Update large numbers of hosts in parallel

Msrc is the brain of the master source structure. If controls the heart (xapply) and the muscles (hxmd) to manage recipe construction (m4), deilvery (rdist) and execution (make). Most of these tools you may have used before, the others you can read about before you read this, or not.

To understand this document

This document assumes you are quite familiar with the standard UNIX™ tools make(1), m4(1), and the shell sh(1). In addition, you should have a working understanding of xapply, and some understanding of how hxmd customizes files via m4.

Make, briefly described, runs the fewest commands possible to achieve a goal. Goals are described in terms of dependency relations between target files, and the commands make should run to update each of those targets. Prerequisite targets are always checked (and possibly updated) before their dependent files. Any file with an updated dependency must be updated if another target (or the goal) depends on that file.

A make recipe file defines a list of of possible target files, their dependency relationship to other files, and the shell commands which would be run to update the target given dependent files with time-stamps dated after the modification time of the target. It also defines macros (also known as variables) which are used to compress repeated lists of files (or commands). In all my HTML documents make macro names are rendered as NAME (historically most make macros are all upper case).

M4 is the UNIX™ macro processor. It replaces text in files. It is used my many applications as a generic macro filter, for example, sendmail, syslogd, and autoconfig.

Sh is the default shell. It is a fairly complete command interpreter and data-flow language which is used by make, and ssh.

Xapply derives shell commands from a template and a list of items, then runs the commands in parallel to maximize throughput. It is backwards compatible with apply.

Hxmd uses xapply and some related commands to apply a command to many hosts in parallel. And msrc uses hxmd to send files and commands to many remote hosts. In all my HTML documents hxmd attributes are rendered as NAME. This helps the reader distinguish them from make macros (which would render as NAME).

What is msrc?

Msrc updates a remote host with a copy of a local directory via rdist, then executes a shell command on the remote host in the context of the updated folder. In short, msrc executes an arbitrary distributed task across a set of hosts with a known set of files. The primary use is to build, install, and configure software on a large group of hosts.

To do that, msrc's default command is make, and a make recipe file is also used to configure the program. So anyone using msrc must have a good understanding of make.

Here is the command-line usage for msrc:

msrc [-lz] [-preload] [-f makefile] [-m prereq] [-Pjobs] [-ulogin] [-y yoke] [hxmd-opts] [utility]
msrc -h
msrc -V

Msrc is a wrapper for the shell command that is to be executed on a set of remote hosts. In this case the wrapper encloses a utility and creates an environment that is a shadow of the local directory on each target host. Msrc updates the target hosts via rdist (version 6), the executes the requested command via ssh. In other modes of operation, one might use rsync rather in place of rdist, see mpull's HTML document.

Since it leverages hxmd's configuration management data, it is especially useful for distributed tasks across heterogeneous hosts. It supports variation in the target population by using hxmd's m4 file processing to customize scripts, makefiles, or data-files from the current directory, as it copies them to each target host.

As an example, to build a program on more than 2,400 hosts in my environment I might use:

msrc -Cdmz.cf make all install clean

To reduce command-line complexity, msrc quotes the target utility (in this case make) and its parameters to protect them from the m4 processing done by hxmd and the shell parameter expansion done by ssh. It also constructs the required rdist distfile on the fly, so the operator doesn't have to triple quote parts of the command.

This is an evolution of the work I did at the Purdue University computing center. The older tools required more explicit configuration of rdist's distfile, and a much longer makefile. The new structure is a little harder to boot-strap, but is much faster, easier to configure, and more flexible.

While intended primarily to drive make on the target host, msrc may execute any shell program. That shell program may take a different action for any subset of hosts, because msrc uses hxmd's configuration management to customize the set of source files distributed to each host. Almost any hxmd option may be presented on the command-line, which is represented as hxmd-opts in the usage above.

This flexible tool is quite convenient for many recurring systems administration, software development, and large-scale computation tasks. One might compare to msrc to (R)ex, for example. But actions are expressed as make recipes, rather than some new declarative language. Msrc could drive a pull system like Puppet. I use hostlint to find regressions, and either pull or push updates to close each loop, see the hostlint HTML document.

Quick start

Before you read this whole document, you might want to visit the quick start HTML document to see what we are getting at. The document is easier to understand if you have access to a host with msrc and the rest of msrc_base already installed.

There is a leverage document for this version of the master source based on the one for the distrib version.

The normal data-flow

To see how msrc works, we break the user interface into several steps. Each step uses data from either the command-line, environment variable, or a file in the current directory to provision the next layer.

This is a quick link index into the main sections:

From the command-line
Msrc accepts options for xapply and hxmd, which includes options for ptbw and xclate. The few options it parses for itself are documented below.
Macros extracted from a makefile
All of the macros extracted from the makefile represent the disposition of the files from the current working directory.
File created for hxmd
Msrc creates template files that hxmd expands to update each target host.
Updating the remote directory via rdist
Rdist sends a copy of the current directory to each target host.
Remote execution of utility
The update script includes a remote command to execute the utility specified on the command-line on the target host.

There is also an alternate local data-flow which allows a completely local version of the process. This provides service for hosts that are not able to receive incoming network connections.

There are some details to illuminate how to manage recursive subdirectories which should help explain the tactics used in that case.

The command-line

Msrc is built on top of hxmd; it accepts most of the options hxmd processes and hands them off to hxmd (which in turn hands them down to m4, xapply, ptbw and xclate).

There is 1 option that msrc won't pass down: the -F option, which changes hxmd's parameters from literal strings to filenames. Since msrc provides those all as files it can't allow any command-line specification.

In addition to the hxmd options, msrc processes the make option -f to change the default name of the makefile used in the next step. Msrc looks for a file named either "Msrc.mk" or "msrc.mk" before falling back to make's defaults of "Makefile" or "makefile". Like make, msrc looks in the current working directory for these files.

The standard -h and -V options output the usage and version information, as in all of my tools.

The other options make more sense in context, briefly:

Using a makefile as a configuration file

Msrc extracts the values of several make macros from the makefile found under -f.

Make meets our needs and doesn't really limit us because we are bound to the current working directory for the other files we process. We also gain a standard file format we don't have to parse, since make recipe files are common to all UNIX™ (POSIX) platforms.

As a bonus, we can use make's dependencies to trigger prerequisite tasks. A common use for this feature is to check-out files from a configuration management facility; if they are missing or out-of-date. The command-line option -m allows us to change the prereq target we use in this step. The default value for prereq is "__msrc" (which is 2 underscores prefixed on the name of the program).

How msrc extracts of makefile macros

To output a make macro from a shell command-line, let us add a synthetic target to the end of makefile that echo's the value. For example:
cat Makefile - <<\! | make -f - __msrc
	@echo ${INTO}

This fragment outputs the value of INTO to stdout. Msrc uses some slightly more advanced chicanery (with added file descriptor manipulation) to extract the 7 make macro values it needs.

Which make macros msrc extracts

Each of the 7 make macros listed below contains only filenames or fixed strings which both make and m4 process. In this document make macros are presented as "INTO".

Msrc forbids any filename used in a macro from containing embedded white-space. When you need a filename with embedded white-space you might stop to ask yourself "Why?" Even when the installed file on the target machine needs white-space in the final filename, that doesn't mean the source file must have the same name.

As given in the example code (above), the first macro is INTO. This macro specifies where on the target host the cached copy of the current directory is to be constructed. The empty string triggers a default value which replaces the string "/msrc/" with the string "/src/" in the path to the current working directory. Always specify INTO when your application requires a specific target directory. The default is good for the design use of msrc.

The INTO macro may not specify more than one target directory, or the current working directory. This prevents the disaster of sending customized files over the top of the source files. If you try to target the current working directory you'll see an error like:

msrc: /tmp/ksb/msrc: will not target the current working directory

An example of this macro from a real makefile:


Setting INTO to "." doesn't map to the current directory: it maps to the home directory of the remote user. This is a slightly dangerous feature, I suggest you avoid using it until you are skilled with these tools.

The macro MODE selects the default mode of operation for msrc, either "local" or "remote". We talk about this more under local mode below.

By default, the other macros segregate the files in the current directory into 5 non-overlapping groups, which msrc uses to decide how to process each file. When the specific macro for a group is not set, or set to an empty list, msrc creates a value for that macro from the files not otherwise consumed. In other words, each filename is normally presented to only a single macro.

When empty or not set, this defaults to any directory which doesn't look like a configuration management artifact ("RCS", "CVS", "SCCS", or "SVN").
Takes any directory out of the list of files, but is usually empty because subdirectories are not common.
Defaults to the list of filenames with the suffix ".host". Note that this also includes matching directories, which are taken to be hxmd cache directories.
Each of these files is processed through hxmd's m4 structure; the customized file is sent to the target host with any ".host" suffix removed. The most common mapped file I include is "Makefile.host". This allows some recipe targets to hold custom commands for each target host and operating system combination. Any valid hxmd cache directory is also a value map.
Before the master source structure used msrc it used distrib and the platform recipe file was commonly named "Make.host", which is how one can tell that a directory needs an upgrade to the 2008 version. For more about the old code and tactics see the distrib HTML document.
Defaults to the list of files with the suffix ".hxmd".
Each of these files is read to assemble a list of options to pass (in addition so those on the command-line) down to hxmd. The common name for this file is "Msrc.hxmd", which matches the default suffix so it doesn't need to be specified in the Makefile, and sorts close to the recipe files.
Defaults to the list of files not captured in any of the above macros.
Each of these files is sent as-is to the target host, even if the file has a special suffix. This macro is only set in the makefile when there are files you need to force into the macro below.
Defaults to the list of files not consumed by any of the other macros.
These files are not sent to the remote host, and may be explicitly except'd in any generated distfile. Any files listed in this macro force all the other files into the SEND macro as they are mutually exclusive.

Being specifically general or exclusive

There are two other mechanisms to redistribute files between the macros. Any of the macros above may be provisioned with a list of files that are to be included, then a markup to either lock the macor (.) or extend the macro to include any remaining files (+++).
macro=files +++
Any macro that includes this token receives all unassigned filenames. The default of holder is IGNORE. Changing that to MAP would process all files through m4, for example.
macro=files .
Lock any macro that receives this value, to prevent any automatic assignments.
Locking INTO to no value forces the target directory to be the home directory of the remote login.
Locking HXINCLUDE is a good way to force files ending in .hxmd into the SEND list.

