Welcome to the NWU project wiki

NWU is a free software package licensed under the GNU GPL (version 3 or later).

Project Goals

NWU is a network-wide update system for systems which use APT for software installation and upgrades.

It allows an administrator to maintain all relevant network nodes from one central point, using a simple CLI tool. Using NWU the administrator is able to remotely install software, list packages installed on managed machines, roll out security upgrades and upgrade the managed machine's APT package cache.

Features

• Manage Debian-like systems in the network using a CLI tool (PyGTK interface under development, web-interface planned)
• *VERY* simple installation, for both server and clients
• Remotely install packages on managed systems
• List pending updates
• Roll out security upgrades to computers
• Update the packages cache of managed systems

Requirements

• Python 2.4 or 2.5
• python-gnutls 1.1.x
• Debian >= Lenny or Ubuntu >= 8.04 (support for RPM-based distros is planned)

Example Output

# nwu help
Usage: nwu <sub-command> <options> [arguments]
Command line manager for NWU, version 0.1.5.

Available sub-commands:

  addrep  <computer> <repository uri>  : Add new repository
  adduser <name> <level:0|1>     : Add a new user, admin or not
  forceinstall <computer> <packages>  : Install defined packages in the computer (force)
  help                           : This help message
  install <computer> <packages>  : Install defined packages in the computer
  list    [group]                : Lists all computers or specified group
  update <computer>             : Update packages list
  upgrade <computer>             : Upgrade all packages in the computer
  view    <computer> <info>      : View computer informations

Available groups for list command:

    outdated

Current Status

NWU is currently alpha software.

See the Roadmap for more information. I resumed work on this project recently, after several months of idling, so don't be surprised if you find year-old pieces still sitting around.

News

See the project timeline and my nwu-related blog posts

Development Team

• Yves Junqueira (yves@cetico.org) (nictuku at freenode IRC)
• Stephan Peijnik

Contact

• Mailing lists: nwu and nwu-commits

Documentation

Server

• Server README file
• RPC methods

Agent

• Agent README file

General

• Download
• Security Model
• Implementation Plan
• Architecture Plan
• DebPackage
• OtherReferences
• RewriteIdeas

Inspiration

I'm writing NWU because I need it and because I believe it could be useful to other sysadmins. Also, it's a good way to have fun writing Python code.

NWU was inspired on a very nice spec available in the Server Candy in the Ubuntu project wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerCandy. The spec itself is in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NetworkWideUpdates.