Greetings list, First off I want to say thank you for such a great "product". I started using Unattended last year and then got into a ton of budgeting, planning, etc so our XP upgrade, the main reason for starting to use Unattended, was delayed. But now, with all that over (for now), I have downloaded the newest version and am currently running the very rockin prepare script! So thanks and hats off to all of you.
On to the real reasons for this message: Package Management *********************** I was reading through the mail list archives and saw that package management is something that is needed/wanted. I agree wholeheartedly. I wanted to see if we were on the same page here -- Package management in the way I read it is a system that would keep an Unattended server up to date with the latest patches, hotfixes, application installers, etc. Does that seem a fair assumption? If so, perhaps we could adopt a similar strategy to the Gentoo Portage system. (For those of you not familiar with Gentoo or Portage ... Gentoo is a distribution of Linux and Portage is a package management system written for said distro.) I use Gentoo on a number of machines at work and love the portage system. It handles a lot more than we might need for unattended but some of the design principles seem to be a good fit. Having a central registry of all these "packages" that we can sync to would be ideal. Letting "maintainers" update these packages would be even better. Has anyone put specific thought into this? If so, what was it? And, what would be the next steps? If we all need it and it is just going to need someone to write it I would like to volunteer. My expertise is in web programming anyway, that seems a logical way to do it. I have a ton of bandwidth at work (I am on a university campus) and could have a test server up nice a quick. If no one else has really looked into this I can start to formalize my thoughts and present a design recommendation to the list. Post Install Usage *********************** Or, Client Package Management. The other side of the coin is that if our servers are updated with the latest packages how do we keep the client machines going. I know that this is a little out of the scope of an Unattended install project, but like I mentioned above ... All the scripts are written for package installation, it would seem practical to reuse this immense effort. I know that some of you have thought of this, or are doing it. If you are already doing some of this, is it through login scripts? Or some other way? Using a subset of the Unattended logic in login scripts makes sense to me. My thought is that this would apply to adding applications (packages) to an existing machine as well. The Rest(TM) *********************** These aren't as thought out as the stuff above (ha!) but I wanted to get them out there while I was thinking of them. [Most of this is predicated on me having a decent inventory (asset management) system in place. I am getting ready to write one up though, and figured if any of this fits I can take it into account.] * Administrative interface: Here is an example -- I know I am having a new user start, they are going to get the base install, the sales install, and a couple of other apps too. I log in to the web interface of my Unattended server, select the machine from my inventory, select the os, select base, sales, then select the other applications from my catalog of installs. This creates a file like the .csv examples so that the appropriate os and applications are installed. (If all this logic is being used to maintain the machines as well, you could log in and select an application to *add* to a specific machine and it would be the next time the logged in!) The admin side could also be used to maintain site configuration files, like the [_meta] info. * Logging: When a machine is built the log files (or entries) are stored on the server and accessible via the administrative interface. This allows me to see what has been done to a specific machine. These entries would be written when software is added as well. * License counts: Now I am just wishing aren't I? If I have a fixed amount of licenses for a specific application I can decrement that number when it is selected from the interface (or maybe when it is installed), unless the user is already licensed for it...etc etc Does any of this sound like it could be usable by someone other than me? If so, what kinds of technologies would you like to see used? I tend to lean toward the stuff that can run on multiple platforms (the LAMP framework is good for that). - For the web stuff would you rather see PHP, or Zope, or ASP , or ?? - How about data storage (MySQL, MS SQL, or ??) *********************** I know this is pretty scatter brained but I have had it all on my mind for several months now and finally have some time to throw at it. I am not putting these ideas out there in the hopes that someone else will do it -- I am soliciting some input before I get started. Oh, and feel free to tell me that this is all just the medication talking! ;) Thanks for listening! Don ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click _______________________________________________ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