Prerequisite recipe bound to "__msrc"

The makefile might also specify dependencies which must be fulfilled before msrc does any processing.

As a side-effect of running msrc, some prerequisite updates may be checked by make in the local directory. Since the default prereq target is predictable, based on the program name, it is possible to add a make dependency to that target. For example, the fragment assures that the files listed in SOURCE exist, or are checked-out before the update process begins:

SOURCE= a.c b.c main.c common.h

	co -u $@

source: ${SOURCE}

.PHONY: source __msrc

# hook for msrc -m
__msrc: source

Any prerequisite bound the the target may be checked (more than once, in some cases) before the utility runs. If the update recipe has side-effects it would be best to protect it with some additional logic.

An alternate set of prerequisite actions might be specified with the -m command-line option, or a link to the msrc program with a difference name. This flexibility allows a single makefile to support multiple uses. Later we will describe the other form for -m which allows for a cleanup target as well.

Take care never to define the synthetic target in your makefile. Putting a recipe on that target suppresses the recipe msrc adds, so msrc appears to extract empty values for every make macro. Error messages like:

msrc: cannot deduce "INTO" not under "msrc": pwd
Almost alway stem from a missing (or nonsense) INTO value.

Less obvious uses of the macros

Setting the make macros to a list of files is the intended interface. Some alternate forms come to mind when you know how msrc extracts their values.
SEND= *.plain *.peanut
Since the code msrc emits to gather the values uses a shell echo, statement with a redirection on the end the shell will expand the globbing asterisk in SEND.
HXINCLUDE= ; some-command with arguments
Since the semicolon (";") in the expanded text terminates the echo the output of some-command will be assigned to HXINCLUDE, from msrc's point of view.

To be clear, this does limit the usefulness of the macro for any other purpose inside makefile. With more complex pipelines one might have to apply parentheses.

In either case, the use of these tactics indicates you've made a spell few people will grok without help. Comments in the makefile help a lot.

Planning to execute hxmd

For the next step, msrc builds the hxmd wrapper to process each host. The instance of hxmd does all the heavy lifting: it manages the loop logic, selects the hosts to target, customizes the files listed in MAP, executes rdist to update target directories, then runs the given utility on each selected host.

The directory might need to tune hxmd; to do this. msrc uses the make macro HXINCLUDE to specify extra options to hxmd. Each of files listed contains options for hxmd. The options are passed on to hxmd via the HXMD_PASS environment variable, as described below.

All files listed in the make macro MAP are customized via hxmd's m4 macro expansion. Each resulting stream is placed in a file with the original name, sans the ".host" extension.

All of the customizations performed by hxmd are specified via the attribute macros the configuration files provided. To take full advantage of msrc, some policy attributes may have to be added to your site.cf file.

Attribute macros msrc expects

The set of macros gathered from make is distinct from the m4 macros provided by hxmd's configuration files. These macros are all rendered in this document as "ENTRY_LOGIN".

In the previous sections we talked about make macros: below this point we talk mostly about attribute macros. The makefile specifies make macros, while the hxmd command-line options (-D, -C, -X, and -Z) garner attribute macros for hxmd's m4 macro processing.

In the following steps, we are going to use these attribute macros to customize the m4 processed files hxmd produces for each target host. Here is a summary of the attribute macro msrc uses:

A domain name for the target host, as well as the expected key value (set by hxmd's -k option)
Lacking a definition of this macro really breaks the whole process.
When we need to become a different user on the target machine, this should be defined to the login name of that user. In that case, the login name is prepended to every reference to the target HOST when it is used to specify a network destination.
The command-line option -u is a shorthand for definition of this attribute.
When undefined msrc won't specify a remote login name. So ssh might map the login with the ssh configuration option User, which might be set per-host in a local ssh_config file. See some notes below with reguard to setting this for multiple operators.
A shell file to source (via the shell "." command) into the remote environment before execution of utility.
When not defined no file is sourced. An error message like this:
/usr/bin/.: Permission denied.
or sometimes:
.: Command not found.
indicates that the target login is using /bin/csh as a login shell. Either use a different login or change the shell.
Usually defined to a function that includes the correct markup for either "local" or "remote" processing. This macro is commonly defined by a file included under -j, or in some HXINCLUDE file (viz. Msrc.hxmd).
A shell command executed on the local machine before we update each target.
A shell command executed on the local machine before we start the utility on each target.
A shell command executed on the local machine after we finish each target.
The patch to rdistd on the remote machine, if we need to set it with rdist's -p option.
The path to an rdist version 6 (rdist6) compatible program.
Assumes the value "rdist" when not defined.
The path to a remote shell for rdist's -P option.
Defaults to SSH, when not defined.
The path to rdist followed by both the -p and -P options and a trailing -f. This could call a program other than rdist for some hosts.
When undefined, msrc constructs a value from RDIST_PATH, RSH_PATH and RDISD_PATH
The path to the remote shell program to execute.
Defaults to "ssh" when not defined.
This attribute is set to the value of the MODE make macro, or set to "local" under -l, or set by default to "remote". It is converted to an attribute macro (under -DMSRC_MODE=value) via the hxmd command-line. It is also available as a parameter ($1) to the INCLUDE_CMD above. It is used by some local template files to tune transport and update commands. Some sites may never need it.

Updating the remote directory

Using the values msrc extracted from the makefile it constructs 2 files.

The first is a distfile for rdist that would update a remote directory (extracted from INTO) from the current directory. The second is a shell script that is customized by hxmd for each host selected. This script uses the distfile to run rdist, then ssh to run the command line utility.

After all that is setup, msrc builds an hxmd command-line, then executes that program to do all the work. The details below explain how that comes together.

Outline of the distfile

The distfile is rendered through m4, so it is a strange mix of extracted make macros mixed with ifelse logic based on some hxmd attributes encoded in m4 macros. All this means is that reading it requires a firm grasp of where all the data came from and how it is going to be interpreted by rdist.

We are building a distfile with 3 labels:

A label to build the target directory (extracted from INTO) on the target host.
A label to build all the directories extracted from SUBDIR.
The label that sends the mapped files and plain files across.

It may seem like calling rdist 3 times is a bit much, but some (older versions) of rdist need the support.

Distfile details

The distfile uses some hxmd attribute macros to customize the transport. Compare the example below to one of these msrc outputs under the -d S option on your host:
dnl rdist distfile to update a remote host
`myself: ( . ) -> ( 'ifdef(`ENTRY_LOGIN',`ENTRY_LOGIN@')HOST` )
	install -onodescend /usr/src/local/sbin/msrc;'
	install -owhole,nodescend /usr/src/local/sbin/msrc;'
`files: ( msrc.man msrc.m make.m README TODO machine.h mreg.ksh msrc.html envfro
	except_pat ( /RCS /Makefile );
	install -owhole /usr/src/local/sbin/msrc;'
`( 'HXMD_1` ) -> ( 'ifdef(`ENTRY_LOGIN',`ENTRY_LOGIN@')HOST` )
	install -b /usr/src/local/sbin/msrc/Makefile ;'

When hxmd runs that through m4, it produces a distfile that is custom-fit to send the source to msrc itself to a target host. Since the source to msrc doesn't have any subdirectories the "dirs" label won't be used, the safety feature of putting a safe transaction on that label helps other programs automate their use of msrc.

The attribute macro HXMD_1 is provided by hxmd: it is the first file in the MAP macro (in this case "Makefile.host" is being sent to "Makefile" on the target machine). When there are other files in MAP There are 2 files on the hxmd command line that are not mentioned in the marked-up distfile: The control file (below), and the last file on the command-line, which is the file displayed above.

Control file details

Next we turn to the control script. This file drives the update of a single host. To update each host, hxmd processes this file though m4 for attribute expansion, then runs the output as a shell script.

The script calls rdist at least twice: once to assure that the remote directory exists, and once to send the files. Then uses the remote shell selected to start a shell on the remote machine to execute the specified utility.

Compare this example to one msrc outputs under -d S on your host (I did remove some m4 markup in this example, after you grok this see below):

dnl remote per-host update script for hxmd
'`set . "Makefile" "remote" "'ifdef(`ENTRY_LOGIN',`ENTRY_LOGIN'@)HOST" "/usr/src/local/sbin/msrc"
ifdef(`SDIST',`',`define(`SDIST',`RDIST_PATH `'ifdef(`RSH_PATH',`-P`'RSH_PATH'
	) ifdef(`RDISTD_PATH',`-p`'RDISTD_PATH') -f')')dnl
dnl myself, subdirs, then files:
SDIST HXMD_1 myself || exit $?
dnl SUBDIR is empty
SDIST HXMD_1 files
	`. defn(`ENTRY_DEFS') \&\& ')`cd /usr/src/local/sbin/msrc \&\& :'

As in the example in the last section, the markup above is passed through m4 to create the command script. The reference to HXMD_2 is therefore replaced by the name of the processed distfile from the previous section. The "_CMD" macros are available to define any additional interventions needed to make this update a host in your local environment.

Debugging these steps

To help the implementor trace errors, msrc displays the parts explained below as the -d option requests. With the debug flag "-d X", msrc outputs the generated hxmd command-line on stderr. That also passes the debug flag to hxmd which traces the execution of the wrapped xapply stack.

Environment options to hxmd

Msrc reads each of the files from the list set by the makefile macro HXINCLUDE to set an environment variable for hxmd (called HXMD_PASS). The command line option -z skips this step, allowing an explicit command line to override the makefile.

The command line for msrc contains options to hxmd to select hosts and tune the use of m4 and xapply's stack. Experience with these tools has shown that the command line options tend to be long and mostly the same for any given directory. In fact, the common parts were almost always the configuration file (-C, -Z, -X), host selection (-E, -B, -G), m4 tuning (-D, -I, -U) and merge (-o) options.

By drawing those options from a file, we avoid having to type them on the msrc command line every time we run the program. Another way to do this would be to code a shell script to force the options into the command line: since we'll use that method to solve a different issue later we don't want to use it here.

There are 3 goals met with such a file:

Add options to provide uncommon data
The standard hxmd site configuration may not include any chassis color information, but this configuration management problem requires that attribute: force the merge locally.

