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Date:      Wed, 10 Dec 97 17:58:00 PST
From:      Adam Turoff <AdamT@smginc.com>
To:        hackers <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   FW: Why so many steps to build new kernel?
Message-ID:  <348F48D3@smginc.com>

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> I was just thinking about this.  I've been playing around with cgic   
lately
> and I think it would be hilarious to have the kernel configuration on   
the
> local web server (password protected of course).  I saw an article the
> other day about windows 98 (not that I really care what MS is doing),   
but
> apparently they are going web browser-centric, certainly that is   
pushing
> it, but I was thinking how easy it might be set up something like this.
> I only considered it because I have decided to rewrite the interface   
for a
> particular software package I worked on last summer to have a   
significant
> portion of its interface web-able.  This is less because I really want   
to
> a more because *I HATE* designing X interfaces and this way I can have
> someone else do it.  Plus windows can be a client to the server process
> (if it was up to me people would just telnet into the server port and   
use
> it that way).

I don't know about that.  Sounds like a huge security hole.

If you're interested in going town this path, I'd strongly recommend
taking a page from Netscape.  Their servers use an admin server
to administer all instances of their httpd on a box.  When installing
the server package, the install program picks a random port > 1024
to use for running the admin server.  The sysadmin can change
this port to something useful, but the idea here is that the
administration is not running on any "standard" port.

I certainly wouldn't want anything like kernel configs or sysadmin
type stuff happening over a standard port like 80 or 8080 with
clear text passwords.  If I could use SSL on some bizzaro
port number, that would be really worth having.  :-)

 -- Adam

PS: Setting two servers to talk to each other so that they can
replicate configurations is left as an exercise for the reader.  



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