Deploy java update
 

Hi, I have Linux mint installed and we use a web based application. This application requires that the java should be updated. How do I update java on all Linux mint workstations without doing this on each computer one by one. That is, how to push\deploy java update on multiple computers over network?

Thanks
Gyan

You don't provide enough information for us to even speculate. You don't tell us what version of Mint your systems are using, or what you have to work with. Are the clients configured to automatically update themselves? Do you have any internal repositories of your own set up? Shared network resources? Any sort of central management console/system in place already? How many workstations? Local authentication or central (like LDAP)? Do you have admin accounts set up on the workstations?

A low-tech way to do it would be to put whatever update package you have onto a shared network resource, and send an email to the users telling them to run it. You say nothing about your 'web based application', or where it runs from, but if it's an internal site, put some code in it to check for the java version, and if not appropriate, download it from an internal source, and run the installer.

Again, with no details there's not much we can definitively tell you.

We have Mint 16 xfce. The application in web based, it is a chemistry application (sci finder) where the user clicks on the editor to draw the structures. This pops up the editor which runs on java(oracle java). This was working fine till recently when the application is asking to update java. I have updated java on some computers and this started working well. I have about 90 Linux Mint workstations. I was wondering if we can deploy this java update in a go instead of repeatedly doing this on each computer.
We do have local admin account setup on the computer. End users do not have admin permissions. They log on locally (LDAP is not available as of now and we are working on it). We have recently started migrating to Linux (from Windows).

This question can be taken in general as well, that is, is there a way to deploy any application\patch at a time to all Linux (any Linux flavour) computers.

Thank you for the reply. Please let me know for any other question

Well, as asked before, do you have a central network resource these systems share? There is a way to script such a thing, since you've got an admin account.
Get a list of all workstation IP addresses into a file, and have your script read it one address at a time, so for each address:

• scp <filename of update package> admin@<workstation ip address>:
• ssh admin@<workstation ip address> "<command to run the update>"

That's it. If you have a shared network resource, you can omit the SCP step.

This assumes that you have already performed the SSH keyswap between your workstation and all the OTHER workstations. If you haven't, it doesn't take long, but it is tedious. This investment in time now will make things easier in the future, since you can then use that same script to perform OTHER tasks/upgrades as needed. And this is only ONE way to do such things...you can install things like puppet, also:
http://puppetlabs.com/