REQUIREMENTS Ruby 1.8 http://www.ruby-lang.org * Shocto depends on yaml, readline, abbrev, timeout and getoptlong which I believe are part of the standard installation. However, I noticed that on Ubuntu (5.04), I had to install each of these packages separately. Ruby Gems http://docs.rubygems.org The user manual has installation instructions. I believe it's usually just a one command installation. OpenSSH http://www.openssh.org INSTALLATION sudo gem install Shocto-X.X.gem (where X.X is the version number) RUNNING type: shocto During startup, shocto will try to create ~/.shocto and a defaults file. Quick Start: To see how it works, try these commands while you are in shocto: help addgroup test (this will change you to the "test" working group) addserver apache@web1 addserver apache@web2 addserver apache@web3 addserver apache@web4 exec uptime (this will try and run uptime on each server. If you don't have ssh keys setup, then you will be prompted for a password) copyid apache@web1 (this will send your public ssh key over to the server, to allow you to connect without using a password. PLEASE SEE THE SSH DOCUMENTATION!) Here is how you add a command. You will be prompted for several params. addcommand diskspace Checks disk space in /opt df -k | grep /opt and then just type diskspace at the shocto prompt and the command will be run on all servers within the current group. Type save to save your group(s) and commands. More to come...