From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Jul 8 17:21:12 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id RAA01010 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 8 Jul 1996 17:21:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost.infi.net (pa1dsp22.dc.infi.net [204.117.149.150]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id RAA00982 for ; Mon, 8 Jul 1996 17:21:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from ron@localhost) by localhost.infi.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) id QAA01556; Mon, 8 Jul 1996 16:27:14 -0400 Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 16:27:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Ron Steele X-Sender: ron@localhost To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: SysAdmin Round 2 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Wow, I got quite a response regarding system admin tools. It looks like there is a lot more basic work to be done than I anticipated, whick is ok by me. One thing I don't want to do is reinvent anything, so let me know if I have missed something. Here is the plan for passwd/group admin: A C library to impliment the low level database type operations of add, delete, and query, that will work on either the groups file, password file, or any other simular text file. A C program to give command line access to this library. A tcl program interface to the lirary - which will be provide the fuctions needed by tcl/tk to do a full GUI. The tcl/tk GUI. Xforms was suggested as an alternative to tcl/tk. It may work fine, and even be simpler, but as I have done some tcl/tk and the tcl interpreter work is directly applicable to my current employment, I think I will stick to tcl/tk. I think that does a fair job of encompassing the desires of parties that responded. A further question: How do people like to have default values, and behaviors stored. The obvious things are environment variables, config files, and command line params. I personally dislike a zillion command line parameters. The choice of config files or environment variables seems to be a choice between two evils. If no one cares I will likely do the config file thing. More comments are welcome. Ron Steele