I want to do a lot of work on the Windows agent to try and make it better. One of the big changes I have planned is getting rid of the Windows GUI. In my opinion the GUI doesn't provide enough value to make it worth maintaining the fairly significant amount of code that it produces as well as the bug reports. Lets look at what the GUI actually provides:
- Version information - When OSSEC was installed - Ability to import key - Ability to change IP address - The information from the key about what is configured currently - Quick links to viewing the logs and config - Help link to the help txt file - Service status information and the ability to change the service state For the help, version and quick links. I think these links are helpful but can be done as shortcuts in the start menu to provide the same convenience. Importing the key is nice and probably the most useful thing but I would argue that this needs to be done once per server. I'd rather make manage_agents.exe the way to do this in the future. Changing the IP address again is something that maybe gets done once. I don't think it is much to ask that someone uses a shortcut link that opens the configuration file in notepad.exe to edit configuration options from now on. This is the only configuration option the GUI is capable of changing. The service information and changing statuses is probably the most useful thing that the GUI does. However, all of this can be done using native windows tools/cmdline. For most things System Administrators have to go into mmc to make changes to services this way. Most of this code is buggy and doesn't work well anyway. Basically, I'd like to get rid of the GUI and all of the code required to make it work so more focus can be put into other features and OSSEC's core. I think the GUI is just a novelty and with the Windows world moving toward a more command line oriented future this makes sense in a lot of ways. I wanted to see if anyone had any strong opinions on the matter before I start working on this as I understand this can be a pretty large change that people may not like. -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ossec-list" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