For example, Msrc.hxmd might contain:

# $Revision: control information ...
# We need to include the color information for movie.com
-X color.cf

Nodes that are mentioned in one configuration but not the other create a close-the-loop problem. Some mechanism to increase the certainty that the files are synchronized before use is strongly advised.

Limit selection to a subset of the normal population
By adding a selection criteria in an hxmd options file, the implementor limits the impact of sending the structure to inappropriate nodes. The bet is that such nodes will not be elected due to the additional constraints.

For example, Msrc.hxmd might contain:

# $Revision: control information...
# We need to know the color of every host

The use of the -z option defeats this injunction for legitimate testing or for silly people.

Add processing hooks to process recursion or other dependencies
The m4 hooks above provide the opportunity to call other structures, but are too cumbersome to type on each command-line. By placing the hooks in an hxmd options file, we remove that burden.

See examples of this below where we explain recursion.

An important point: we normally only put options common to mmsrc (micro-msrc) and hxmd in these files. Since mmsrc doesn't emulate xapply's stack, we mustn't include any options it doesn't know in these files.

Another important point: using -z without careful inspection of the options you are ignoring is about as safe a playing with a gun you didn't clear yourself. Never point a loaded msrc at a structure you are not willing to destroy. Given that msrc is designed to update directories completely this is a pretty fair rule in all cases, but much more important when you disable someone's -z safety.

There are other reasons why these options are gathered in this indirect way:

The files are read as a single catenated text stream. In that stream:

Whole-line hash comments are ignored
This allows load lines (with a first line starting with "#!"), comments, and the use of mk in these files.
A line that starts with a dollar-sign ($) expands from the environment
This allows the addition of debug options, the output of a shell command, or temporary filenames to be passed though without creating a new file. To defeat this feature put a space before the dollar-sign.
The file name "." is ignored
This lets you force HXINCLUDE to a value, without actually reading a file. One might also use "/dev/null" as an explicit value that has no options in it.
Newlines are replaced by spaces
This is done because the option parser that reads from the environment doesn't break words on newlines. To defeat this put the newline in an environment variable and use the dollar-sign facility above.

After removing comments, if the only thing in the stream is a double-dash token (--) then the stream is replaced with an empty one. The environment variable HXMD_PASS is set to the resultant stream. Hxmd reads this variable in preference to HXMD.

Without intervention, the HXMD_PASS variable is inherited via the environment by any descendent processes, including nested hxmds. Hxmd has an option (-z) to clear the environment variable after it is read for options. With -z set in any HXINCLUDE file any descendent use of hxmd reverts to reading HXMD rather than HXMD_PASS.

Directories without any local options files

If there is no file listed in HXINCLUDE, msrc looks in an alternate directory for a file with default options in it. That directory is specified by the environment variable MSRC_LIB with a default value of /usr/local/lib/msrc:/usr/local/lib/hxmd. Msrc builds the filename from its run-time program name with the suffix .hxmd added, so the default would be "msrc.hxmd".

This allows a site to set general policy like "always include audit.zf" as code, rather than as a verbal mandate. Note that any explicit option file removes this default, so in the control recipe must explicitly include the global default file. That usually only impacts recursive spells.

Always adding this file proved to be much more of a bug.

It is easy to defeat any site defaults since the name of the file is based on the name of the program and the $MSRC_LIB path variable. In other words you have to want this feature to make it work. The base installation of the msrc tools does not build /usr/local/lib/msrc because most sites don't need that directory.

Sending non-local files

In the older system the hand-built "Distfile" could be manipulated to send files from a different local directory to the remote destination. These files could be processed with m4 markup (with the crazy @file@ notation) or sent as-is. Since the implementor doesn't code a distfile, and need not use rdist at all, msrc must provide another way to support this feature.

To copy a file from from a different local directory in the new structure, list it by either an absolute or relative path in the SEND macro. That has a big issue: that whole path is catenated on the target directory. To defeat that, use the rsync-style notation: version 2.6.7 allows a /./ in the path to represent where to start the target directory. Everything before that token is replaced with the target directory. To send /home/663/ksb/lib/this.tar to the target directory itself, as just this.tar, include the path SEND as:

SEND= /home/663/ksb/lib/./this.tar
To include the lib component word it as:
SEND= /home/663/ksb/./lib/this.tar

Any file copied from a parent directory has the ../ prefixes removed in the target directory. This is done to protect sibling directories on the platform host from accidental updates. To override this protection, prefix the path with ././, that activates the previous rule, which always suppresses this one.

See the rsync manual page for another example.

The MAP macro works exactly the same way. Of course any ".host" suffix is removed as well. The SUBDIR lacks this feature, as a recursive call the msrc with a yoke set for INTO works better.

The wrapper around hxmd

When the parallel factor given by -P is greater than 1, we use ptbw to manage a list of temporary directories. We stage the processed MAP files in these directories for rdist's use.

In this case, msrc actually execve's ptbw to wrap hxmd with a command that looks like:

ptbw -mdt dirlist -N socket hxmd ...

When the parallel factor is 1, there is but a single directory so we don't have to use ptbw. In that case hxmd is the direct child of msrc.

By using the -d option to ptbw we hope that we won't interfere with any use by an enclosing wrapper. We also do not change any of the environment variables used by ptbw. We even preserve ptbw_d by setting it back to the inherited value, or unsetting it (under -l).

In future versions of msrc we may use any existing instance of gtfw to allocate local temporary directories of files. We'll see how that works out.

Program name and default configurations

When an explicit -Z option is presented on the command-line, msrc passes hxmd the string "hxmd" to defeat the logic which looks for a default configuration file. Any other program name is passed on to hxmd as its program name, so the default zero configuration file is msrc.cf.

Since ptwb follows the wrapper rules for program names, it passes the correct name down to hxmd when it is used for temporary directory management.

The explicit hxmd command line

The actually parameter list passed on to hxmd is built as:
hxmd passed-options -Pparallel -DMSRC_MODE=mode -F0 -- update mapped-files provision

That is to say, we follow the program name with any options passed through the command line to hxmd, then an explicit -P option, an explicit -F0, an option terminating double-dash, the generated update script, the list of files from the make macro MAP, then a helper file (the rdist distfile).

Run the utility

Msrc executes hxmd, which does all the work; then, it removes some temporary files and exits with the same exit code hxmd returned.

When no utility is specified the default utility is "make". By giving the platform recipe control to do whatever is required we make the fewest assumptions.

The leverage used for utility

As stated above, the default the utility command is another instance of make. One might specify any other standard scripting agent, or local driver script; but any command that might become interactive defeats the purpose of the large-scale automation msrc provides.

Using some scripting agent (shell script, make recipe, or the like) allows for a much more repeatable process. One might specify any command as the utility, but it would be "poor form" to make the maintainer of your structure type a hundred character command to use your automation.

There are 5 options I use to get the right recipe (and recipe file) to the target machine:

Pun the makefile
Include targets in the makefile that are unrelated to its use by msrc as a configuration engine. These can then be triggered on the target host.

The has the advantage that only a single recipe file controls both sides, but that is also a disadvantage in that the same target recipe (viz. clean) may already be in use, and conflicting uses for a single recipe is hard to document and maintain. I always include the word "pun" in the comments in such a recipe file.

Send a mapped recipe file from "Makefile.host" to "Makefile"
Use a separate recipe file (under the MAP feature) to customize the recipes for each host. The safest way to process any mapped file is to quote the entire contents from m4, only unquoting the parts you want expanded. All the example files I've written assume this style.

This is the most common in my environment because I like to keep the "master" and "platform" recipe files separate. This also has the advantage that the same target may trigger wholly different logic on each target node, based on any attribute hxmd can process, and the recipe file can derive at run-time.

Use mk markup in some other file
A good example of this is the markup I include in manual pages to "self-install" under the spell:
msrc ... mk -mInstall \*.man
I backslash-quote the glob so it matches the files on the remote host, as some of the files may have been included in MAP or built via a recipe. A target manual inside the platform recipe file is a more indirect way to do the same thing, but assures that any manual pages built by a recipe are up-to-date.

This does require the installation of mk on every target host. It is in the install_base package.

Use op(1) to escalate privileges
Each target machine's op rule-base is a valid indirection to select the a recipe modification. For example, an admin group might build as themselves, but install as the superuser, which is exactly what op is good for. I would only use op to execute any of the methods above.
op make install

This implies an escalation rule that allows certain make targets to be run as the superuser. That's much more sane than allowing arbitrary shell access as the superuser. At the least you'll need install and clean. Here is a sample rule to allow this access:

make	/usr/bin/make $1 $* ;
	uid=root initgroups=root gid=source
This is most secure when the "make all" is run as the administrator, or we can run other targets as the "source" login with the additional rule (after the one above):
make	/usr/bin/make $* ;
	uid=source initgroups=source
Send a script with an obvious name (e.g. platform.install)
Obviously, sending a plain old shell script is better than nothing, but it shows a slight lack of imagination. It also may have to be run with an explicit dot-slash to be sure it is selected by $PATH, while a make recipe file is always assumed to be directory specific. I believe it is much harder to code (and keep track of) these little scripts than it is to just use a directory specific recipe file.

Also you'll need to pick a scripting language that is supported on every platform you maintain; this is why I use ksh and perl a lot.

Local mode is another data-flow

Under the command line option -l msrc doesn't use rdist to update the target hosts.

In that mode, msrc builds the desired directory in a temporary space (under TMPDIR, or "/tmp") so it can run the given utility from the staged directory.

This allows another transport mechanism to project the data to another host, while still allowing msrc to generate the up-to-date files. For example, the updated directory might be copied to external media, or copied to a local repository, or sent back to the requesting client via a "pull" request. In fact the task is started by the request for the data with the msrcmux(7) service, see the manual page or HTML document. The distributed version uses mmsrc, but could use msrc, if local policy required it.

The makefile may also request local mode by setting the make macro MODE to the value "local". To explicitly forbid local mode set the macro to "remote". For example:


The steps taken are the same except for "Control file details". At that point we substitute as below.

