Hi, I'm sitting on the fence on this, more towards keeping the old way though.
I generally like text-based configuration because I can auto-generate the configuration using shell scripts. I can also easily grep the part that i want to see with a combination of cat | grep. Another pro I can think of is its portability across systems without any need to install extra config tools. I can easily transfer a conf file across Linux boxes or even to other *nixes easily (provided the software is portable as well). You can tailor your conf file to be as simple or as complicated to suit your software's needs. Of course on the other hand, the conf file might look very scary at first (then again, I think Windows registries are worse) and uniformity would be great. Looking at the amount of configuration available even on the simplest packages, I think centralized system will also be pretty difficult to configure. One obvious advantage of centralized system is that you know your configuration is there, you won't need to remember /etc/.....conf, etc. Now, interestingly, Solaris (starting from version 10) has something similar to what you just described. They have a centralized SMF (Service Management Facility). It doesn't collect config files, but it collect init scripts together. With SMF, developers only need to write an XML file to be supplied to the SMF. The file will describe the dependencies, and initialization stuffs for the service. It's well-received since the old init way (that's prevalent in all *nixes, including UNIX) is quite jarring to organize, especially when many of the scripts depend on one another. (Btw, Debian solved the problem by using auto-calculated dependencies, I think it's in lenny, the next stable candidate.) It will be interesting to see similar efforts done to config files. I'm sure we'll have many people arguing over the pros and cons when such movements start. Regards, Chris On Jan 26, 2008 6:04 PM, Kokhong Cheng <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi All, > > I would like to bring up the topic of Linux configuration. > > Linux (and Unix) systems have long used disparate, free-form, text-based > configuration files in /etc/ for configuration. > > What are some of the drawbacks of this approach? > > Application developers have to write their own configuration parsing > engine. (of course once they have written the first one, the rest > becomes easy, but still, there is this initial hurdle to productivity) > The lack of a consistent/reliable interface to change configuration, > take for example, pppd, vpnc, and dhclient will all overwrite > /etc/resolv.conf with their own settings. > Configuration change is not user-friendly - it took me a few years to > understand the sudoers format - how many Linux users actually have the > skills or patience to understand the grammar of the file? To make > matters worse, different applications have their own grammar. > > Working with embedded systems, all the solutions I have encountered > (some are proprietary, but most are Linux based) utilize a central > "configuration manager" with configuration options organized in a tree > structure, stored in an XML file. This configuration manager acts as a > middle-man for the traditional applications that still read proprietary > configuration files by creating these files with the required settings. > > One application I have found that embraces a centralized configuration > is monowall http://m0n0.ch/. > > I think it is high time to define and implement such a system for > mainstream Linux systems. I would like to ask if there already exist > efforts to have a "config manager" for mainstream Linux system, and at > the same time, ask for your views on this topic - whether you support or > oppose the idea - and what are some of the considerations that we have > to be mindful of? > > Thanks! > Kokhong > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Slugnet mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet > -- contact: +65 97553292 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] facebook: http://nus.facebook.com/profile.php?id=502687583 _______________________________________________ Slugnet mailing list [email protected] http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet
