From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Oct 25 21:37: 7 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from ren.sasknow.com (ren.sasknow.com [207.195.92.131]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2437B37B407 for ; Thu, 25 Oct 2001 21:37:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (ryan@localhost) by ren.sasknow.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA39868 for ; Thu, 25 Oct 2001 22:37:02 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from ryan@sasknow.com) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 22:37:02 -0600 (CST) From: Ryan Thompson To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: User/virtual administration Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 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 It's been awhile since I've posted here... Hopefully this will be interesting to a few of you, though! (If not, feel free to hop over this message and go on back to the great terrorism debate, which, by the way, has been really interesting reading.. ;-) I'm proposing a new administration project, and am currently compiling an ideal feature set and initial research. This project, essentially, will aggregate and centralize administration of various possibly distributed system components, but in a user-centric way. This is in some ways like some rubber-stamp style "virtual hosting" platforms, automating repetitive administrative tasks and hiding all the gory details of pesky and typo-prone things like DNS zones, apache s, passwords, etc, for each user or account. (I.e., NOT like webmin, etc, which manage in a module-centric way). Of course, this project will be developed on FreeBSD :-) I know that similar projects exist.. But it seems to me that every one of them that I have been able to find suffers in certain areas that I want to address and correct. At this point, I am considering the following issues: * Similar products--my list of similar products is probably not complete. What is out there for this? Is anything similar in development right now? * Feature requests--If this project is developed, what key features would be most important? Or, conversely, what annoys you most about the system you are using? * Demand--who would use such a thing? Is this something that is sorely needed by many? Or are the current products accessible enough (in terms of TCO and time required to set up)? Would the project be sufficiently marketable to support itself? (tough questions! :-) * Support--would anyone *consider* contributing time/money/ resources to the development of something like this, given a more formalized proposal? What would you require before contributing? Feel free to reply to the list, or to me privately. If you suggest a great feature that I didn't think of, you will of course receive proper acknowledgement if it is used.. But if you feel the need to place restrictions on the use of your killer ideas, etc, you are probably best not to send them at this point. :-) If I receive an encouraging response to this, I WILL sink some significant time into it and put your responses to their best possible use. Thanks! - Ryan -- Ryan Thompson Network Administrator, Accounts SaskNow Technologies - http://www.sasknow.com #106-380 3120 8th St E - Saskatoon, SK - S7H 0W2 Tel: 306-664-3600 Fax: 306-664-1161 Saskatoon Toll-Free: 877-727-5669 (877-SASKNOW) North America To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message