Linuxconf again and again (was: purposes)
aj@dungeon.inka.de said:
> would be nice if this was possible also for unix. adduser is nice but
> not compareable to the gui tool. (adduser + userdel + less /etc/passwd
> + passwd + some other tools would be comparable.
> of course these gui tools are not as powerfull, and are not
> scriptable. but they do there job: give 20% functionality, enough for
> 80% of the job. and it requires not very much knowledge to use them.
> developing similiar tools can be a task for the linux/bsd/unix
> community. it also helps newby users a lot.
I'm getting tired at this. There *are* a lot of tools for such
tasks. I'm getting the impression that the problem is actually that
there is not just *one* tool. Having a choice seems to be too much
sometimes.
Just as an example: Have a look at
http://www.redhat.com/corp/support/manuals/RHL-6.0-Manual/install-guide/manual/doc070.html
That's the user management from Linuxconf. What else do you want?
It looks like there are two problems with Linuxconf on Debian, both
discussed here not long ago: The init-scripts have not enough
information (for any such tool), since there is no way a configuration
frontend can tell which files to edit and how to reload the
configuration. Linuxconf uses info embedded in the scripts or in
separate files for this. Debian needs just some policy for that.
The other problem is the network init script, which is a mess of
configuration data and (sh-)code (I would like to consider this an
uglyness of it's own anyway). There is already a clean solution for
this (a new tool "net" and a new /etc/init.d/network by Massimo Dal
Zotto <dz@cs.unitn.it>).
If anyone wants to throw some time on "making Linux easy" please don't
discuss, but make Linuxconf work on Debian. It may not be perfect, but
it works, it is GPL, it is extensible and does not prevent anyone from
using vi or emacs to do his job. I've been using Linuxconf on Redhat
since 5.0 and I liked it. Even if you don't use the GUI it's really
great to just edit some configuration and then "linuxconf --update"
instead of hunting down the PID of some daemon and SIGHUP it to reload
the file. I've experienced Linuxconf as great not only for newbies but
also for busy admins.
Jochem
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