From owner-freebsd-arch Thu Feb 13 8:25:26 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7BA8537B401 for ; Thu, 13 Feb 2003 08:25:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from Daffy.timing.com (daffy.timing.com [206.168.13.218]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0551B43FDD for ; Thu, 13 Feb 2003 08:25:20 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from ben@timing.com) Received: from piglet.timing.com (piglet.timing.com [206.168.13.178]) by Daffy.timing.com (8.11.3/8.11.3) with ESMTP id h1DGPHH31643; Thu, 13 Feb 2003 09:25:17 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from ben@timing.com) Received: from piglet.timing.com (localhost.timing.com [127.0.0.1]) by piglet.timing.com (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id h1DGPHXl059183; Thu, 13 Feb 2003 09:25:17 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from ben@piglet.timing.com) Received: (from ben@localhost) by piglet.timing.com (8.12.6/8.12.6/Submit) id h1DGPGgd059180; Thu, 13 Feb 2003 09:25:16 -0700 (MST) From: Ben Mesander MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15947.50924.514481.652584@piglet.timing.com> Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 09:25:16 -0700 To: Mike Makonnen Cc: Garance A Drosihn , wollman@lcs.mit.edu, wes@softweyr.com, arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: syslog.conf syntax change (multiple program/host specifications) In-Reply-To: <20030213041709.XOQ23484.out001.verizon.net@kokeb.ambesa.net> References: <20030210114930.GB90800@melusine.cuivre.fr.eu.org> <200302120632.36583.wes@softweyr.com> <200302121411.h1CEBRSe025071@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> <200302121521.33506.wes@softweyr.com> <200302121615.h1CGFdGG025691@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> <20030213041709.XOQ23484.out001.verizon.net@kokeb.ambesa.net> X-Mailer: VM 7.00 under Emacs 21.2.95.2 Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Mike Makonnen writes: > There's no way in hell we or any other BSD is going exclusively to XML for any > particular configuration file. Some Linux distro might try it, but it would > never work. The current file layouts are too entrenched. What would work; > however, is XML as an intermediate data layout. The XML would sit between some > program the user can use to make choices and the underlying text file. Take > rc.conf for example. You could put all that data in XML format and some gui > would let the user choose whatever he/she wanted and that would then be piped > through an XSLT script that renders it in the current key=value layout. The data > would be kept in defaults/rc.conf.xml and defaults/rc.conf would just become > another generated file. This is similar to the approach AIX takes; you can use tools like SMIT to update entries in the ODM (the OO database which stores the system cfg). The traditional UNIX ASCII config files are generated from the ODM. But you can also choose to be a traditionalist, and edit the config files directly, and ignore SMIT and the ODM. Then it's like managing any other UNIX system. Additionally, there was a tool to sync the ODM with what the current state of all the ASCII files is. So you can actually switch back and forth between the two system administration models. --Ben To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message