I read the ditty on this functionality. I think there's a lot of very good ideas there. Where you suggest that the proposed functionality sounds like Webmin, I would say no, it sound like NetDirector. Much less well known than Webmin, NetDirector was started in 2004 by Emu Software (the company I founded) and is living on as a joint project between myself and the good people at Ubuntu's top partner in Australia, Epoch Labs. We have a new release hitting sourceforge this week, which will fix a bunch of bugs, move to GPL and add Windows support. Release 4.0, which ought to happen in a couple months, will add the ability to run scripts with scheduling, RBAC, rollback, etc and we'll add a generic file push, so an admin can manually edit foo service. And in the meantime, we want to add plugins to Yum and Apt to compliment the existing RHN plugin.
Here's where NetDirector fits. Today, you've got tools like Webmin and YaST, which are great for small simple networks that are easy to use, even for a non Linux expert, but that don't scale. Then, you've got cfengine, puppet, etc, which scale beautifully, but that aren't easy to use. NetDirector tries to fill the middle - there's a UI for those that want it, and you can push changes to multiple servers, schedule them for the weekend, get an email when they happen, lock down users via RBAC, etc. Here's how one of our users put it: "NetDirector saves me on average 10 hours a week.By autodiscovering the configurations on my servers, NetDirector helped me fix several anomalies introduced by junior Admins before they impacted service."
I really would like to find a way to "cross the streams" with NetDirector and func, to borrow a line (sort of) from Ghostbusters.
Not sure there is a way, and not sure there needs to be one - I support what you guys are doing. But I hate duplication of effort.
Cheers,
--
Greg
Greg Wallace
SkypeID: gregwallaceemu
O: 617.830.1835
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Profile: www.linkedin.com/in/gtewallace
Project: www.netdirector.org
Blog: www.jocsflorals.blogspot.com
On Feb 18, 2008 5:25 PM, Michael DeHaan <mdehaan@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So one of the ideas we've had for Func is extending FuncWeb to do
system-config-* like tasks, since it seems ideally suited to the purpose.
I've written up some stuff on the subject here:
https://fedorahosted.org/func/wiki/SystemConfigIdea
see also https://fedorahosted.org/func/wiki/FuncWebNotes
I think the main areas of work right now on Func should be:
(a) getting the webapp polished up and packaged, since it's shiny
and will make people (and a different class of users, even) want to use
more of Func
(b) finishing the certmaster split so we can get more applications
to use that infrastructure (and the more apps that use that
infrastructure, the easier it is to deploy funcd).
Are there any features you would like to see in that kind of web app?
Comments about things you don't like in existing webapps are welcome too
-- we do want to start small though, system-config seems like a good
start. We're not trying to replicate anything (IMHO) crazy strange
like Webmin's Apache module. Those are places where config management
is good to have, but if you just have a handful of systems, it's nice to
have alternatives -- especially if you just want to look at something on
a remote box or run something quick. It should also made clear we're
not looking to increase dependency bloat by adding a lot of stuff --
Func has a good amount of cross-distro interest too, so we will try to
not do anything too RH centric. Where we do make that mistake it will
most likely be at the Func module level, so patches to make things more
portable at that level are always welcome.
--Michael
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