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Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 17:37:31 +0200
From: Philipp Buluschek <djbulu@gmail.com>
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To: users@ace.apache.org
Subject: Re: Questions on ACE
References: <5358B5DC.9040004@gmail.com> <5358C387.5060609@luminis.eu>
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Thank you all for the quick answers.

I understand that most things I need are somehow possible (cool!). 
Unfortunately I will not be able to test your suggestions immediately. I 
will report again as soon as I can set up a real server with real 
devices to test in more real-world settings than only client/server 
locally on my dev machine.

Regards Philipp


On 24.04.2014 09:55, Jan Willem Janssen wrote:
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> Hi Philipp,
>
> Good to hear ACE solves most of your use-cases already, see my
> (lengthy) answers inline.
>
> On 24/04/14 08:57, Philipp Buluschek wrote:
>> My use case: I will have several hundred embedded systems running
>> Felix which must be kept up to date. I will probably have few
>> (maybe 4) different "distributions" (ie. applications), each on
>> many of those systems. Here are my questions:
>>
>> Can I put targets (ie. the machines to be updated) into groups, so
>> that I can easily deploy a new version of a distribution to a large
>> group of targets?
> There is no "real" grouping mechanism for targets yet. However, there
> are two ways you could solve this right now:
>
> * from the web UI, you can select a number of targets that need
>    approval, and hit the 'A' button. This allows you to approve all of
>    those in a single step. This can be made a little easier when ACE-320
>    and ACE-321 are resolved;
>
> * alternatively, you can add a custom tag to all targets that divides
>    them into groups, after which you use the GoGo shell to approve them:
>
>    w = (cw)
>    each ($w lt "(customTag=target-group-X)") {$it approve}
>    $w commit
>
>> Can I configure when the update takes place - ideally some time in
>> the night (when the users don't use the system) with a large jitter
>> (so the server is not overloaded all at once).
> The ACE agent, responsible for the deployment on the target side, is
> responsible for checking whether updates are available and, if so,
> downloads it. The server does not push updates to the targets. That
> said, if you are worrying about the load on the ACE server, you might
> consider using ACE relays to distribute the load over more servers.
>
> At the target-side, the default agent can be configured to perform its
> update-check by specifying the "-Dagent.controller.syncinterval=N",
> where N is the interval in seconds. By default, it runs once every 30
> seconds.
>
>> Can I configure locally (on the agent) whether it should update?
> The default agent has one simple rule: if there is an update
> available, it'll download and install it.
>
> To get more control on whether an update should be installed, for
> example, by explicit user intervention, you need to create a custom
> controller for the agent. Examples on how to do this can be found in
> the `org.apache.ace.agent.controller.itest` project (see [1]).
>
>> Can I update the OSGI framework itself from ACE?
> Just like it is currently possible to update the ACE agent itself,
> updating the OSGi FW is possible as well (it is a bundle, so can be
> updated).
>
> However, it is not implemented yet, as it requires some work. For the
> launcher (responsible for bootstrapping the target) to update the FW,
> it must work with its own classloader (allowing you to load two OSGi
> frameworks separately) and on the server side, a mechanism for
> providing information on whether there are FW updates available must
> be made (I'm not sure if this is a matter of configuration or whether
> actual code changes need to be done).
>
>
> 1.
> http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/ace/trunk/org.apache.ace.agent.controller.itest/src/org/apache/ace/agent/itest/
>
> - -- 
> Met vriendelijke groeten | Kind regards
>
> Jan Willem Janssen | Software Architect
> +31 631 765 814
>
> /My world is revolving around PulseOn and Amdatu/
>
> Luminis Technologies B.V.
> J.C. Wilslaan 29
> 7313 HK   Apeldoorn
> +31 88 586 46 30
>
> http://www.luminis-technologies.com
> http://www.luminis.eu
>
> KvK (CoC) 09 16 28 93
> BTW (VAT) NL8169.78.566.B.01
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