[hobbit] Automated Client Updates

[Henrik Stoerner]

On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 04:29:43PM -0700, Charles Jones wrote:
> I'm testing out the client update feature.  Here's my experience so far:
> 1. I read the directions, and prepared a client tarfile and placed it 
> (hobbitclient-420.tar) in the download directory.
> 2. I added the following to my client-local.cfg:
>    [linux]
>    log:/var/log/messages:10240
>    ignore MARK
> *   clientversion:hobbitclient-420*
> 3. I waited awhile (30+ mins) for the clients to update.

It can take a while:
- hobbitd re-loads the client-local.cfg file every 10 
  minutes. So worst case, it will take 10 minutes for the
  change to take effect. You can force this by doing a
  "kill -HUP <hobbitd-pid>".
- The client needs to contact the server to pick up the
  new config. If the timing is bad, that might not
  happen until 5 minutes after the client-local.cfg
  change was loaded. So now 15 minutes have passed.
- If you're running the clients via the hobbitfetch/msgcache
  pull-style connection, there's an additional 5 minute 
  delay due to the extra hop between the server and the
  client.
- After the update, it will be another 5 minutes before
  the client runs again and you can see the change.
 
So all in all, it takes between 5 and 25 minutes.

> 4. When I click the info column on some clients, it shows:
>    *Client S/W:hobbitcli*
>    Is it supposed to be truncated like that?

No, it looks like you upgraded the client software from one of the
beta/RC versions. They did truncate the clientversion string to
9 characters max.

> Does this indicate that the new client is running? 
Yes. The next time you update, it should show the full version string.

> Is there any other way to verify the client version?

Add a "file" check to one of the updated files, perhaps with an
md5 hash check to be 100% sure it's the new version.


Regards,
Henrik