Question about MunkiServer vs Munki

[djk]

Hi,

I have recently inherited a half-built Munki setup that consists of straight up Munki (and MunkiAdmin) plus an instance of MunkiServer. I come from a Casper background so MunkiServer looks great, it replicates some of the features such as grouping etc.

However I am slightly confused and it might be due to having been left with no documentation of the setup but I'm wondering if someone could clarify a few points for me.

1. It looks like MunkiServer in essence creates its own manifests which exist entirely outside Munki itself, or am I missing the way to link them together?
2. If I am right about number 1 then does this mean that the "Managed Software Center" is no longer viable as a machine can only use one repo/catalog/manifest provider at a time and it's either Munki or MunkiServer? I can't see where to make installs optional in Server.
3. I've been using autopkg to create some packages which puts them in the munki_repo share which I can then configure using MunkiAdmin but obviously at the moment in my setup this has no bearing on what ends up in MunkiServer unless I manually add a package and point it to the files that autopkg created. This doesn't seem right to me...

Hope this makes sense!

Cheers!

[mkuron]

MunkiServer and a traditional Munki repository are mutually exclusive. One client can only connect to one or the other.
As MunkiServer has received very little maintenance over the past few years, switching to just a traditional Munki repository is probably the better choice. MunkiAdmin makes administering it similarly painless as MunkiServer. I have a script that can export packages from MunkiServer into a Munki repository file/folder structure, if you need that.

[djk]

Thanks mkuron but I think I'll just carry on with what I've got which is essentially having started afresh.

Appreciate the rapid response!

[sloanelybutsurely]

@mkuron @djk munkiserver has been forked and is now maintained over at https://github.com/munkiserver/munkiserver. @rickychilcott can probably answer some of your other questions.

We welcome any suggestions!

[rickychilcott]

Hey @djk:

1. You're correct -- you'll have to pick either Munki or munkiserver for your primary "repo"
2. Same as one. For optional installs, this is quite easy in munkiserver. You can do it at either the computer or computer group level. See the attached screenshot of two optional installs: Final Cut Pro and Logic.

3. You're correct. I've long lusted after having an autopkg integration with munkiserver. @zperrault and I will see if we can come up with something. Zach is a student at Ohio University and is working with me this and next semester to improve munkiserver performance and add some features. I think it may be possible to try to tackle adding a basic package api, as we're starting to build out a test suite for munkiserver.

@djk do you have any experience writing any autopkg recipes? If so, maybe we can work together to make this happen with munkiserver.

Let me know if you have any questions or head over to https://github.com/munkiserver/munkiserver to see what we're working on.

Ricky

[mkuron]

A long time ago, I wrote a MunkiServer Importer for AutoPKG: https://github.com/mkuron/autopkg-recipes. It's really basic and due to lack of an API, it does screen-scraping, but it works. I used it for a while with the fast-changing packages (Chrome, Firefox, Flash).

[rickychilcott]

Thanks @mkuron -- if we added some sort of API key for a user, a lot of this could be reduced a simple curl command. Thanks for this though. This will be helpful as I try to convince @zperrault to tackle this!