Re: CDD opportunity? (was: [radel@inet.net.nz: Debian Server ideas])

[Steve Kemp <skx@debian.org>]

On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 10:23:01AM -0300, Ben Armstrong wrote:

> Apart from the specific implementation ideas presented by this poster,
> it sounds to me like this is an as-yet unaddressed Custom Debian
> Distribution[0] opportunity, if there are developers who would be
> interested in undertaking such an effort.  In other words, there ought
> to exist a CDD containing a variety of the best software within Debian
> targetted at admins wishing to set up a server box (or a set of server
> boxes) quickly and painlessly.

  I'm not sure that I agree a custom distribution is needed in this 
 case.

  We already have something that is designed to pull in a large number
 of packages arranged by functionality - tasksel.

  When I saw this I thought if we were to extend tasksel to have a
 list of server tasks and give it the ability to run a hook
 program after the installation we'd be a long way there.

  For example:

    [ ]  Task - Setup a webserver
    [ ]  Task - Setup a DNS server

  The first would pull in Apache, Apache-modules, apache-docs.
  The second would pull in bind.

  (Both would install webmin and Mozilla if they were missing and
 afterwards would launch 'mozilla webmin/pagefor{bind apache}')

  No need to complicate things unduly - maybe tasksel isn't the
 best basis, and a GUI program would be better but if it was just 
 a simple wrapper around our dependencies and a group of virtual
 packages followed by a simple menas to invoke a "simple configuration"
 program afterwards we're there..

  Also there may be specific programs which can be used for different
 tools, but in the interests of consistency I've used webmin to
 configure things in this example.

Steve
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