Replacements for distfile and the update script

Since we don't want to call rdist to copy files into our empty temporary directory, we build a marked-up shell script to do the work. Here is an example:
msrc: cat <<\! >/tmp/mtfcakNZCB/provision
dnl complete the ephemeral directory then run command
`cp "Msrc.mk" $1/
cp -p 'defn(`HXMD_1')` $1/"data.txt"
cd $1 || exit 69
`cd $1 || exit 69
ifdef(`ENTRY_DEFS',`. defn(`ENTRY_DEFS') && ')$SHELL -c "utility" "$@"

After m4 expansion, this script copies literal files, then files listed in MAP, then changes directory to the staged area and runs the given utility. The utility is provided the same parameters as the script (see above), unless msrc was specially compiled with -DMSRC_LOCALPARAMS=0.

Since the update script doesn't have to call rdist or ssh it is a little shorter. It does, however, have to manage the temporary directories, and it uses ptbw to do that.

dnl local per-host update script for hxmd
unset ptbw_d
exec </dev/null;shift;shift
ptbw -t socket -R1 sh -c "mkdir -p -m 0700 \$ptbw_list;'defn(`HXMD_2')dnl
` \$ptbw_list \${@};exec rm -rf \$ptbw_list" "_" "Makefile" "local" "'dnl
ifdef(`ENTRY_LOGIN',`ENTRY_LOGIN'@)HOST`" "target" "${@}"

The code "unset ptbw_d" removes the usage of ptbw from the process environment of utility. We are not trying to wrap utility, and it might be using a "ptbw -d" instance itself.

In the case where msrc sees an active ptbw -d diversion, msrc replaces the unset with a variable assignment to restore the original value.

The crazy shell manipulations allow the script above to provide any -AR ptbw tokens and the 5 parameters to the utility. The rm removes the staged file directory after the utility exits.

Resume the normal flow

By just replacing those files, we have changed to a local staged directory. All the other steps are the same.

How to debug the processes above

In all of these debug commands you may add -l to force local mode. Sometimes getting a master source directory to work in both modes is hard, but it is almost never impossible. I usually make this true with an rsync daemon running on the master source host; this allows pulls of master source configuration files.

So when we put that all together we get a data-flow that looks like this:

directory listing + recipe macros SEND, MAP, SUBDIR, INGNORE , HXINCLUDE =>
	file disposition list

current working directory name + recipe marco INTO =>
	pick the target directory path

command line option -l + recipe macro MODE =>
	pick a transport mode
View the results for any directory with:
msrc -d P :

Then, we build the marked-up shell control files that actually push the contents to the correct place (host, directory, login). The pick one of the two methods (local or remote) based on the transport mode be picked above. View the transport markup with:

msrc -d S :

Then, we construct hxmd's command to process the markup control files and marco expanded files (those that were in MAP or ended in .host): the files that ended up in HXINCLUDE + any command-line options for hxmd View the hxmd command-line with:

msrc -d X :
the output of that request shows the name we call hxmd with is the same name we force on msrc. That allows the name of the program to pick a configuration file.

We then launch that process, possibly wrapped in a ptbw. To see that you'll have to add a POST_CMD to show the process tree of the update script:

msrc -DPOST_CMD='ptree $$'

To see the update process as it runs put a shell trace on the script:

msrc -DINIT_CMD='set -x'
Also consider using the shell source command (.) or an m4 include directive to include a longer list of commands. For a source command use an absolute path so the file will be found under both local and remote mode. For any m4 include file always protect the shell code with m4 quotes.

Any target login's shell that is csh-compatible breaks the boiler-plate code in the msrc. There is no way to really stop the madness since the code uses the dot command (.) to source the ENTRY_DEFS file, and that command is spelled source in csh. Build a parallel login with a Bourne shell compatible syntax. See above.

You may combine these (and other hooks) to debug any process you create.

How to get started

Assuming you did the hxmd start-up, you should have a file "site.cf" that has at least a few hosts in it. With that file, we can build an msrc sample directory to see how it works.

If you didn't do the hxmd start-up, you should build a file named site.cf with the name of a target host in it (like your workstation).

Pick a directory

For this example, we'll use a directory under either /tmp or your home directory. I'm going to use "/tmp/ksb" for my source directory. Replace the hostname ripley with a short hostname from your "site.cf" file.
$ cd /tmp
$ mkdir ksb
$ cd ksb
$ echo "INTO=/tmp/ksb.dest" >Msrc.mk
$ msrc -Csite.cf -E SHORTHOST=ripley date

You should see 2 rdist update banners, then the output of date from the target host. Here is the output from my host:

ripley.example.com: updating host ripley.example.com
ripley.example.com: updating of ripley.example.com finished
ripley.example.com: updating host ripley.example.com
ripley.example.com: updating of ripley.example.com finished
Mon Feb 15 16:20:00 CST 2014
Replace "date" with "uname -a" to be sure the time-stamp came from the correct host.


Trace the progress of the generated update script by setting the INIT_CMD to set -x. If that doesn't tell you enough you can put a dumpdef in that attribute to display the m4 bindings in scope.

Inside the update script the attribute macro HXMD_0 is the name of the script itself. Use that to copy the script to someplace safe if you need to preserve it; for example, mail it to yourself. Remember that in situations with large numbers of target hosts and a high parallel factor, a simple cp to a fixed filename will race badly.

Adding local flavor

Pick an attribute from you local "site.cf" file; I'll have to use the nonsense macro COLOR, since I don't know what you've decided to implement. We are going to build a file that changes content based on that attribute. There are 3 common ways to do that:
use the attribute macro directly
For example, include a line in the file like:
`Hello, I am 'COLOR` today.'
use an ifelse or ifdef to select text
Remember that m4's if statements are limited to exact string matches, so the cases here can be numerous:
HOST `is a' ifdef(`COLOR',`pretty COLOR',`plain') HOSTTYPE`.'
use the attribute macro as an include filename
Set the make macro IGNORE so it catches "*.m4" (for example) then use:

It is also possible to run shell commands from within m4, although capturing the output is a bit cumbersome -- it might be better to leave such work to the target side when possible, as that distributes the computation more evenly.

As always, keep plain text inside quotes as long as possible: only drop quotes when expanding an attribute macro or other markup.

Recursive calls for subdirectories

Distribution of a directory should imply that any subdirectories specified in the make macro SUBDIR are sent to the same target hosts. This is possible, but is not automatic. It requires some project and site specific knowledge to know which data to send down.

How the data flows to the next level

There are several hooks in hxmd and msrc to help with recursive execution.
Any yoke command-line options
The make recipe file should have a valid default value for each macro. Some recursive instances of the process might need to re-tune those defaults to be more aligned with their needs.

Under -y, any option may be passed to make, but usually we limit ourself to macro assignments. Since these macros help the parent and child instances of msrc work in tandem, we call the "yokes". (Like oxen pulling as a team.) The best example of this is the INTO macro; if the parent doesn't pass this on to each child instance there is a good chance they will send their source to the wrong platform directory.

The make macro HXINCLUDE
Recursive descent operation requires very long msrc command lines. Placing those recursive options in a file saves a lot of typing, and command-line errors. This is where hxmd's merged configuration option (-o) is specified.

The point here is to avoid mistakes in a very long command-line specification. It would be too easy to forget options, type the wrong options, or spell the right options wrong; so we include them in a file where we know they are revision controlled and spelled correctly.

For example, we might need to capture just the transport attributes. We place the merged configuration option in a file ("Msrc.hxmd"):

# capture transport attributes
Attributes specified with -D
The list of hosts selected
These are always captured using a merged configuration option (-o) specified for hxmd. We take this tactic since any host selection options (-B, -E, or -G) might evaluate differently in the context of the subdirectory. The merge option requires a list of the attributes to record: the application's needs dictate which ones to include. The resulting file is available in the attribute macro HXMD_U_MERGED.

See host we pass this file back to make below.

Configuration files listed under -C
Configuration file listed under -X
Configuration file listed under -Z
These are all available under attribute macros, for example HXMD_OPT_C. They should be passed down to the recursive msrc instances with help from the makefile, as needed.

This is not to say that the files specified by HXMD_OPT_C should be passed under -C. In fact these are almost always passed under -X.

The PRE_CMD script hook
This is the tie-point we use to trigger a call-back to the makefile to update the files.

For example, we might add these lines to "Msrc.hxmd"

# Provision and select a descend target from the makefile for each host:
-D!PRE_CMD="make -f ${2} DOWN_CFG=-C\ HXMD_U_MERGED LINTO=${1} THOST=HOST TINTO=${5} ${3}_descend"

The parameters enclosed in curly braces are provided by msrc in the context of the update script, see "5 more bits", just after this list.

A target in the makefile
Now that we've collected the components, we need to iterate over the directories listed in the make macro SUBDIR to update each one. Here is a sample target spell:
# Loop-back from Msrc.hxmd, for local or remote updates, at PRE_CMD.
# Please find DOWN_CFG, THOST, TINTO, and LINTO defined in Msrc.hxmd.  --ksb
	xapply ${X_OPT} 'cd %1 && msrc ${DOWN_CFG} -E HOST=${THOST} \
		-y INTO=${TINTO}/%1 -- \
		make source' ${SUBDIR}

The "remote_descend" target assures that the same target host list is provisioned for recursive instance with the merged configuration as -C. In this example (although I've not shown it) we know there is at least 1 file specified under -Z, so we pass it though.

5 more bits of data you are going to need

The example above (with the remote_descend target) is quite naive; there are actually 2 cases that need to be provisioned. First for msrc in "local" mode (under -l), then 1 for "remote" mode.

The INIT_CMD, PRE_CMD, and POST_CMD have access to 5 shell parameters to help any recursive application of this technology function in both modes. Since shell parameter look exactly like m4 macro parameters when written as "$1", "$2", etc., they need to be spelled as "${1}", "${2}", etc. to avoid being replaced with the empty string, or some random m4 macro parameter.

These parameters make it way easier to recursively call msrc, rdist, or rsync to deliver subdirectories, chain peer directories, or use a multi-stage engine for extremely complex tasks. Here are the parameters:

${1} the local cache directory
This is the directory (on the local host) which holds the any processed source.
Under msrc in local mode (viz. under -l)
In this case, ${1} is a temporary directory built for this host. This directory is removed after the utility executes, so make use of it by saving it someplace, like in ${5} on the HOST.
Under msrc in remote mode
In this case, ${1} is always set to "." (dot). There is no other cache directory engaged.
Under mmsrc
In this case, ${1} is set to the value of INTO, which might be set to an alternate value forced under -y.

