Peter Tribble wrote: > So, a question for the weekend: > > When administering something, do you prefer to issue a bunch of commands > to set configuration parameters, or edit a configuration file that the > thing can read? > > (Where edit doesn't necessarily mean vi or emacs, but could also mean the > automated generation of a configuration file via any means. In fact, normally > the automated way rather than the by hand way.) >
Good and fun question. Obviously, it depends on the implementation... we've all seen good and bad examples of each. In general, I'd say CLI. Disk configuration is a good example; VxVM vs Linux RAID. Continuing with the storage example, I hate tools that opt to use multiple configuration tools, such as LVM's lv/pv/vg/blah commands. But when it comes down to it, I opt for CLI mostly because you typically get quick feedback on whether or not your syntax was wrong or you did the wrong thing. With files the edit/start/edit/start/edit/start cycle gets old. The interesting middle ground is shells such as Solaris is now more commonly using, example svccfg and zonecfg. Offers the best of both worlds, but I still like traditional CLI. benr. _______________________________________________ sysadmin-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/sysadmin-discuss
