Sowmini.Varadhan at Sun.COM wrote: > I think this discussion is veering off topic (something > along the lines of "Is vi as an admin tool a Good Thing?") > but the problem today is that the administrative model > is subject to change (e.g., the format of files like > /etc/dladm/*.conf is not an exported interface, plus > it's hard to keep track of which files need to > be modified to enable/disable some feature - e.g., we have > too many files in /etc/ that affect interface configuration). > > Having one Stable Interface that tracks sounds like a good idea, > especially if one wants to automate configuration of > a farm of machines. That, I believe, is one of the guiding > principles behind nwam, dladm, etc.
Let me give you an example of why sysadmins want to know "everything". I installed snv106 and started to play around with crossbow. I was using inside a virtual host and then with a reboot, my vnic0 doesn't appear. The standard commands can't see it. A question to crossbow-discuss goes largely unanswered. Now if I translate that to working in an office, using Solaris for some production environment, the it is like that Sun's support is of no help and it's up to me to find out what the problem is and fix it. Now at the moment I'm deliberately playing dumb and trying not to dig into the bowels of crossbow because I don't want to disrupt the system in a way that makes it harder for the folks in MPK to see what's wrong when I'm back there. On the other side, there has been one response from someone who ran into something similar who "fixed" his system by editing one of those magic *.conf files we say not to touch. So if I limit myself to *adm interfaces, I'm probably in a situation where I need to reinstall to fix the box. Do you think that's acceptable? Darren >> Darren Reed wrote: >> >>> Do you have some research to support this statement that the >>> sysadmin doesn't want to know about the underlying implementation? >>> >> I've been biting my tongue for most of this discussion, but >> I just had to respond to this. As a former sysadmin >> (SunOS 4, Solaris, Ultrix, Tru64, FreeBSD, and N flavors of Linux) >> who migrated into driver development, I absolutely *hate* "magic". >> I want to know how everything works. I need to be able to >> read the shell scripts, and find the *text* files backing whatever >> datastore the system has for configuration information. I need >> to know what files I need to backup if a machine is unique, >> and what files to update with tools like cfengine in order >> to make more machines just like the first one. I need to >> be able to fix a problem in single user mode with vi from >> a serial console. I don't want to be surprised by the system >> making a temporary change permanent. >> >> Please keep people like me in mind as you try to make things >> easier to use for Windows / Mac users coming to Solaris. I >> think old farts like me who learned the ropes in the 80s and >> 90s comprise a large part of the Solaris installed base... >> >> Drew >>
