MilkCheck is a Python-based distributed, highly parallel and flexible service manager. It runs commands across various servers, based on dependencies between them, and offers a compact execution summary. It aims to manage service starting and checking on very large number of servers, like in HPC world. It can run tens of thousands of commands across thousand servers in very short time.

• Python 2.4+
• ClusterShell 1.7+

First, define your python version:

# export PYTHON=python2

Or :

# export PYTHON=python3

Next, build Milkcheck from source:

# ${PYTHON} setup.py install
# mkdir -p /etc/milkcheck/conf
# cp conf/milkcheck.conf /etc/milkcheck
# cp -r conf/samples /etc/milkcheck/conf

Or, build RPM and install it:

$ yum install git rpm-build make
$ make PYTHON=$PYTHON rpm
$ rpm -ivh RPMBUILD/RPMS/noarch/milkcheck-*.rpm

MilkCheck has its own test suite which could be used to check for issue when making patches or testing its correct behaviour on your system. Before running tests, you must verify you can connect, through SSH to your local machine, non-interactively, without password. Try:

$ ssh -o PasswordAuthentication=no $HOSTNAME echo OK
$ ssh -o PasswordAuthentication=no localhost echo OK

You must install python nose v0.11+, then run:

$ make test

See MilkCheck man page for command usage and conf/samples/example.yaml for file configuration documentation.

Install MilkCheck (see above)

Create your first configuration file in /etc/milkcheck/conf

$ vim /etc/milkcheck/conf/first.yaml

Create a local service, running the classical Hello World.

services:
    hello:
        actions:
            start:
               cmd: echo Hello World

Check this configuration, running milkcheck without option

$ milkcheck
No actions specified, checking configuration...
/etc/milkcheck/conf seems good

If everything is fine, launch the start action

$ milkcheck start
hello                                           [    OK   ]

If you need to run a service on remote nodes, simply add a target option:

services:
    hello:
        actions:
            start:
               cmd: echo Hello World
    crond:
        target: foo[1-10]
        actions:
            start:
               cmd: /etc/init.d/crond start

Launch the start action again

$ milkcheck start
hello                                           [    OK   ]
crond                                           [    OK   ]

Check conf/sample/example.yaml for all possibilities.

Latest source, bugtracker and information could be retrieve from MilkCheck website:

https://github.com/cea-hpc/milkcheck/

See Licence_CeCILL_V2-en.txt (english version) or Licence_CeCILL_V2-fr.txt (french version).

See AUTHORS.