In any case, the PRE_CMD hook is often used to finish an update. For example, any SUBDIR updates are triggered by that hook. The value of this parameter is often prefixed on each name in SUBDIR to create a -y option for recursive instances of msrc (or mmsrc).

${2} the makefile specified
Either the value of the makefile command-line parameter, or the value msrc (or mmsrc) selected from the available recipe files.
${3} the MODE
Either the value of the MODE make macro, or the value msrc selected via the -l option. Under mmsrc, this is always "local".
This is a convenience variable built from an m4 ifelse expression, which resolves to either the host we should target, or the login at that host when the attribute macro ENTRY_LOGIN is defined for the host. This is almost always used as a parameter to ssh, rdist, or rsync as a command-line specification for the target credentials.
${5} INTO
Either the value of the INTO make macro, or the value msrc (or mmsrc) selected via the the default rule. This is likely tells some other process where to put the staged files under "remote" mode.
${6} -AR1
Under the -A option xapply adds the ptbw tokens to the argument list of each process. These are visible as additional positional parameters in this script, offset by the 5 forced parameters.
${7} -AR2
This would be the second ptbw token under the options above. Next -AR3 as ${8} and so on. Note that forcing a specification for -c defeats this logic, in which case you are on your own to find the values, see -d X for clues.

Some hxmd option file usually includes some of the above shell parameters in a recursive call to make. For example:

# send in the clowns
-DPER_CMD='make -f ${2} LTG=${1} CRED="${4}" RTG=${5} ${3}_descend'
I only quoted ${4} because ENTRY_LOGIN could have a space in it, but that would be silly for a UNIX™ host.

Avoid unwanted inheritance below

In the example cases above, the top-level directory sets the list of hosts for all descendent directories. Without any code to intercept the HXMD_PASS variable, it will flow though the environment to every descendent hxmd.

The hxmd option -z removes HXMD_PASS from the environment after it is read. By placing that option in "Msrc.hxmd", we limit the effects of the file to 1 level of recursion:

# Limit our effect to 1 level

Setting HXMD_PASS to the empty string also removes any ancestorial baggage.

A working example of descending into sub-directories

The source for mk's library is built with the tactics described above. In this section, we are going to put it all together to show how the 3 commands below build identical platform copies of the source for that directory (/usr/msrc/local/lib/mk).

For this example, we are going to simply construct the platform source in a known place in the local filesystem. We're not going to install it or act on it, just create it under /tmp.

The setup in the source

There are 2 files in the source we need to look at: the make recipe file Makefile, and the hxmd options file Msrc.hxmd.

The hxmd options file is pretty standard, in that it is always used to loop-back to the makefile. Here is the file:

# Don't pass this down more than 1 level:
# Build an aggregated configuration to tell subdirs which hosts to process:
HXMD_U_MERGED`'ifdef(`HXMD_OPT_Z',`\ -Z\ HXMD_OPT_Z')`'ifdef(`HXMD_OPT_C',`\

And here is a blow-by-blow analysis:

We need to limit the effect to a single level with -z. This removes the HXMD_PASS environment variable after hxmd reads it.
This is an attempt to save the attributes that let us access the host to transmit files (via rdist). If it doesn't work at your site, you might have to add attribute names based on your local site policy.
We are setting PRE_CMD for every host to update the descendent directories, but only for this instance of hxmd, not in the generated HXMD_U_MERGED file (notice the exclamation point markup).
make -f ${2}
We need to loop-back to the makefile from whence we came, not the default make might choose.
We know we always want to process the merged configuration as our primary configuration file.
`'ifdef(`HXMD_OPT_Z',`\ -Z\ HXMD_OPT_Z')`'ifdef(`HXMD_OPT_C',`\ -X\ HXMD_OPT_C')`'ifdef(`HXMD_OPT_X',`\ -X\ HXMD_OPT_X')
I needed an example of m4 markup in this file to explain how to quote it. This doesn't assume the specification of any zero-config, config, or ex-config but when 1 is presented, it passes it down as a -Z or a -X command-line option. That way, we can still see any attributes we might need below. The empty m4 quotes allow the ifdef to be abutted to the previous word, then the backslashes quote the spaces from the shell.
This records the local source cache, the present target host, and the final platform directory name for make. For a more direct use of rdist or rsync one would record TCRED=${4} to get a login@host term, in this case we rely on the structure below via recursion.
This is the recipe we are going to invoke in the makefile to complete the call-back: it expands to either "local_descend" or "remote_descend", depending on the options to msrc or mmsrc.

The recipe file holds those 2 key targets for descending into the many SUBDIR's this structure builds. The first is active in "remote" mode:

		-y INTO=${TINTO}/%1 -- make source' ${SUBDIR}

The second is active in "local" mode:

	xapply ${X_OPT} 'cd %1 && mmsrc ${DOWN_CFG} -E HOST=${THOST} \
		-y INTO=${LINTO}/%1 -- make source' ${SUBDIR}

Both have about the same structure. Here is a blow-by-blow analysis:

xapply ${X_OPT} 'cd %1 && ...' ${SUBDIR}
We use an xapply instance to iterate over each directory (we could do this in parallel, but let's not for the time being). In each iteration, we chdir into the directory and call either mmsrc or msrc to distribute the directory into the similar directory under our cache.
msrc or mmsrc
We can't use "msrc -l" to place a subdirectory's platform source in a known folder, because that always picks a local temporary name (as it might select more than a single host, and targeting the same directory for multiple hosts would be "poor form" at best). So in the local recursion mode, we must use mmsrc which does target a known local directory (INTO). In remote mode, we use msrc to project the master source to each platform host's INTO directory.
This is where we pickup the configuration attributes for the host we are updating. We read the configuration file names from the data Msrc.hxmd passed us (after it was run through an instance of m4, then passed through an environment variable and stuffed into a command line).
-y INTO=${TINTO}/%1
-y INTO=${LINTO}/%1
We force the directory to be delivered to the correct location. In local mode, we hang it under the local cache LINTO, while in remote mode we deliver it to TINTO.
-- make source
Using a double-dash option separator, we move to the utility specification and run a make source to ask the platform recipe file to do any other actions it needs to complete the source file updates.

Built with msrc in remote mode

The command below specifies that msrc should draw the host with the short name "svr6" from dmz.cf to send the current directory to /tmp/mk.remote, then do nothing on the remote host:
msrc  -C dmz.cf -E SHORTHOST=svr6 -y INTO=/tmp/mk.remote :
It happens that "svr6" is the host I'm using, so we end up sending the platform copy back to /tmp on localhost.

Built with msrc in local mode

In this example, we build the platform directory under a temporary name, then cp the whole deal to /tmp/mk.local using msrc in local mode (under -l), the other parameters are the same:
msrc -lC dmz.cf -E SHORTHOST=svr6 cp -rp . /tmp/mk.local

Built with mmsrc (local only)

When you don't have msrc compiled yet you can still use mmsrc to provide a local platform copy:
mmsrc -C dmz.cf -E SHORTHOST=svr6 -y INTO=/tmp/mk.mmsrc :

All of the above commands build an identical platform copy under /tmp. What you do with the generated files is up to you: tar them, RPM them, cross-compile them, rsync them, or whatever you need to do to get them to the correct place on the correct host.

Tips for quoting Makefile.host

Mixing m4 mark-up and shell quotes in a make recipe is hard do, read, and follow. Since we depend on such markup in "Makefile.host" we need to have a common tactic to make this clearer: the best one I can recommend is to changequote to some other quotes (say square brackets) then build macro for each m4 quote character (` and '), then change quotes back.
`# head comment with revision control markup
# near the top of Makefile.host
`# the rest of the makefile

# at the end
Then I use ${C} and ${O} in any recipes the need quotes. That way, make expands them for the shell, which actually helps a lot. By the wacky rules of make macros you could use the slightly shorter $C form, but that confuses the maintainer later (who will read $Csome as if the macro expanded were "Csome" every time in the example below); only the most skilled masters of make read it as, "Expand $C followed by the word 'some'.".

That puts the whole of the file in standard m4 quotes. To reveal a macro value, we explicitly dequote it. In the next example, I include single quotes around "some long shell command" with the C macro defined above, and reveal the value of MY_LIST as the parameter list to xapply:

	xapply ${C}some long shell command${C} 'MY_LIST`
When expanded by m4 yields (for example):
	xapply ${C}some long shell command${C} list1 list2 list3
When expanded by make for "target" yields:
	xapply 'some long shell command' list1 list2 list3

In the manual page for hxmd, there are some notes (under BUGS) about quoting m4 on the command-line. Those still apply to commands in any MAP'd file.

To send a variable number of payload files

The older version of the master source was built on top of distrib. This allowed a very versatile mark-up in the "Distfile" to send different lists of files to platform hosts. A similar effect in the 2008 version of the structure is possible in 3 ways: by indirection through a local mode directory, by command-quoting the SEND (or MAP) macro value, or by using a yoke to set those same macros from the command-line.

This tactic is not always the right option. Often, it is far easier to send an empty or unwanted file to the platform directory then simply ignore it in the generated recipe file. Or to use a template file that include's or paste's the correct contents into a common file, rather than try to pick the right file to send by name. Note that undivert takes the place of paste under GNU m4.

When the data sent to 1 host should be protected from disclosure to other hosts, or the size of the payload is an issue, then it is worth it to build the extra logic to project the exact payload needed.

In the next sections, we explain the data-flow with examples of real code. This also provides some insight with regard to replacing another feature of distrib: that program would process a single host multiple times if the host were listed in a configuration file more than once (hxmd-based program never do that without additional structure to make it happen).

Command output to set SEND or MAP

If we have a shell program that outputs the correct SEND file list, then we can just set the macro as:

Since msrc uses a shell echo command to output "${SEND}", the shell will evaluate the command-quotes to run generate-send. The output must be the list of files without any extra noise.

This tactic doesn't usually work in practice. That's because the list of files must be the same for every host, as the recipe is consulted for configuration information once for all the hosts updated by a single instance of msrc. It does work if the list of files is variable based on something other than an attribute of each host; for example, the time of day, or the group membership of the administrator.

Using a yoke for indirection

In this case, we are going to use the msrc command-line to select both the target hosts and the files to send to (map for) them at the same time. In which case we can assume that those parameters are internally consistent with each other.

