although i did not hear TAL's talk, i (and others on this list) have
heard this point ad nauseum:
"i just need to fix this one thing; why do i need to automate it?"
much of the time, the underlying point is something rather unattractive:
"i have a symptom in front of me i know how to mitigate; i don't have
the
time/will/desire/energy to fix the real problem right now"
when i take my sysadmin in hand and direct his behaviour, it is almost
always
to do force him to face and resolve the overall problem rather than
just getting
this particular monkey off his back. (and yes, i give him adequate time
to do so.)
i wonder if the increased complexity of administering today's systems
and the increased rate of configuration churn has moved beyond many
sysadmin's
comfort levels, thus almost forcing the treating-a-symptom approach. if
so, this has dire
consequences for our field, for then it is the problem itself that is
the difficulty, and
not the presence/absence of specific tools. a guru elite becomes
necessary, then, simply
to figure out the solution, independently of how it is implemented and
deployed.
andrew
On Oct 12, 2006, at 8:38 PM, Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:
On Oct 12, 2006, at 20:05 , Luke Kanies wrote:
Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:
Luke recently mentioned a presentation by Tom Limoncelli about why
he doesn't do automated configuration management; does anyone have a
pointer to this, or a summary or etc.? I'm still coming up to speed
on a lot of this stuff (and noticing that the currently existing
tools don't in general seem to fit our needs very well... but then
neither does what we're currently using :/ ).
----
Andrew Hume (best -> Telework) +1 732-886-1886
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Work) +1 973-360-8651
AT&T Labs - Research; member of USENIX and LOPSA
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