Stork Tutorial: Pacman

Pacman Groups
Your groups.pacman file allows you organize your nodes into separate groups. You are allowed to include a node into a group or exclude a node from a group. You can also include, exclude, or intersect groups with each other. To define our groups, we can use:

./storkutil.py pacgroups (include|exclude|intersect|remove) group NAME [NAME...]
where group is the name of the group to be affected, and NAME are the names of the nodes or groups to be included/excluded/removed.

We start by adding a node to a group. If a pacman group file for your username does not exist, then storkutil will create a new one.

./storkutil.py pacgroups include myGroup foo1.node foo2.node Using groups file: ./foo.~~~.groups.pacman File Not Found, Creating New File File './foo.~~~.groups.pacman' successfully signed ./storkutil.py view groups Viewing: foo.~~~.groups.pacman PACMAN GROUP FILE GROUP: myGroup INCLUDE: foo1.node INCLUDE: foo2.node

Storkutil will automatically sign the file using your default private key file, which you created when you generated your first key pairs. If you want to use a username that is not your default, you can use the --username option to work on a different file.
We can continue adding more data into our group definitions. For instance, if we want myGroup to include all the nodes in the group oldGroup, except for the node badNode which is a member of oldGroup, we can run the following commands:

./storkutil.py pacgroups include myGroup oldGroup
./storkutil.py pacgroups exclude myGroup badNode
This means that installing a package to myGroup will install it to every node included in oldGroup except for badNode.

We can remove groups or nodes from a group by simply using the remove command, as such:

./storkutil.py pacgroups remove myGroup

If you want to view the contents of the group file, you can use the view groups command in storkutil, but you will first need to add a node to a group to generate a group file.
When you are done, you will need to upload the groups.pacman file to the Stork repository.

Pacman Packages
The packages.pacman file allows you to manage which packages to install on which nodes. With the pacman packages file, you can tell a node or group (as defined by your groups.pacman file) to install or uninstall a package. To create and modify our packages file, we will use:

./storkutil.py pacpackages (node|group|all) NAME (install|remove|update) PACKAGE

We can start by assigning a node to install a package. Be sure your filename follows the pattern .packages.pacman, where the name is the one your configured in your Stork configuration file. This will aid your nodes in finding the correct group file to use. If the file you specified does not exist, then storkutil will create a new one.

./storkutil.py pacpackages node planetlab.foo.edu install gnuchess
This will assign the planetlab.foo.edu node to install gnuchess.

We can also assign groups to install or remove packages:
./storkutil.py pacpackages group myGroup install lynx man gnuchess
This command will tell myGroup to install the lynx, man, and gnuchess packages in all the nodes in the group.

We can also instruct Pacman to install packages on multiple nodes without grouping them, using the all command:
./storkutil.py pacpackages all install gnuchess
Note that in this example, the group and node commands are replaced with all command, and also that there is no group or node name required. This command will instruct Stork to install gnuchess on every node to which the packages.pacman file is distributed.

Using the update command, Stork will also instruct all nodes in a group to update a preexisting package:
./storkutil.py pacpackages group myGroup update gnuchess
This will instruct all myGroup nodes to update gnuchess when necessary.

Storkutil will automatically sign the file using your default private key file, which you created when you generated your first key pairs. If you want to work using a different set of keys and files, you can use the --username option. You can view the contents of your package file using the view packages command.

When you are done, upload your Pacman config file to the Stork repository.

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