinking about more possibilities there might be an option to define 
different SOFTWARE variable values depending on IP ranges or other host 
properties using conditional variables. A mapping like
If network 192.168.1.0/24 then SOFTWARE=\\192.168.1.x\wpkg\software
If network 192.168.2.0/24 then SOFTWARE=\\192.168.2.x\\wpkg\software

This way if a host uses DHCP and is roaming between to IP networks it would 
always connect to the local server.


In any case I would recommend the DNS resolver solution outlined above.

br,
Rainer