Examine the recipe file with contents of:

# Revision control information
# Note that this recipe requires -y options for INTO and MAP
INTO= nonexistent directory: set on the command line
If we run msrc without any yoke and with that as the control recipe, msrc outputs an informative error:
msrc: Makefile: "INTO" should have exactly one value, not 8
This prevents anyone from using the recipe without the driver command that yoke's INTO and any other macros needed. Admittedly the forced error message is not as clear as it could be.

To get a better error message use the Easter Egg (when INTO has too many words and the first word starts with an underscore) that outputs the list of words as an error message:

INTO= _Please set INTO and MAP on the command line
Which outputs a much clearer message:
msrc: Makefile: Please set INTO and MAP on the command line
This doesn't keep the command-line from only setting INTO without setting MAP, but it is better than nothing.

The details of the driver are explored below, as we use "Makefile.host" to drive "Makefile.remote". You might otherwise use mk to embed the driver code in comments in the recipe file itself, or use a recipe in that same file to drive msrc.

Local mode indirection

When MODE selects the "local" tactic, no data is sent directly to the platform host, rather the files to populate the remote directory are copied to a temporary directory (this mode is also set via -l from the command-line). While the list of the files copied to that staging area may be fixed, the contents of the MAP'd file are mapped with m4 as usual.

At that point, it is up to the coder what to do next. For example, one might build an archive of the files for later delivery, or create a DVD burn to send to an off-site facility. Those options are not in-scope for this document. Below, we'll consider the case where some additional processing is to be finished locally before we engage the target machine.

We should, then, build a new control recipe file to drive another instance of msrc with values of MAP and SEND of our choosing. That is to say that the file named "Makefile.host" is not a platform recipe, it is another msrc control file, with m4 mark-up expanded to set the macros we need.

In the leverage section above, I mentioned the use of "Makefile.host" to send a platform recipe file that did more than just pun the control recipe file. In this case we'll need another make recipe file to drive the platform level after we use "Makefile.host" to drive the configured directory on the local host. We'll send that file over (mapped or plain), then copy it into "Makefile.host" as a generated file just before we push to the target platform.

So to count all the make recipe files needed:

The driver to gather the files and configure the local mode instance of msrc.
The configuration file for the remote mode instance of msrc.
Makefile.remote or Remotefile.host
Renamed by a recipe in the the previous file to become a new "Makefile.host", which is then sent to the platform to take any actions required.

An example of local indirection

Getting back to the fact that distrib would process a host more than once: we have a system of openvpn links between data centers that we want to configure from a secure repository.

The old version of this structure used distrib, so it had a line in the configuration file for every host and VPN end-point combination (some hosts have more than one end-point): for example this file shows "svr10" has 3 VPN ends (green, blue, and red) while "svr20", "svr30" and "svr40" each hold one:

svr10 green svr20 ...
svr20 green svr10 ...
svr10 blue svr30 ...
svr30 blue svr10 ...
svr10 red svr40 ...
svr40 red svr10 ...

It is impossible to make hxmd parse this file to give us any value to VPN that holds all 3 values. Rather we must reformat the file to include both the HOST and the VPN in the same unique token, we'll call this vpn.cf:

svr10:green svr20 ...
svr20:green svr10 ...
svr10:blue svr30 ...
svr30:blue svr10 ...
svr10:red svr40 ...
svr40:red svr10 ...
If we know which host we want, we can raise the ENDPT with a guard:
-k ENDPT -Cvpn.cf -G "ifelse(0,index(ENDPT,$host:),ENDPT)"
that spell selects all the ENDPT's that impact the host named in the environment variable host.

To use that to build the VPN configurations for each of the 4 hosts, we'll need a Makefile with some special glue:

SEND= generic.conf openvpn.sh vpn.cf *.key Makefile.remote
This recipe tells msrc to process the structure into a local stage directory. Then, we need a Makefile.host with some real power in it, here are the special parts:
IGNORE= generic.conf list Makefile.remote
GEN=    list Makefile.host
SOURCE= Makefile rc openvpn.sh

all clean dirs install restart: Makefile.host
	toSend=${G}tr -s " \\n\\t" "   " <list${G};\
	msrc -y "INTO=$$REM_INTO" -y "SEND=openvpn.sh $$toSend" -C'HXMD_U_MERGED` -E HOST='HOST` make $@

Makefile.host: Makefile.remote list
	rmdir rc.d
	cp Makefile.remote $@

list: vpn.cf
	hxmd -k ENDPT -Cvpn.cf -G "ifelse(0,index(ENDPT,'HOST`:),ENDPT)" -F2 \
		"echo %[1:\$$].conf ifdef(\`KEYFILE',\`defn(\`KEYFILE')',\`\`%[1:\$$].key'')" ENDPT >$@
	xapply -f "make %[1 1]" $@

purple.conf: generic.conf vpn.cf
	hxmd -k ENDPT -Cvpn.cf -E "ENDPT='HOST`:purple" "cp %1 $@" generic.conf

And the blow-by-blow explanation:

We drop into square bracket quotes to stash a command quote (backquote) into the macro G. I don't like to changequote's all over the place; this allows make to hide these from m4.
GEN= list Makefile.host
These 2 files are built in the local staging directory.
Holds the list of VPN configuration files for this host
A copy of Makefile.remote which gets mapped to the target host
IGNORE= generic.conf list Makefile.remote
We don't need to send some of our work files to the target host, they don't need to know how we got the payload to them.
all clean ...
Read the prerequisites first.
We just copy this from Makefile.remote, in light of that name change we'll map it on the way to the target host.
After we've been mapped, the HOST has been replaced with our hostname, so the guard raises all the ENDPT's that we need to configure. Then, with a blinding combination of quotes, the dicer, and m4 markup we produce the list of VPN configuration files and keyfiles we need to process this host. Each as a pair on a line in the list file.

A note on the blinding quotes: first, the command is expanded from Makefile.host via m4 to replace HOST with the target hostname. That removes the outermost level of m4 quotes. Then, make expands dollar macros and removes backslash continued newlines (so "$$" becomes "$" and "${G}" becomes "`"). Then the shell dequotes the double-quotes (so "\$" becomes "$" and "\`" becomes "`"). Then m4 runs again (via msrc) to replace KEYFILE. Lastly as we call echo we treat the expansion of ENDPT as "%1" in the dicer, using the expression "%[1:$]" to select the VPN name from (ENDPT == HOST:VPN).

To build each necessary configuration file, we use xapply to recursively call make. (We assume the key files are all present, they could be included in the make recursion.)

An example target to create 1 of the configuration files from the generic.conf and the vpn.cf files.

If you have a make that does wildcard matches (like GNU make), you can compact this rule a lot. But if you want your code to work on older UNIX systems you'll not want to depend on that feature of GNU make.

all clean ...: Makefile.host
We use the G macro to command quote a tr to turn the list into a shell variable without any embedded newlines, then recursively call msrc with a yoke to set INTO, and SEND. We gather our attributes from a merged configuration file and transfer the target we were given to the make on the remote end.

To debug any code you craft like this you'll need a few tricks. The best is to limit your testing to a single host, then ask mmsrc for a utility of:

/bin/sh -c "/bin/sh -i </dev/tty >/dev/tty"
Unless you set -P1, in that shell $ptbw_list is the temporary directory, and you'll be able to use most UNIX™ tools to view files, and test recipes in that directory. You should copy out anything you need to examine then exit that shell; it's not a safe place to work.

Msrc and cache directories for run-time content

If we want to send real-time content to every host we could write markup to esyscmd a shell command based on attributes of the host, like:
esyscmd(some-script HOST LOC)dnl
But that has an obvious limitation: the output generated must be valid m4 markup, because it will be processed by m4 before we see it. Less obvious is that older macro processors lack the esyscmd macro.

Via m4+make the hxmd facility for cache directories has configuration powers beyond what msrc can easily access though m4, which is very useful in some cases. (See Cache control markup in the hxmd HTML page for a refresher.)

If we build a directory called First.host, then build a cache control recipe file in it (always called Cache.m4):

`# turn this hxmd cache into an echo statement



To test that with hxmd I might run:

$ hxmd -Cauto.cf -E HOST=localhost cat First.host
$ hxmd -Cauto.cf -E HOST=localhost cat First.host/

Notice that, by the rules of hxmd, the target name name for the request with the slash on the end is different from the name without it. Since msrc will never put the slash on the end you can't get to the (possibly better) case where the key macro (hostname) is the target, directly. If you put the slash on the end of a MAP'd file, msrc removes it because that would map the name to the empty string on the target host (by the path rules that msrc uses). [For that same reason, the filename ".host" is not allowed to map to an empty filename.]

So every cache directory msrc processes requests the name of the directory (with the last dot-extension removed, if any). When we stick to the common naming of appending ".host" to all the mapped items, we know the name of the recipe we are making is that name. That reduces the task to coding a recipe with a shell command (from m4) to output the data we want in the file, using the attribute macros defined for the target host. It is fine to use the HXMD_CACHE_TARGET macro to make the recipe more generic, so when someone renames the directory the spell still works (which is a good thing).

The prototype hosts example in the hxmd HTML document would be included automatically in the MAP macro in the control recipe, as the name proposed was hosts.host. In the platform recipe, a command to install the resulting file into /etc/hosts would be easy. The configuration of any new machine is built by constructing similar recipes for each of its key files. There is never a good reason to build a machine "by hand" when automation coded and maintained can do this mundane work for you.

This payload might be delivered to the host as an archive, a script, or as a raw rsync -- but the key is that the generation of the right "bits" is not only possible, but easier than the alternative error-prone typing. To put that into a punned recipe:

# $Id: ...
# punned recipe to install a basic personal file-set on a host

SOURCE= Makfile
#SEND, MAP, IGNORE set by msrc

	rm -f ${GEN}

install: source
	install -m 644 motd /etc/motd
	install -m 644 hosts /etc/hosts
	install -m 644 named.conf /etc/named.conf
	# ...
	. ./local-post-install

source: ${SOURCE}

.PHONY: clean install source __msrc

# and the classic hook
__msrc: source ${GEN}

This recipe is abstracted from the one I use to configure new machines. Each file (e.g. motd) is built by a local cache directory or mapped file, the local-post-install script is built from a file which looks for class-based and os-based logic from some other directories. This constructive system allows me to create as many virtual or physical hosts as I need (and have resources to provision) rather than being limited by my keyboard skills.

