From owner-freebsd-chat Sun Jun 17 17:31:19 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 2FE5037B401 for ; Sun, 17 Jun 2001 17:31:04 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: (qmail 12999 invoked by uid 100); 18 Jun 2001 00:31:03 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15149.19398.975415.242825@guru.mired.org> Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 19:31:02 -0500 To: Technical Information Cc: FreeBSD Chat Subject: Re: System Tuning/Sysadmins In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010617184404.01776308@mail.threespace.com> References: <20010617093905.A20349@h24-67-61-12.lb.shawcable.net> <20010617063505.A29241@shell.monmouth.com> <20010617073505.B20171@h24-67-61-12.lb.shawcable.net> <20010617103922.A79022@acidpit.org> <4.3.2.7.2.20010617184404.01776308@mail.threespace.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Technical Information types: > At 12:22 PM 6/17/2001, you wrote: > >Which is the real problem with the GUIify the world approach to system > >administration: the GUI hides the details about what's going on, so if > >that tool isn't available, the admin has no idea how to go about > >fixing things with the tools that may be available. > > This is a fair enough statement, but I'm in agreement with Chris too. If I > configured my snazzy UNIX server and it works, what difference does it make > how I got it there (text editing or GUI)? I love the stability of UNIX but > often find myself in a position of wanting to turn on the XYZ service on a > particular system, but not having the time to (nor wanting to) research and > find the one little line of some text file in /etc that I need to uncomment > to make that happen. I'm no sysadmin, but with a reasonable GUI tool at > least I can still get some work done. You missed one critical thing about that statement: it's not about tuning things, it's about *fixing* things (first word, last line). Having a GUI to configure and/or tune things means you can do so without knowing anything about the underlying system. This is fine until the system breaks - at which point you're in the position of having to reinstall and reconfigure the thing from scratch. Or wait for someone who knows what they're doing to come fix it for you. Being able to fix things quickly and inexpensively is an important feature for a server - one that you lose more often than you need to unless you know how to use the more primitive tools for doing so. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message