Here's a little shell script I cooked up to aid in managing large groups of Windows/Linux dual boot client workstations. It essentially makes the Linux systems 'call home' whenever they boot up so that we can have a series of scripts on the server which will bring them up to date. The alternative is to walk around to each workstation and type some commands. This gets old after you've done several hundred. It was also necessary to do this from a client side process, as there exist tools to push down changes from the server already, but we never know when Linux will be running. The PC might be running Windows for weeks. We just want everything to sync up the next time somebody boots Linux.

Anyway, here it is - I call it 'pcu':

#!/bin/sh -f
##
##
## Update client workstations from a
## sequentially ordered set of update scripts
## located on a network drive.
##
## Scripts may be named numerically to be processed
## in order. Only scripts with ctime newer than the
## time of last invocation will be processed.
##
##
##
## Configuration:
##
## For synchronizing clock

NTP_BINARY='/usr/sbin/ntpdate'
TIMESERVER='ntp.example.com'

##
## Server/path containing scripts. This dir is NFS mounted locally.
PCUSERVER='pcu.example.com'
BASEPATH='/home/pcu'

##
## Where to find the files locally
## Default is $LOCALPATH/$FAMILY/$HOSTNAME
## or $LOCALPATH/$FAMILY/default if no $HOSTNAME dir exists.
##
## $FAMILY is used to group scripts of similar
## machines/architectures/lab configurations

LOCALPATH='/etc/pcu'
FTIMESTAMP='/etc/pcu.time'
FAMILYCONF='/etc/pcu.family'
INSTALLOC='/etc/init.d/pcu'
DEFAULTFAMILY='general'

########################################################
##
## Install
##
if [[ ! -x $INSTALLOC ]] ; then
  echo "PCU installation commences. $0 "
  cp $0 $INSTALLOC
  chmod 755 $INSTALLOC
  update-rc.d pcu start 99 2 3 4 5 .
  mkdir $LOCALPATH
  touch $FTIMESTAMP
  echo "PCU installed."
fi
##
########################################################

if [[ -x $NTP_BINARY ]] ; then
  $NTP_BINARY -su $TIMESERVER
fi

mount -t nfs $PCUSERVER:$BASEPATH $LOCALPATH

if [[ ! -x $LOCALPATH ]] ; then
  exit
fi

if [[ ! -e $FTIMESTAMP ]] ; then
  exit
fi

if [[ -e $FAMILYCONF ]] ; then
  FAMILY=`cat $FAMILYCONF`
else
  FAMILY=$DEFAULTFAMILY
fi

echo "Processing Updates for $FAMILY"

if [[ ! -x $LOCALPATH/$FAMILY ]] ; then
  echo "$0: Warning: $LOCALPATH/$FAMILY ($PCUSERVER:$BASEPATH/$FAMILY) is not ac
cessible."
  umount $LOCALPATH
  exit 0
fi

if [[ -x $LOCALPATH/$FAMILY/`hostname` ]] ; then
  UPDATEPATH=$LOCALPATH/$FAMILY/`hostname`
else
  UPDATEPATH=$LOCALPATH/$FAMILY/default
fi

if [[ ! -x $UPDATEPATH ]] ; then
  echo "$0: Warning: $UPDATEPATH ($PCUSERVER:$BASEPATH/$FAMILY/default) is not a
ccessible."
  umount $LOCALPATH
  exit 0
fi

for a in `find $UPDATEPATH -type f -newer $FTIMESTAMP | sort -n` ; do
  echo -e "\t" `basename $a`
  sh $a
done

umount $LOCALPATH
date > $FTIMESTAMP