I just spent some time documenting the new installation wizard for hostmaster 2, and annotating it on this hostmaster wizard photoset on flickr.

Example screenshot :

I've built a new API for use in hm2, which allows you to define queues that would like to get triggered. I've built the api so that defining 2 functions hook_hosting_queues and then the queue handler, gives you an impressive amount of free process accounting, and also configurability.

What the queue dispatcher does, is it keeps a list of queues, when last they were triggered (dispatched), how frequently they need

I've just published the 0.1-alpha2 release of hm2, which features extensive changes from the first alpha release 3 weeks ago.
We are now nearly feature complete for the 0.1 release, but there's still a fair amount of loose ends to clean up.

Release announcements:

Hostmaster : http://drupal.org/node/275709
Provision : http://drupal.org/node/275710
Hosting : http://drupal.org/node/275708

Single Download:

I thought a bit about how to fix the problems regarding shared drupal hosting in the HM2 paradigm. I think I have a good solution and would like to have feedback on it before it gets implemented in full in HM2. But first things first...

This will be the page to describe potential ways of integrating ubercart for HostMaster2's billing/sales system. I'll update this page with my thoughts as I experiment.

Eclipse

Please share your steps on installing and setting up HostMaster and related dependencies (Apache, MySQL, cron, etc.).

Dedicated Server

TODO

On your Mac Laptop

For download, feel free to substitute CVS checkout

1. Download Drupal 5 into your root web server docroot (e.g. /Library/WebServer/Documents)
2. Download the hostmaster install profile into the profiles folder, so that it is at /profiles/hostmaster
3. Download required modules: views, drush, ...

This is a brief outline of development plans for HM2 over the next few weeks. Planning at the weekly level will happen in the #hm2 room for irc.freenode.net, Fridays at 9:00AM PDT.

Now that the first release is out, we will be revving pretty rapidly to get the bug fixes in, and to make this more usable.

0.1 - Single platform

Solid release for Drupal 5 platform.
Will not be able to upgrade.
Production ready.

0.2 - Multiple platforms

Support for more than one Drupal release.

We have a weekly development meeting on #hm2 on irc.freenode.net, to discuss development, and make our weekly release.

If you are interested in hostmaster 2, please join us.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meetingdetails.html?year=2008&mont...

Just a quick note to let you guys know I implemented functionality whereby hostmaster finds all the modules / install profiles on any
platform it manages, and builds 'package' and 'package release' nodes out of them. These will be linked to sites through the package_instance junction table, so you will be able to see exactly what modules / themes are on the system, what version they are
and eventually whether they are enabled or not.

Open

This project is developed on drupal.org, using the tools provided by the community. After many discussions with many different developers working in this space, it has become apparent to me that many people have developed their own custom set of utilities and scripts to manage many of the issues this project encompasses.

This project aims to be an open framework that will allow us to collaborate on a single set of community developed / maintained utilities, so that the quality and the capabilities will improve for all of us.

Easy

This page documents all the different terms used when referring to components of the Hostmaster system, and how the different entities relate to each other.

Front End

The user interface used to administrate your sites. The front end is provided by the Hostmaster install profile, and the Hosting contributed module. It defines a complete Drupal based data model for managing the various aspects of your installation.

Entities

These entities are used primarily in the front end to manage the configuration and data. Upon calling the back end, the system breaks

What is Hostmaster?

Hostmaster is a distributed instance management system, that allows authorized users to administer multiple Drupal sites across one or more servers, through a Drupal based administration front end. It is designed to help solve many of the common problems that administrators come across when providing mass hosting solutions, by providing the basis for turn-key deployment and management of Drupal sites and related services.

What do I need to run Hostmaster?

UPDATE cross posting this into SOC 2008 for any feedback

I'm excited to begin working with this module. It has been quite the task to enable a module or change a permissions setting across 40 sites, having to log into each one or via update.php.

So my question is, how would this integrate into a collection of 30 - 40 established sites in a multisite configuration?
Is this something that needs to be implemented from stage 1?

I read the description of what the HM2 does but am still a little unclear how it handles modules.
Can I enable/disable modules via HM2?
Can I modify access controls across all domains and/or each domain via HM2?

So I was reading about a module today called autopilot (http://www.workhabit.org/change-management-and-drupal-autopilot-news) and was wondering if anyone here is involved or knows anything about it and what sort of differences/similarities there are between it and Hostmaster2.

I'm very interested in the topic of change management and and such things, but just getting my mind wrapped around these tools. I'm involved with some large Drupal deployments so tools like this are getting pretty high on my radar.

Hello, as a step towards getting the support to open source
CivicSpaceOnDemand, we have further opened up the CSOD APIs. This
time we have exposed the provisioning system and everything that is
involved in setting up and configuring databases, mail servers, dns
servers, file systems, web server configurations, Civicrm files,
Drupal files, etc.

Please note that this system is entirely developed in PHP and MySQL and is compatible with Drupal coding styles. It has been in production for almost 15 months and deployed hundreds of sites.

Provisioning system:

We've had various good efforts now at building mass provisioning solutions for Drupal. But too often we're building solutions in isolation, in competition, without enough resources to pull them off. We end up with duplication, half-finished products, privatized code. To put it mildly, it feels like we're not making the best use of the potential of open source.

Mass hosting Drupal presents particular security, technical, network, integration, and other challenges that require specialized solutions.

There have been significant efforts by individual companies at providing provisioning systems, including Bryght’s Hostmaster platform and CivicSpace’s Civicspace On Demand platform.

This wiki page is an attempt to pull together a listing of the particular problems of mass hosting and what some existing pieces are.

I just found the BIND module. Definitely something to look at running along with HM2.

Hey everyone.

What's the current of Hostmaster2? Is there still someone working on it?

I won't be able to do much work on drush in the upcoming half year as I'll be a lot less active in this time. I'll still read this group and the drush issue queue from time to time, but won't be able to actually commit patches. Nevertheless, I still think that having Hostmaster2 based on drush is a great thing. So I'd suggest that whoever is working on Hostmaster2 just sends a short message to Arto asking him for CVS access. Moshe also did a few commits on drush recently, so he might be someone to talk to about drush related things, too.

I've had a few conversations about my own wishlist for a management panel for VPS containing multiple multi-site instances.

My use cases are pretty simple:

Use Case 1: Upgrade 1 (one) important module on one multi-site codebase (like CCK)
Use Case 2: Mass migration of multi-site 'site files' to new code base

Both of these require the same basic things, the main difference being extracting one site out of a multi-site instance versus a complete migration of all sites in a multi site instance (instance = codebase).

The core activities here are:

1. mysqldump
2. mysqlimport

We have a OpenSRS module for allowing you to purchase domain names from OpenSRS.

Is anyone interested enough in providing domain name registration during site creation to port it to Drupal 5?

Just to let everyone know, Adrian's initial work on hostmaster2 is checked into the Bryght SVN hostmaster repo for your viewing and hacking pleasure.

These are notes posted by Adrian, following some initial code development based in part on Drush.

The requirements I had for Drush were

1) required parameter handling. In the form of
./drush.php provision $urlhere

This is already implemented it turns out, so that when you define a command
called 'provision', any extra parameters are automatically passed to the callback.

2) multiple Drupal systems through a central drush.php

This also already exists, via a -path argument. More on this later.

3) Force loading of modules.