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Daily Cup of TechBean There, Done Tech |
Firefox is trying to break a world record for the number of software downloads in 24 hours! They have officially released version 3 today and they want everyone to know about it.
Personally, I have loved Firefox for a long time now and it would take quite a bit for me to go to another browser.
A few weeks ago, I ran across a couple of articles about a university in Holland that was having difficulty getting all of their Microsoft patches out to all of their systems. What did they decide to do?
Buy more servers? Nope!
Increase bandwidth? Nope!
Use a program that has been essentially outlawed in North American universities? Yep!
The university decided, on the advice of their IT consultant, that they would use bittorrent to deploy the patches.
This really got me thinking about how I would go about creating my own U.Holl server (as I like to call it). These are some of the thoughts that I have come up with.
Just to add a really strong sense of irony, I would probably build the U.Holl server on Linux, most likely Ubuntu with a typical LAMP installation. Then, for ease of management, I would install a tracker such as phpMyBittorrent or something similar.
In the tracker software, I would create several different categories based on the target systems that I would use. For example, there would be Windows XP, Windows Vista, Office 2007, etc. categories. Each category would have its own RSS feed.
Each workstation or server that was to receive updates using bittorrent would have a copy of uTorrent running in the background. This would be critical. You would also need to tweak uTorrent so that it automatically ran an installation script r program each time it finished downloading a new patch. This script would also schedule a reboot at 3:00 AM (or whatever time you wanted) since it seems almost every hotfix from Microsoft needs to reboot the system.
A potential install script might look like this:
The trick to automatically downloading files is to subscribe each uTorrent client to the proper RSS feeds given out by the server. This way, each system only gets the patches it needs.
I think that this type of a delivery system has great potential. You could even use it across slow bandwidth links or to deploy other software, not just patches.
This is a project that I am hoping to spend some time on over the next while but I am looking for your input/suggestions now so that I can hopefully avoid some pitfalls later. Any input would be greatly appreciated!
If you found this post useful, why don't you buy me a cup of coffee to show your gratitude?
Well, it took over a year, but we now have definitive proof that the Lost USB Drive application works! When I launched the Lost USB Drive Experiment in early June of last year, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I had all but forgotten about the experiment.
So, imagine my surprise when I had this in my inbox this morning:
Dale,I recently took over Costa Coffee Eastleigh and have found your USB Memory stick, I’m not sure how long it has been here but if you would like to pop in and collect it I will put it to one side.
Thanks
Matthew
Store ManagerCosta Coffee
27-29 Market Street
Eastleigh
SO50 5RG
To be honest, I was a little shocked! But, at the same time, this totally made my day! Just goes to prove that there are some honest people out there and that a little ingenuity can go a long way!
If any of you are in the area of Matthew’s store, go in, congratulate him on his honesty and integrity, and buy the biggest, most expensive coffee on the menu! Way to go, Matthew!
If you found this post useful, why don't you buy me a cup of coffee to show your gratitude?
