Shawn wrote: > On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 10:03:20 -0600 > Daniel Taylor <dante at argle.org> wrote: > >>AIX has smit, smit is awesome. All else is forgiven. >> > > Smit/Smitty sucks. Granted is has more functionality than most other admin tools out there compared to Admintool (Solaris), Sysman/diskconfig (Tru64), SAM (HP-UX). But, it really does suck. The one tool that I have to say I like most is diskconfig from Tru64, but even then it has it's limitations. I'm a relatively new admin (meaning about 2 years of experience), but I prefer "old school" and wanting to know the command line interface to each administrative function. Just in case you can't get the admintools to work properly, and IMO, most times it's faster at the command line. Thus, the reason why I prefer Slack for my distro of choice. Sure, you can strip Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake down to a minimal system. But, it's far more work for that, IMO, than it is to install a base system and build up to what you want. > It's not perfect, but I still have yet to see a better general admin tool. > > >>"Some of the base packages" Like pretty much every useful command-line >>utility, _all_ the core libraries, X11 and the classic window >>managers, ghostview, an available selection of daemons (with different >>default selections), samba, and the kernel providing common nfs and >>firewalling service. Show me two commercial Unixes that have as much >>in common and I'll shut my mouth about it. The major distros have even >>settled pretty nicely on the structure of /etc, though there are still >>SysV vs BSD camps on init. >> > > File locations aside, most of the big UNIXes "generally" come with most of what you've listed with recent versions. If it's not there, install it. Same with Linux on installation. Solaris, Tru64, and HP-UX all use the init commands. Last time I worked on an AIX box, you still have to put an entry in inetd.conf. Although, I will admit to being primarily an admin for HP-UX and Tru64. It's been a little while since I've seriously worked on a Solaris box, and quite a while on and AIX box. > "Generally" is correct. IF I install a new Linux distro, I _expect_ that I will have installed or immediately available _all_ of the above. If I install Solaris, I expect that _some_ will be installed, and that I will have to hack around libraries and get source to install the rest. That, and the hacks and deviant packages will be different if I'm using UW, Tru64, HPUX, or AIX. FreeBSD has more in common with Linux than Solaris has with Tru64 in my experience. > If Linux is so standardized, why is it that programs that are written for Linux are generally written for Red Hat, SuSe or Debian? If it works on one, it should work on all of them without a lot of dicking around and configuring the distro to get it to work. If it ever truly does. > Because the people who are packaging the binaries are malinformed or lazy and don't know how easy it can be to generate rpm, deb, and tgz from the same source package. I have worked on projects packaged and tested for multiple distro's. Apart from having a partition with the distro installed on it to boot to for testing, it just isn't that much extra work. > > >>Because Linux isn't encumbered with the BSD license, I think this is >>_one_ shakedown of Linux companies. I think that it will continue to >>cycle with new companies coming in to the fray as old ones mature, >>die, or get acquired. RedHat is pretty mature, and they have found >>their niche. >> > > I'll agree, and that's basically what was saying. The UNIXes went thru a number of shakedowns over the years. I don't see Linux being any different. > My position: the GPL does not eliminate the business sycle, but it does eliminate the deleterious effect of lost software due to the business cycle. > >>>Linux is the kernel. That is all what Linux is. A distro is far >>>more than just packages on it's base install. It's where they place >>>things, tools they use for administration, etc. >>> >> >>The core admin tools are the same. I expect that as new generations of >>admin tools come out they will mature and become standard. >> > > Are they? Maybe vi/emacs and editing of files (if they exist) are the same. But does linuxconf exist on my Slack system? No. Does netconfig exist on a Red Hat system? Not the last time I checked (been a while admittedly). Hell, even the way to setup static routes (not soft, but hard set static routes) varies greatly on the different Linux distros. Aside from putting the route add command into rc.local or the various init scripts, you're all over the filesystem on each platform. That is IF they have files that are read on init. Red Hat has you putting it into a file that doesn't exist on other platforms, others tell you to put the route add command into rc.local. IMO, something like that should be standardized. Granted the commercial UNIXes have their different ways of doing it in terms of file locations, but so far my experience has been that it's always been a text file generally under the /etc tree. > I do not consider linuxconf/kudzu/kcontrol/etc. to be _core_ admin tools. They are nice for those who want to use them. Yes, vi/emacs on text files, m4, awk, perl, and the basic sysinfo command line tools are what I consider "core admin tools" everything else is built up from them. > Yes, there's always the argument that you can "customize" your box to how you want it. But, I'm talking standard defaults of the system on install. Not to offend anyone here on the list, but in a corporate world most times you don't have the luxuries to customize the systems to how YOU OR I want them. They (meaning corporate world) want as default of a system as possible so that as admins come and go, it's generic enough for the replacement admins to figure out wihtout spending a lot of time learning. The admin can always be replaced, the boxes when put into a production environment can't be taken offline and rebuilt/changed/whatever to accomodate the preference of the admin who just came in. > Exactly. This is why I do not consider most of the GUI helper tools to be "core admin tools". A decent admin _should_ be able to check the system out pretty thouroghly over a terminal without having to resort to GUI tools. Yes, the GUI tools make life easier, but they aren't standard enough yet and most of the ones I've seen take an information hiding approach that makes it harder for an inexperienced admin to become an experienced admin. > _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list