Using extended make or m4 features

It is possible to do some of the tasks above using additional (non-portable) features included in some make versions. For example, the .BEGIN and .END special targets that FreeBSD supports might prime and purge a cache, but these tactics fail completely under a standard version of make: the special targets are just ignored so the 2 actions are never triggered.

I would avoid using these special features, even if you run only hosts that support them. This effectively locks your code out of any other platform (as BSD's version won't even compile on other platforms).

Similarly, I have been using BSD m4 so long that I forgot that the paste and expr macros are not portable. One should use undivert and eval to be more portable.

Adding implied hosts

In some cases, an update to a host implies that the same (or a related) update must also happen to other hosts. I break out 4 cases here that I've used. You might remember them with an acronym "PLUS".

Before you implement any of these you should first try the generic script version. The dmz script lets you specify the service you want to update rather than the host under the -S option:

$ dmz -S apache make restart

Before you go to the trouble to implement one of the tactics below, you should give the script idea a chance. When that doesn't work move up to the spells below.

Redirecting a request to update a single host to really update multiple hosts might be crossing that fine-line between clever and stupid: the rule of least astonishment says that this could really be the wrong thing to do. I'm going to show you how to do it, both because it is a practical spell and because you should be the judge of clever at your site. Keep in mind that it would be best to document this in the control recipe and any README or other site specific lore.

P - Form a posse and update them all

Using this posse idea from hxmd's Forming a posse we would like to check to see if we have at least 1 host from the posse, and when we do we need to push to them all, which we call a "posse update". So the problem we are trying to solve might be stated as, "When any member of the posse is updated, we need to update them all."

For example, updating the master site.cf file used to run the master source structure itself at your site: when updated in production the same file may have to be update on the "failover" host as well as the primary one. There are many ways to provide that backup service, but it would be clever if we could (cheaply) make msrc provide support for itself. In fact the best tools usually "eat their own dog food".

For the posse case, we need to build list of all the members of the posse as a prerequisite to the push (in the control recipe). Then, in the Msrc.hxmd, we can include that file in the selection list if the target host is also in the posse. For this example I'll used the service "silver"; to do that let's add to the local control recipe:

CFG= site.cf
GEN= silver.posse

	rm -f ${GEN}

	posse silver ${CFG} >$@

source: ${SOURCE}

.PHONY: clean source __msrc
# hook
__msrc: source ${GEN}

In Msrc.hxmd, we include a guard to accept any host, and possibly add the whole posse when we find any posse member:

# $Id: ...
-G "HOST ifelse(yes,SERVICES(silver),`include(silver.posse)')"

This doesn't exclude hosts that lack the service from getting the push, but when they get the push we don't tell the posse about it. With a simple restatement of the guard, we can exclude those that are not in the posse (move the HOST into the then-part of the ifelse).

When we apply a different configuration file to this structure, we may trigger a bug: the silver.posse file may not be updated. Since any copy from a previous build may still exist in the directory (no make clean having been executed). Similarly, parallel builds with other admins my remove or update the common file while it is in use.

As long as the clean target removes the silver.posse file, this should work for any posse based on a fixed service name. And it is still less error prone than no automation at all.

L - Local indirect update of hosts

The previous tactic has some limitations that we can fix by using a local mode push to build the posse list and by including an hxmd cache directory to select the hosts we need to chain. The cache directory becomes the posse list so that we don't need a prerequisite file on __msrc which can become stale.

By telling msrc that a directory named Addlist.host should be included in MAP:

# $Id: ...

hxmd turns that directory into a file with the output of the target Addlist, which is the name of the directory with the ".host" removed from the end:
# hxmd -I $PWD -Csite.cf -E HOST=sulaco.example.com cat Addlist.host

This means that under msrc we'll get a file named Addlist with a list of the hosts we want to include in the push. To use that list, we'll combine it with the HXMD_U_MERGED list in a recipe on the local host, via local mode. Here is a control recipe (named Msrc.mk)

# $Id: ...
MAP=    Addlist.host Makefile.host
SEND=   Makefile.remote

SOURCE= Msrc.mk Makefile.remote Makefile.host

	rm -f ${GEN}

source: ${SOURCE}

.PHONY: clean source __msrc

__msrc: source ${GEN}

The above local control recipe sends the current directory to a temporary directory under $TMPDIR on this host. From there, the processed Makefile.host uses both HXMD_OPT_C and Addlist as configuration files for a recursive copy of msrc. It sends to all the host defined in both of those files, with additional attributes from the original configuration files provided in HXMD_OPT_Z and HXMD_OPT_X.

That leaves the Makefile.host to send the payload to the hosts we've selected and added. Here is a fake one that just outputs the names of the hosts it should visit:

`# $Id: ...
	echo 'HOST` >>Addlist
	efmd -C 'HXMD_OPT_C`:Addlist -B2 -L
	rm -f Addlist

The logic here is that we want to send to all the hosts in the Addlist plus the target host. When we are done (replace the efmd call with a call to msrc to actually send the payload), we need to remove the modified Addlist so the next iteration of the cycle doesn't pick up the changed file. The union operation under -B2 is the key-stone, we can use any attribute from the configuration file, or add the logic to include any -X and -Z files, to chain to the desired target in Makefile.remote.

U - Uniform addition of an audit host

In this case, we want to notify an audit host (or facility) of every push. There are several ways to do this, but the most common is to setup a host with a ENTRY_DEFS file that just logs the access then continues the normal process. (The host must have disk space to hold all of the pushed platform data, which is what you want for an audit.)

The host is always included by forced -C and -Y options in Audit.hxmd, which is usually a symbolic link to a common file. It is possible to use a -Z option or msrc.zf file to present the audit host, there is a fine line between clever and stupid at exactly this point. That host may get more updates than intended, and may even need op rules that stub for package activation. Beware of mission-creep here.

If you want to log what was run (and still run it), you can cheat by using ptree or ps to find the command-line of the running script then continue the normal data-flow. The cd command after the name of our script is the target directory that all the other hosts updated. For example, we hook into the ENTRY_DEFS with a command like:

ptree | grep \ `pwd` | logger ...
. /usr/local/lib/distrib/local.defs

If you don't want to run the command on the audit host we should tune the ssh configuration appropriately: the target account traps the incoming command-request to look at SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND: you'll have to allow the incoming rsync or rdist commands, and log the incoming shell command-line. For example, to test this build a script named auditMe:

exit 0
Then edit the test account's .ssh/authorized_keys to include a command=./auditMe prefix on the key you are using. When you ssh into the machine, you should see output like:
Tue Aug 10 04:30:00 UTC 2010

To fix that to our purposes, we need to trap a command that matches rsync --server (or rdistd) so we may let it run (maybe in dry-run mode, with the output logged). Any other command we need to just log as-is.

That creates a fair audit trail on the host you added. Like most audit systems it can be defeated, but it is way better than nothing.

S - Subdirectory stepwise refinement

In this tactic, we for the whole process in orderly process: from one subdirectory to the next. Using the same logic we built for subdirectory recursion, we visit the directories in SUBDIR in the order specified in the control recipe. Each of those tasks may use a different configuration file (one based on an attribute of the current target element) to pick a list of new targets.

I'm not going to build a long example, since it requires a lot of context.

This tactic includes any lateral ("L shaped") push from a posse leader to her members: for example, having a single compile host build the binary files for similarly configured hosts, then push the install target to those hosts after a successful compile. In other cases we might just rsync or rdist the installed files to the rest of the posse (which is what distrib was meant to do).

The order these pushes

See hxmd's HTML document under under "What order are hosts processed in?" for details.

In addition to the collation available in the selection phase of hxmd processing, we could use a cache directory to produce a new configuration file with the elements sorted by some external program, then feed that list back into another instance of msrc, but I've never had to do that.

Different realm, different login name

Usually we depend on our ssh_config to map login names when we cross adminstrative realms. Some rdist implmentations force the local login name to be the remote login name explicitly, when none is specified. In that case the value set in ssh_config is clobbered so we must define ENTRY_LOGIN to the correct value explicitly.

Here is a clever configuration file define to read the remote login from the environment:

ENTRY_LOGIN="esyscmd(`echo -n ${realm_USER-${USER:-$LOGIN}}')"
This configuration definition is placed above each posse block to leverage the environment to fetch the correct mapping.

This assumes that realm_USER is set for each realm in the operator's shell startup files. Every login that uses msrc must then set only these variables for realms where their login name must be mapped. Other mapping functions could be done by replacing echo -n with some local script.

What if I need to process a cleanup action after a posse push or cached update?

The best way to process a cleanup action after a complex posse push is to use the -m option with 2 make targets separated by a colon (:).

The common prereq parameter (see the previous description) allows the construction of prerequisites before any files get pushed. Adding a postreq to the specification triggers an update of that target after the utility completes on every target host. Unlike the prereq, the target definition must be given in the makefile, so there is no default value unless you specify a colon on the end of prereq, which defaults postreq to __clean (double-underbar clean).

For example: to if the target clean does the right thing in the existing control recipe, we can update the common tail:

# $Id: ...
# Use "-m __msrc:__clean" (or just "-m __msrc:") to trigger the cleanup here
# The marked line below needs to be tuned for your local site policy:
# 	$Push(*): ${msrc:-msrc} -m __msrc: -C%s -f %f $HOSTS make install

	cd Hosts.host && make clean

.PHONY: clean __clean __msrc

__clean: clean

__msrc: source

The other way to cleanup is via a script that triggers the post action internally. We prefer to integrate the cleanup actions in the control recipe to keep it synchronized with the construction recipe. Splitting the construction (in the control recipe) from the cleanup (coded in a separate script) is much more likely to get get out-of-sync. Forgetting the -m specification may be a bug, but the fix is usually "make __clean".

There are other ways to manage this, but all of them fail the maintenance criteria, keep the 2 actions in the recipe file and keep the command-line to trigger them in the recipe file as either a target, or in a marked comment line with mk. In both cases it is possible to lock the process with some shell level program, like flock, which offers a cheap locking mechanism (see the HTML document) to lock the directory in question (unless you are on a host that doesn't support advisory locking, where you might use the control recipe file).

# $Id: ...
#  $Push(*): flock %f ${msrc:-msrc} -m __msrc: -C%s -f %f $HOSTS make install

This could be used as a "lock-and-load" semaphore that keeps multiple copies of the structure from running in parallel while it sets up the task, updates the selected elements, then cleans the directory afterwards is really the best tactic.

