PConsole is a program I’ve used quite a bit in the last couple of weeks. Last week I found myself at Sun’s Guillemont Park helping with some testing of an infrastructure component we’re interested in, and I had a rack of Sun blades to manage. This week, I’ve a small set of Linux (Redhat) systems and a developer who wants to manage updates and rpm installs in a simpler fashion.
PConsole is simple in it’s idea: Take the input in one terminal, and apply it to many others. With large numbers of systems to manage, things can rapidly become tedious: Enter a command in this window for machine 1, move the mouse, enter the command in the window for machine 2, move the mouse… you get the idea.
But it’s not specific for clustering - as many other programs in this vein are - it’s “just” a terminal multiplexor really, and really helps reduce time and effort for all sorts of aspects, be it systems administration, coordinating testing, or even problem investigation. My only criticism is that it’s not included in more distro’s as standard.
On a related note, XMX is very, VERY handy for pushing out an X-display to multiple users, and well worth a look. Extraordinarily handy for distributed demonstrations.
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