From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Jan 29 11:02:58 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA27948 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 29 Jan 1998 11:02:58 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from webserver.smginc.com (webserver.smginc.com [204.170.176.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA27939 for ; Thu, 29 Jan 1998 11:02:53 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from AdamT@smginc.com) Received: from smginc.com ([204.170.177.4]) by webserver.smginc.com (post.office MTA v2.0 0813 ID# 0-13723) with SMTP id AAA188; Thu, 29 Jan 1998 14:04:28 -0500 Received: by smginc.com with Microsoft Mail id <34D0FC18@smginc.com>; Thu, 29 Jan 98 14:00:56 PST From: Adam Turoff To: Karl Pielorz Cc: hackers Subject: RE: WebAdmin (was: RE: /usr/src/release/sysinstall needs YOU. :-)) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 98 14:03:00 PST Message-ID: <34D0FC18@smginc.com> X-Mailer: Microsoft Mail V3.0 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG X-To-Unsubscribe: mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org "unsubscribe hackers" Karl writes: >Hmmm... > > I don't often throw my 2 pennies worth in, but here goes... > > The company where I'm working now have several FreeBSD machines, and 1 > competent BSD 'maintainer' (guess who?). OK. Time for a roll call. How many other people resemble this description? :-) :-) If I haven't said it before, I'd like to thank all of the hackers that came before me that worked on FreeBSD. My life would be an NT Admin Hell otherwise. >[karl's admind] > > A lot of this is based on SMTP / POP3 conversation style stuff, e.g. you might > send a command to that port to 'ADDUSER "username", "password", "group", > "homedir", "shell"' etc. - the box then goes off and does this - tells you > whether it could or couldn't etc, likewise a 'LISTSMTPVIRTUALDOMAIN' command > will return a nice list of all the SMTP Virtual domains the server supports, > which again can be read and displayed by the client... > > I know this solution isn't perfect, but it's not doing too bad so far... We > have Win 32 clients (written in VB) which connect to it at the moment, though > there's no reason why these couldn't be Java clients. > > The client is 'dumb', all it has to do is prompt for the right information - > make sure it's sensible - then submit it to the server to have it carried out. > Any errors are returned as text, or error codes - which the client can display > to the user. > > Right - that's the 'rough' outline, please flame away... Seems reasonable. I'm a bit of a protocol bigot, though. With so many standards out there, why create a new one? Hesitance towards a CGI based approach, even if it's running on an obscure SSL port is well founded. I agree that it's senseless to do something that's not open and extensible. Just because I happen to have an anti-Java bias doesn't mean that there are sufficiently many hackers out there who want to make java admin clients or whatever. CGI is just a simple matter of programming. How about using a framework that can use CGI but can also run standalone or off of an admind interface to the same scripts? It's all about sending the correct name/value pairs to the correct script and waiting for your box to automagically reconfigure itself. Sound reasonable? Lynx/Netscape/Daemonscape can use it if you're so inclined to run a httpd-type interface, and some sort of perl/tcl/python/java/vb standalone client or admind client should hit everyone's wishlist. Now it comes down to a simple matter of programming in everyone's copious free time.... -- Adam.