edit hosts file on multiple servers without NIS

[Petr Simik_1]

I have relocated server and now I have new IP adress on it. I wat to update hosts file on other 40servers. I don't use NIS. Typing one-by-one is the possibility, but I am looking for some more sofisticated way.

something like

for i in `cat serverlist`
do
remsh 'edit .... file /by scenario'
done

THanks for any Ideas

[John Dvorchak · Accepted solution]

I would think that if you have any more that about two servers you would want to implement DNS and avoid all of these types of issues. But to answer your question:

for i in `cat serverlist`
do
remsh $i "sed 's/old.add/new.add/g /etc/hosts'"
done


I haven't tried this but it should work. Do yourself a favor and implement DNS. It is easy quick with hosts_to_named

[John Dvorchak]

Ok my mistake, you can't use sed you have to use ed. So change the edit line to:

remsh $i " ed '(1,$) g/old.address/new.address' /etc/hosts"

[Dietmar Konermann]

IPOLD=xxx
IPNEW=yyy

for host in $( remsh $host "cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.org && sed s%$IPOLD%$IPNEW%g < /etc/hosts.org >/etc/hosts"
done

[S.K. Chan]

One way is ..

for i in `cat serverlist`
do
remsh $i "sed 's///g' /etc/hosts>/etc/hosts.new;mv /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.old;mv /etc/hosts.new /etc/hosts;chown root:sys /etc/hosts;chmod 444 /etc/hosts"
done

A good tool to distribute files to clients that you should seriously consider using is "rsync". It's easy to implement and is based on rcp plus some added security option. I use it alot to synchoronize some files between machines.
http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/

[Michael Steele_2]

Don't suppose I can suggest 'rdist' for this. 'rdist' is the administrative utility most similar to NIS. It 'rcp, 'remsh' and all those other BSD networking commands.

Distribution file, aka, 'distfile':

http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/fsearch/framedisplay?top=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90147/B2355-90147_top.html&con=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90147/00/00/89-con.html&toc=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90147/00/00/89-toc.html&searchterms=rdist&queryid=20030513-111002

'rdist' syntax:

http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/fsearch/framedisplay?top=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90147/B2355-90147_top.html&con=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90147/00/00/89-con.html&toc=/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90147/00/00/89-toc.html&searchterms=rdist&queryid=20030513-111002

[Pete Randall]

Just edit the hosts file on one server and then copy it to others with a script like this:

for SERVER in `cat hostlist`
do
if [ $SERVER != $HOST ]
then
echo $SERVER
rcp -p $FILENAME $SERVER:$FILENAME
fi
done


Pete

[John Dvorchak]

Ok I'll get this command correct yet.

sed s/132.201.90.73/132.201.90.770/g < /etc/hosts > /etc/hosts.new; cat /etc/hosts.new > /etc/hosts;