Colony replacement!

[Auke Kok]

Hi all,

I am really in the need for a colony replacement so I've written a 
cleanroom replacement of colony/cabal. Right now it is in beta and you 
can find it in the latest version of lunar-tools (2004.5). The program 
is called 'clad' which stands for CLuster ADministration (tool). It's 
not really integrated but uses some lunar functionality for specific 
functions, hence released in lunar-tools.

A short intro:

clad is a typical command line tool that works always in the same way: 
`clad ACTION [CLUSTER [nodes | command]]`. There of course are the 
obligatory -h -v and -d options and --help is a bit more extensive.

You create a cluster with 'clad create clustername'. Clad will prompt 
you for a id_dsa passphrase and define the cluster. Then you 'clad add 
clustername node1 node2 node3' which will result in the appropriate 
pubkey for that cluster definition to be uploaded through ssh to each node.

Once setup succesfully, clad will use ssh-add to store the passphrase so 
you only need to login once if you have your ssh-agent running. If 
needed clad will run one temporarily but you will have to type your 
passphrase with ever clad command of course. If you want to run multiple 
commands after another you can 'clad login clustername' and later 'clad 
logout clustername'. Between those commands you can succesfully execute 
commands on each node without typing a single password.

This all of course relies on ssh and the ability to logon with a 
plaintext password first to upload the key. You should make sure you use 
proper passwords and turn off password auth for root after you have 
setup your nodes.

There is no support for concurrent runs ATM. I will dig into that later. 
  I hope everyone can live with this bare minimum replacement of 
cabal/colony which I will erase ASAP from lunar/theedge as it is broken ATM.

PS the name choice is preliminary. People with stronger names can 
suggest a better one to me.

sofar