When my posse is empty, I need to take action

Use the -N option to trigger an action by including it in Msrc.hxmd.

Using HXMD_U_SELECTED in the INIT_CMD section of the update script is a sure way to trap the how many hosts were selected, but it never gets run when zero were. You could divert a shell commend into the update script to touch or rm a flag file (which you'd check from a wrapper script).

Adding hosts via local mode

Another way to do this is to use HXMD_U_MERGED and the Addlist to send the payload to each host exactly once. To do that we need to use a local push to create a "chain mode".

If we force the command specified on the command line to just save the action we'd like to take, then we can re-issue that command later. To do this, we'd have to use a gtfw wrapper, which is beyond the scope of this document. That will be covered in the HTML document on gtfw.

An example of building more complex data for a push

Say that a cluster of hosts need to know something specific about each other: for example, their named.conf might need to have a masters configuration for a DNS zone. We can't use the hostname, since named won't use a DNS name to configure the master for a zone.

There are a few ways to make this happen; I'm going to show one that works for almost any attribute. In this example I'll use IP address since that is easy to lookup from the hostname.

We are going to add a GEN element that is an hxmd format configuration file, then link it into the push process with a line in Msrc.hxmd. That is the easy part is that linkage:

# $Id: ...
# link in the address information for the clustered named.conf
-C synthetic.cl

To build that configuration file, we need to add a local recipe (in Msrc.mk or Makefile):

GEN= synthetic.cl
# For make to check that the local configuration file is up-to-date
# with the source we need a path in the filesystem.
# If your make supports shell macros use something like either of these:
#MYCNF!=efmd -C cluster.cf -T HXMD_OPT_C dnl
#MYCNF!=hxmd -C cluster.cf "echo HXMD_OPT_C" | oue

synthetic.cl: ${MYCNF}
	hxmd -P1 -C${MYCNF} ${ADDR_HOOK} -F0 addrs.host |oue >$@
	(echo "g/^[A-Z_]*=/m0"; echo "wq") |ed - $@

That spelling forces hxmd to process the file addrs.host first through m4 then the shell for each host. In the preprocess step, under m4, we'll substitute the HOST macro into the script, then use host or dig to map the host to her IP address.

For example, addrs.host might contain:

IP=$(dig +noall +short +answer 'HOST` A |\
	egrep -v "^(10|192\\.168|172\\.(1[6789]|2[0-9]|3[01]))\\." |tail -1)
echo "%HOST IP"
echo 'HOST` ${IP:-"."}
exit 0

Note that the oue filter strips out all the duplicate header lines, so only the first remains. The ed spell is an example to move any global macro assignments up to the top of the file (so they are visible to every node) and is not required in the example as given. (Some more logic might be required to fetch other columns, but not for this example; we leave it with just the dig.)

We have now satisfied the Msrc.hxmd goal, so each host can see the IP address we had when the spell ran. We also put in a dot (.) where we could not find a routable address for the host. Of course that IP address might not be the one we have in the future, DNS can change and the spell only updates when you ask for it. But that is more of a bug with named's glue than our push of the file.

An example of a pun'd recipe file

A pun of an master source control recipe combines both the platform and control recipe files into a common Makefile. When the task at hand doesn't require the use of make on the target host, or the use of m4 markup to customize the platform recipe file for that host we can use this tactic to reduce the number of files managed in the source directory.

When we still want to use make on the target host we use the same recipe file as both the msrc configuration and the platform update recipe file. Since the only target msrc must use is __msrc, this leaves the standard targets (all, clean, install, and the like) available for the platform use.

Like any other master source recipe, it needs INTO set, because any rcsvg extraction into /tmp would otherwise break it. Second it needs DESTDIR logic for any package build that needs it. Lastly, it should not let install delete the original payload, as it might be run from the master source (since it is pun'd) and would delete the current working file.

# $Id: ...
# A pun'd makefile for tcpmux service to find correct host for
# VCS service group (by jad and ksb).

SOURCE=	Makefile vcsmux.pl

all: ${SOURCE}

	rm -f ${GEN}

install: all
	install -c -m 0755 vcsmux.pl ${BIN}/vcsmux

source: ${SOURCE}

	co -q $@

.PHONY: all clean install source __msrc

# master source hook
__msrc: source ${GEN}

There is no GEN in the recipe above, but I left it in as an example: it is not really YANGNI code, as more than half the recipe files I code generate local files. The issue here is that any generated files must be `buildable' on either the master source host or the platform host to fit the pun'd restrictions. For example, a file recovered with wget or rsync from a local repository.

The other important restriction is that all targets should (at least) be benign when run from either the master source host or from the platform host. Never use a punned recipe file when this is not possible. The safety provided by the two-file solution is well worth the extra overhead of keeping both files revision controlled.

Using diversions to modify the send script

In place of INIT_CMD, PRE_CMD, and POST_CMD one may use INCLUDE_CMD to incorporate the shell code for those actions in m4 diversions.

When I included the output above from "msrc -d S", I left out the many divert calls, here is a more complete rendering:

dnl remote per-host update script for hxmd
'dnl include shell functions and markup
dnl after params"
dnl before INIT
dnl myself, subdirs, then files:
SDIST HXMD_1 myself || exit $?
dnl SUBDIR is empty
SDIST HXMD_1 files
dnl before PRE
dnl before POST

Since the code is presented in the order the diversions specify, they normally don't change anything. However if you'd like to include a totally different update protocol, or do more than a simple recursive operation you may use the even numbered diversions to include any code you like in the update script, even calls to msrc or hxmd.

For example, a file included under -j might define INCLUDE_CMD as:

dnl Use our update, either send-local.m4 or send-remote.m4
dnl Note that the INCLUDE_CMD macro is passed the mode (local or remote):
Each of those files would define the other m4 hooks as local policy specifies, potentially ignoring most of the code msrc provided. For example:
dnl delete msrc update
define(`INIT_CMD',`cat >/dev/null <<\!rm')dnl
`# Example.com local update code
do-rsync ...
ssh ...

Programs built on top of msrc

These are ways to save some typing or duplicate files.

The dmz script

While debugging a master source structure, one usually only pushes to a single test host. This is quite cumbersome with the hxmd selection option -E. The clause for a single host would look something like:
msrc -Csite.cf -E SHORTHOST=lv426 make DEBUG=-g all

For a short list of test hosts the code gets a lot less obvious:

msrc -Csite.cf -E "-1!=index(\`_lv426_sulaco_nostromo_',_\`'SHORTHOST\`'_)" make DEBUG=-g all

Which is more than I'd like to type for each compile-edit-debug cycle, luckily it is easy to script.

Calling msrc from a short shell script reduces the key strokes, and adds some clarity. Let's reduce the last example to:

site lv426,sulaco,nostromo make DEBUG=-g all

We'll take the name of the script as the basename of the configuration files (-C $0.cf) and build the quoted m4 expression to search for SHORTHOST the first parameter. Here is a shell fragment I use in my script:

DEFCF=`basename $0`.cf
# ... option parser ...
HTEMP=`echo _${1}_ | tr -cs '\-.a-zA-Z0-9' '_'`
exec msrc ... -C$DEFCF -E "-1!=index(\`$HTEMP',_\`'SHORTHOST\`'_)" "$@"

Characters from $1 that cannot be part of a hostname are mapped to single underscores ("_"). The list of hosts could be separated by any character the customer like (e.g. commas, colons, or white-space). The underscores are used a separators in the list, we then search for each nodes SHORTHOST in that list. When none matches return "-1", so we don't accept those.

There is a valid site policy which I don't use anymore, that says every configuration file should have a matching zero-configuration file (-C foo.cf implies -Z foo.zf) to support it. There are some advantages to that structure, but the core tools don't enforce it because it is error-prone and more complex than you ever really need. That means it is up to you to be sure every process always calls though an invariant script to make it happen. It also means you must know you need it before you start coding your local structure, and you don't know that yet.

The best solutions cause the recipe to harmlessly break, if it is not used in the correct context. This prevents untrained workers from making horrible mistakes with powerful spells. At least it limits the damage they can cause. Our most useful tools are also, proportionally, our most powerful weapons, so put a trigger guard on that seven bladed chain saw of salvation.

Common make recipe files

The makefile specification on the msrc command-line doesn't have to be resident in the current working directory. A program built on top of msrc might specify a common makefile for every structure it processes. The value of HXINCLUDE could be specified as an absolute path as well.

With this in mind, a directory could represent a recurring task like data collection, or audit scanning. The contents of the directory would be the files needed to collect, compare/collate with a common interface (like make, or mk, or a shell script). The recipe file would hold the specification for the INIT_CMD, PRE_CMD, POST_CMD which make the interface to the local site configuration.

There is a pretty good example in hxmd's library called gnumake.m4. If you have a list of GNU programs you want to build, you can gather the compresses archives, build a configuration file that defines the macros used in the file, then use msrc to drive building them all. There are enough hooks (at the m4 markup level and at the shell level) to let that recipe template drive any build you want.

The sinclude of targets.m4 produces unique recipes in each created makefile. This is context sensitive in 2 ways: either by changing the current working directory, or by tuning -I (assuming you have an m4 that takes that option).

In Admin/master there are some good templates for recipe files and such.


Using the xapply stack under hxmd to process multiple hosts in parallel adds a huge performance advantage for applications such as building programs, updating configuration files, and collecting data against a large population of hosts.

Administrators leverage skills they already have by using the standard macro processor, dependency, and recipe processors they already use for other common tasks. The single new syntax required is the configuration file format that requires either m4 or C quoting rules and the percent marked column headers.

On the down-side, the intermixed use of make macros, both m4 and sh markup, and wrapper technology does make the structure "touchy". The learning curve starts with the use of xapply, then some understanding of xclate (aka. xapply -m). Add configuration management attributes with hxmd to reach a more powerful command environment, then add ptbw.

After you've mastered those, you'll better understand why this tool is as it is. And then you'll want to learn how to use msync, efmd, and package creation with level2s. Be sure to read the leverage document from this directory, if you didn't do that before. Then read the makefile template HTML page.

$Id: msrc.html,v 1.116 2014/04/17 17:24:25 ksb Exp $ by .