ClusterSSH is just one of those handy tools for making changes to many servers at once. A very nice tool for a systems administrator to have. If you are in an enterprise situation where your system is a Windows system and you maintain Linux / Unix systems you ave a few options to manage your systems like VirtualBox, Cygwin, puTTy and many more. Of the ones I mentioned only VirtualBox and Cygwin are ones that ClusterSSH is a option to run.
Cygwin does not have a package available so it must be compiled and installed.
First make sure to install Cygwin. If you have Cygwin installed then there are several other packages you need to install.
clusterssh requires X11, tcl-Tk and a few perl packages
Start Cygwin setup.exe and select the following. Note vim is not needed you can install nano or any other editor.
- Archive/unzip
- web/wget
- net/ncftp
- utils/gnupg
- Devel/gcc-core
- Devel/binutils
- Devel/make
- Devel/patchutils
- X11/xorg-server
- X11/tcl-tk
- X11/X-start-menu-icons
- Editors/vim
- Perl/perl-Tk
CPAN modules install
First start an X11 Server session. Since we installed X-start-menu-icons you will have a shortcut under All Programs>Cygwin-X called XWin Server. Click on it to start it or open a Run or command prompt and type C:\cygwin\bin\run.exe /usr/bin/bash.exe -l -c /usr/bin/startxwin.exe.
The Xserver will start and it will also load a xterm session which you can close.
Open a Cygwin Terminal session and type the following commands:
cpan X11::Protocol cpan Exception::Class cpan Try::Tiny cpan Readonly cpan Test::DistManifest cpan Test::Trap
If you have never used cpan a configuration and update wizard will run first. If you accept the default and press enter it will configure it all for you. Once that is done and X11::Protocol starts a test X11 window will popup. Just click in the window to close it and the installation will complete.
ClusterSSH Install
Now we are ready to download App-ClusterSSH-4.01_01
Download 4.01 from http://sourceforge.net/projects/clusterssh/files/2.%20ClusterSSH%20Series%204/
Extract the file change to the extracted directory and type
$ tar -xvzf App-ClusterSSH-4.01_01.tar.gz
To install this module, run the following commands:
perl Build.PL ./Build ./Build test ./Build install

Now you are ready to go. Open an xterm window and start using ClusterSSH!


Adryan says:
I have completed all of your steps, is there anything I need to do from there in order to get the clusterssh going? I started an xterm but it was just one window, are there a few more steps that I’m missing?
running cygwin on windows 7 btw.
newlife007 says:
In the xterm window type cssh server1 server2. server1 and server2 to be replaced with your server names.
Adryan says:
Okay, that seemed to try to start the sessions. Do I need to setup a host file with the servers I am trying to get to or should I just use the IP of the servers that I am trying to reach? Thank you for your assistance.
newlife007 says:
If it cannot resolve the name you will need a host file entry or access them by ip.
Adryan says:
Yes I have a host file, where would I place that? I am guessing in the cygwin folder somewhere?
Prashant says:
Perfect one.
Achieved what it says.