Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 12:20:46 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Mike Makonnen <makonnen@pacbell.net> Cc: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Configuration management Message-ID: <3D10D98E.4B8E308F@mindspring.com> References: <20020619031533.2c302e68.makonnen@pacbell.net>
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Mike Makonnen wrote: > From time to time, I've seen threads on various mailing-lists about > creating a gui tool for configuring the system (basically /etc/rc.conf). > The assumption is that providing some sort of point-and-click interface > will make it easier to configure FreeBSD. The problem with this, among > other things, is that it requires developer buy-in because the configuration > tool has to be updated everytime a new knob is added, which makes it more > tedious and error prone for the developer. The tool was already written, and is available in ports. It doesn't require tweaking for new knobs, because it operates on knobs in an abstract sense, rather than having a full list of knobs. It gets its knob list from the l-values in the files on which it operates. I am personally a big fan of the single configuration store; this is because it's more important to me to be able to replicate an exisiting configuration onto a new machine, than it is for me to be able to back up to a previous known working configuration. > For example, I have a haphazard collection of rcs files > for files I have edited in /etc. Most times I do co/ci when I edit them > but sometimes I'm in a hurry and I don't bother or I just plain forget. Not all > the files are in rcs. I don't have a standard tagging scheme. I also don't > generally tag them all before or after a mergemaster. However, I believe these > things should be done for all my files on a consistent basis, but I'm > generally too lazy and don't bother :-( so an automated system that did > all these things for me would be nice. [ ... ] > To address this, I would like to develop a set of scripts, for inclusion in > the base system, that manage the files in /etc as a set of rcs files. The canonical way of doing this would probably be to support versioning in the file system. There are ways that this can be done, but there are certain things about UNIX that make it hard to get right (specifically, globbing), and VFS stacking is not as easy as it should be, so that approach is probably going to be a non-starter, unless you are prepared to do a lot of work. I think your project is a interesting idea, even though I would personally probably not use it (but I do not administer a large enough number of FreeBSD systems frequently enough for it to be an issue for me). I know that David Wolfskill does a lot of this type of thing himself. He would probably have a lot of suggestions that would be useful for you. If you are in the Bay Area, then you might want to contact BayLISA, where you could get input from a large number of system administrators for large systems and large clusters. You might also want to look at a number of the existing tools in this area. There are several projects that deal with graphical administration. They are mostly Linux-centric, but there have been active FreeBSD porting efforts. I really think that this may be more of a UNIX thing in general, than a FreeBSD thing in particular, or at least a BSD thing in general, given that FreeBSD's "rcNG" project is in the process of converting 5.x to be as compatible with the NetBSD rc system, and therefore configuration files, as possible. Good luck with your project! -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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