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+sitesummary
+===========
+
+More information is available from
+<URL: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary >.
+
+Sitesummary generated Munin configuraiton
+-----------------------------------------
+
+Sitesummary can be used to generate Munin configuration to collect
+statistics from all sitesummary clients with the Munin packages
+installed.  To enable it, install the munin package and make sure
+/etc/sitesummary/collector.cfg include 'MUNINDIR=/etc/munin' to get
+sitesummary to replace the default munin configuration with the
+generated one.  Running these commands as root normally does the
+trick.
+
+  aptitude install munin munin-node
+  echo MUNINDIR=/etc/munin >> /etc/sitesummary/collector.cfg
+  sitesummary-client
+  /etc/cron.daily/sitesummary
+
+These steps can be preseeded during installation, here is an example
+to enable Munin autoconfig on the sitesummary collector
+
+  sitesummary sitesummary/replace-munin-config boolean true
+
+Sitesummary generated Nagios configuration
+------------------------------------------
+
+Since version 0.0.51, there is experimental code in sitesummary to
+generate Nagios configuration based on the collected information.  To
+enable this, install nagios3 and nagios-plugins-standard, edit
+/etc/default/nagios3 to include
+'NAGIOSCFG=/etc/nagios3/sitesummary.cfg' and run the sitesummary cron
+job.  Running these commands as root normally does the trick.
+
+  aptitude install nagios3 nagios-plugins-standard
+  echo 'NAGIOSCFG="/etc/nagios3/sitesummary.cfg"' >> /etc/default/nagios3
+  sitesummary-client
+  /etc/cron.daily/sitesummary
+  /etc/init.d/nagios3 restart
+
+The current version of the code run all Nagios checks locally, so it
+only work on a single machine.  The plan is to change this to use NRPE
+to work with a network of machines.
+
+On the client side, add
+'include=/etc/nagios/sitesummary-nrpe-commands.cfg' and
+'dont_blame_nrpe=1' in /etc/nagios/nrpe_local.cfg to enable the
+sitesummary checks.  To make sure the nagios server can contact nrpe,
+it might be required to list the server address using the
+allowed_hosts option.  Running these commands as root normally does
+the trick.
+
+  aptitude install nagios-nrpe-server nagios-plugins-standard
+  cat > /etc/nagios/nrpe.d/sitesummary-nrpe.cfg <<EOF
+allowed_hosts=myserver
+dont_blame_nrpe=1
+include=/etc/nagios/sitesummary-nrpe-commands.cfg
+EOF
+  sitesummary-client
+
+These steps can be preseeded during installation, here is an example
+to enable Nagios autoconfig on the sitesummary collector and allow it
+to query Nagios NRPE on the clients.
+
+  sitesummary sitesummary/enable-nagios-config boolean true
+
+  sitesummary-client sitesummary-client/nagios-server string sitesummary
+  sitesummary-client sitesummary-client/enable-nagios-nrpe-config boolean true
+
+Design draft
+------------
+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?