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To: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert)
cc: root@io.cts.com (Morgan Davis), jkh@FreeBSD.org,
        hackers@freefall.cdrom.com
Subject: Re: sup: Ok, I'm gonna do it. 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 01 Feb 95 09:42:46 MST."
             <9502011642.AA06840@cs.weber.edu> 
Date: Wed, 01 Feb 1995 15:42:56 -0800
Message-ID: <9197.791682176@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org>
Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> Would an all singing, all dancing administration tool, like SVR4 sysadm
> or AIX's be a sufficient answer to this problem?

It would certainly be a heck of a start.  I've made a very rudimentary
beginning on this with `dmenu', but something a lot more polished I
certainly would not kick out of bed for eating crackers.

> What it if was only available as a GUI tool?

There would be some fuss, but since Jeremy has kindly offered Xaccel
at VGA resolutions, we'd have most folks covered.

> The installer is a special purpose program -- that is, its scope is
> extremely limited.  It does what it does extremely well.  You might
> liken it to a car that runs real well in one lane of a 20 lane
> freeway.  Reentering it is like trying to signal a lane change.

I'd be even more blunt: Reentering it simply should not be allowed,
with the installer leaving the system after installation.

> Maybe what's needed is a tool writing pragmatist, willing to start
> pulling administration sources from the comp.sources archives and
> make them work.  In a volunteer project, that person may be difficult
> to find.

Oh, I don't know..  The person I'm writing to seems very qualified! :-)

						Jordan