Start on system to track the hosts on a site.

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+Design draft
+
+sitesummary
+===========
+
+system to collect key info about all the machines on a site, to help
+the sysadmin keep track of a lot of hosts.
+
+Should be capable of handling both thin clients and "real machines"
+
+ - two package, one server sitesummary and one client sitesummary-client
+
+ - the client submits information to the server using HTTP put.  It
+   include the list of files it intend to submit, to detect deleted
+   files.
+
+ - the HTTP connection is either using SSL, or the file(s) transfered
+   are GPG encrypted.  (figure out key exchange system)
+
+ - the client submit a set of files and output from commands with hw
+   information etc (need plugin system to make it submit more files)
+
+    - lspci
+    - lsusb
+    - dmidecode
+    - uname -s / -m / -r / -v / -o
+    - ifconfig -a
+
+    - public ssh host key
+    - /etc/debian_version
+    - dpkg -l
+    - /etc/apt/sources.list
+    - /etc/fstab
+    - /proc/cpuinfo
+    - /proc/meminfo
+
+ - the server track changes done to the files (some version control
+   system like rcs?) on each host, and make summary report on the
+   number of individual machines reporting to the server
+
+ - how do we identify machines?  MAC address could work (ip -s -f link
+   maddr - which when several interfaces?).  IP addess will not work
+   for thin clients on private networks behind two different servers.
+   the linux hostid command is only using IP address and is useless.
+   Can not generate random key stored on the file system, as this
+   would give all thin clients on a server the same ID.  dmidecode
+   serial number might work for some models, but others have the same
+   serial number on several machines.
+
+ - ideas for use of this info
+
+   - machine count, grouped by os/kernel/etc
+
+   - can generate a list of host keys for distribution to the clients
+
+   - can generate dhcp MAC<->IP mapping
+
+   - can generate lts.conf files for the LTSP clients
+
+The server can either be a CGI script, or listen on some port on its
+own.
+
+The client should be a platform independent script with as few
+dependencies as possible, to make it lightweight and easy to install
+on all machines.  (perl, python, /bin/sh?)
+
+Should the client know which files to report, or should the server be
+able to affect it?  Can cfengine, nagios or munin be used for this
+instead?