Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 13:49:28 -0600 (MDT) From: Wes Peters <softweyr@xmission.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: UNIX sysadmin GUI (was: Price of FreeBSD) Message-ID: <199704201949.NAA07925@obie.softweyr.ml.org> In-Reply-To: <5354.861482487@time.cdrom.com> References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970419141731.13657B-100000@zeus.xtalwind.net> <5354.861482487@time.cdrom.com>
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Sorry, I just couldn't stay out of this. I once spent a significant
portion of my time and personal energy to designing something along the
lines of what Jordan is discussing here, and would like to offer my
insight.
Jordan K. Hubbard writes:
> > By `fancy setup and configuration tools' I sure hope you don't mean NT's
> > install that blew up on us probing an Adaptec 1542. We tried to let it
>
> No, of course not. That would be deliberate stupidity and I'm not
> talking about anything like that.
>
> Also, the UNIX traditionalists should please bear in mind that such an
> interface would NOT BE DESIGNED FOR THEM.
Well, perhaps even the gurus would use it to do the simple, day-to-day
stuff. The important part to understand is that the command line tools
and configuration files would remain the same. All you need to do in
order to 'dumb down' UNIX administration to the point that most people
can do it is:
o Reduce the most common operations to a dialog or two. How much
information do you *really* need to collect to add a user account to
a UNIX system? Right, adduser does it all with about 10 questions.
OK, collect these 10 questions into a dialog box so the user can
*easily* change her mind. Same for 'rmuser', 'adddisk', etc.
o Provide reasonable defaults for almost everything. Setting up
printers on FreeBSD is a good example of this. Everytime I see a
message like 'how can I print postscript on my XXX-jet?' I chime in
with 'install apsfilter!' How 'bout we make a simple 'add printer'
dialog that asks you what kind of printer it is, where it is plugged
in, installs apsfilter and/or ghostscript if not already there, and
edits the config files?
> It all just totally misses the point, which is that *we're not talking
> about their needs* when we bring up the idea of an all-singing,
> all-dancing GUI-based administration system, nor is such a system
> meant to REPLACE anything about the current CLI based approach. It's
> the #1 straw-man argument every time this comes up that "anyone
> wishing to dumb-down UNIX and replace its hallowed, cherished
> interfaces with a GUI should be shot" despite the fact that the
> proponents have never even remotely suggest *replacing* anything, and
> such a system would be a wholly optional add-on. However, no matter
Optional in that the first thing you see is a dialog that says:
FreeBSD installation
If you want to install FreeBSD on your computer with a
minimum of fuss and bother, click the Guru button to
have the FreeBSD Guru help you finish the installation.
If you're already a FreeBSD Guru, or are familiar with
another UNIX system, click the CLI button to start the
installation shell. If you are not sure which to choose,
try the Guru first. You can view the CLI shell from
within the Guru at any time.
[ Guru ] [ CLI ]
> how clear the advocates may make this, it just doesn't matter -
> mention the very concept and it's Fear And Loathing time, rumors of
> the imminent arrival of apocalyptic horsemen and the minions of Gates
> being fiercely debated in every mailing list.
For system administration tasks, die-hards could continue to use adduser
et al if they wish. The product we had designed included both a cli and
a report writer so it could be used from shell scripts or cron. We had
some advanced ideas that even cli die-hards would want, however. For
instance, you could create a new user by copying the attributes of an
existing user; you were asked for a username, a full name, and an office
phone number. Everything else was defaulted, including the location of
the home directory. We also had user templates, you could create a
template for a programmer, one for an accounting user, one for a support
tech, etc.
Believe me, it is really *quite* simple to automate many day-to-day UNIX
administration tasks without replacing a single system component. You
just simply write smart code, put a *really simple* GUI over it, and do
your very best at picking reasonable defaults and automagically probing
and detecting options wherever they can be determined.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com
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