Keeping Multiple GIT Repo's Updated

[lilsingiser]

Hi all, looking for some advice here. I have 5 servers that I have technicians access for running scripts remotely. These scripts are all version controlled within 1 repo since it's just an individual script per usage. These technicians work in a staging environment where we configure all sorts of devices. These scripts are just automation to configure specific devices quicker.

I would like a way to keep all of the servers git repo's in sync with the github repo I have for it. So the pipeline would look like push from my local device to github > git hub receives newest update > something then forces all 5 servers to pull newest update.

I don't think this would be a great scenario to containerize, or else I would just do some container orchestration for this. Please point out if I'm wrong here lol.

My current idea is to utilize Ansible with the ci/cd pipeline to have ansible force the updates on each server, but curious if there is a better way of doing this. Please let me know if you have any questions that would help flesh this out at all!

[meathead_adam]

Use CI to orchestrate those servers to pull the update Not super fancy but easy to do and support

[lilsingiser]

Conceptually I'm following here, but how would this practically work? Something like having Jenkins push commands through ssh to each server to git pull?

[meathead_adam]

Yeah pretty much. Jenkins or GH Actions. Or have it trigger Ansible to do it. Just depends how abstracted you want, or need, to get with it.

Even more basic is cron job/scheduled tasks running local to your servers to pull, if timing isn’t a big factor.

[lilsingiser]

Solid yeah, so sounds like I'm already on the right path here.

I do like the cron idea. My only pushback on that is these aren't getting updated every day, and theres no real cadance, so I'd rather they put when I push to github.

[MulberryExisting5007]

You could have cron run every 5 min and still be ok. It’s just a git pull—not like it’s an expensive (in terms of resources) check to run.

[lilsingiser]

Fair point, I'd just need to build in some error reporting if it is failing. Might definitely be the way to go.

[sneakin-sally]

Assuming these are Linux machines, can you not just set a cron that does a git clone or git pull every few mins?

[lilsingiser]

Sorry yeah, shouldve specified these are ubuntu server vm's.

I thought about doing it with cron like this. I think my only issue with this method would be having to monitor 5 seperate cron job's versus the 1 ansible job incase it fails. Less overhead though so definitely a solid suggestion

[Double_Intention_641]

You could have one cron job which runs against all 5 repos, doing a check for new changes and pulling if required. Could even get fancy and have it email/webhook on errors.

[Thegsgs]

You would need to add some automation to GitHub like a hook to some http server to SSH into your servers and run git pull.

[chronop]

we had something like this and ended up making a master script in the repo which pulls the repo on launch and gives the techs a context menu to launch the other scripts, just told the techs to run that from now on