netskel

README

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 David McNett            _ __   ___| |_ ___| | _____| |
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 http://macnugget.org/  | | | |  __/ |_\__ \   <  __/ |
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                        netskel environment synchronizer

INTRODUCTION

netskel is an ssh based file synchronization tool which can be used to mirror a central repository of files to multiple UNIX shell accounts. It was built to create a simple and automated mechanism for users to push out their various shell environment config files to all the machines where they have shell accounts.

In particular it's useful for pushing out a common .cshrc, .bashrc, or ssh authorized_keys file to all your hosts. Using netskel will allow you to make centralized changes and updates to your unix enviornment without suffering through the tedium of applying those changes to the multitude of hosts where you have an account.

VERSION 3.0 BREAKING CHANGES

If you are a current Netskel user with a previous version, please be aware the current v3.0 release is a complete and total overhaul of the Netskel system. The old releases required Apache web server and used http/https as the deployment mechanism. This update re-write is entirely ssh-based and no longer uses or requires a web server to host the back end service

SERVER REQUIREMENTS

• Go compiler to build the server binaries
• A server that can be reached via ssh from your client installations
• A dedicated user account on that server to operate the backend service

CLIENT REQUIREMENTS

• A reasonably POSIX-flavoured system that has Bourne shell (/bin/sh) and a modest assortment of the usual Unix tools.
• The xxd binary (part of vim, should be on any Linux and macOS box but will require the vim port/package on FreeBSD. This replaces the older Netskel's reliance on uuencode and uudecode which is no longer reliably present on modern machines.

INSTALLATION

• Create a user on your server to hold the server code and your userland database. This user's homedirectory will be your install path. Suggested /usr/local/netskel with the user's shell as /usr/local/netskel/bin/server and no password.
• Copy your personal authorized_keys file to the netskel user's .ssh directory with the proper permissions.
• Run make && make install from the server directory of this repo
• Place any files and directories you want to deploy in the ./db/ folder of your Netskel installation. By default this is a git repo so you can use version control to track changes and additions to it.
• Run make userzero from the server directory of this repo, which will bootstrap your current login on your host as the first deployment of the client. Verify that the server info in ~/.netskel/config makes sense to you.

You should now be able to use netskel push <hostname> to deploy the netskel client from your current account to other hosts.