[HN Gopher] OpenWISP: Multi-device fleet management for OpenWrt ...
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       OpenWISP: Multi-device fleet management for OpenWrt routers
        
       Author : zdw
       Score  : 62 points
       Date   : 2025-02-05 15:38 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (openwisp.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (openwisp.org)
        
       | fh67 wrote:
       | Anything similar for opnsense (besides their own service) or
       | pfsense?
        
         | chme wrote:
         | Maybe just go with ansible or similar:
         | https://github.com/ansibleguy/collection_opnsense
        
           | chatmasta wrote:
           | Updating a fleet of embedded devices like routers (which can
           | come online and go offline at any time) will generally be
           | much easier using a pull-based update model. But if you've
           | got control over the build and update lifecycle, a push-based
           | approach like ansible might be appropriate.
        
             | chme wrote:
             | Maybe I am missing somehing, but I would assume that base
             | network infrastructure like routers, firewalls and switches
             | have a higher uptime, availability and reliability than
             | ordinary servers.
        
               | dsr_ wrote:
               | The problem with push is that the service sitting at the
               | center needs to figure out which devices will need to be
               | re-pushed later on. You can end up with a lot of state
               | that needs action just to get things back to normal.
               | 
               | So if you can convince devices to pull at boot time and
               | then regularly thereafter, you know that the three states
               | they can be in are down, good, or soon to be good. Now
               | you only need to take action when things are down.
               | 
               | Never analyze distribution of software and config based
               | on the perfect state; minimize the amount of work you
               | need to do for the exceptions.
        
               | westurner wrote:
               | Unattended upgrades fail and sit there requiring manual
               | intervention (due to lack of transactional updates and/or
               | multiple flash slots (root partitions and bootloader
               | configuration)).
               | 
               | Pull style configuration requires the device to hold
               | credentials in order to authorize access to download the
               | new policy set.
               | 
               | It's possible to add an /etc/init.d that runs sysupgrade
               | on boot, install Python and Ansible, configure and
               | confirm remote logging, and then run `ansible-pull`.
               | 
               | ansible-openwrt eliminates the need to have Python on a
               | device: https://github.com/gekmihesg/ansible-openwrt
               | 
               | But then log collection; unless all of the nodes have
               | correctly configured log forwarding at each stage of
               | firmware upgrade, pull-style configuration management
               | will lose logs that push-style configuration management
               | can easily centrally log.
        
             | westurner wrote:
             | Pull based updates would work on OpenWRT devices if they
             | had enough storage, transactional updates and/or multiple
             | flash slots, and scheduled maintenance windows.
             | 
             | OpenWRT wiki > Sysupgrade:
             | https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/sysupgrade
        
             | _joel wrote:
             | Ansible does pull?
             | https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/cli/ansible-
             | pull.htm...
        
         | dp-hackernews wrote:
         | Or build the router image declaratively with Nix.
         | 
         | https://nixos.wiki/wiki/OpenWRT
        
       | honeybadger1 wrote:
       | neat, will play with it.
        
       | phoronixrly wrote:
       | I've always wondered why this project needs to be so complex... I
       | need to administer 10-20aps... why is it necessary to run 9
       | services to achieve this? A mail server? An OpenVPN server?
       | Docker is still not advised for prod use.
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-05 23:01 UTC)