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Well, as you point it out:<br>
"If the tool forces the user to do things a particular way, then
the tool is working against, rather than for, the user."<br>
<br>
My experience with infrastructures and especially configuration
management tools is that you can't have both automatic-easy-no-hands-on
configuration and manual configuration of the same application
simultaneously. If one attempts to make a "perfect" configuration tool,
he will quickly realize the human being is unpredictable and sometimes,
god forbid, stupid. Compensating for the human factor is a never ending
quest which eventually force the choice between total control over the
configuration by the tools or total configuration by the user/admin. If
you don't believe me, look at a popular OS called Windows, made by
Microsoft. Their attempt at providing a unified "interface" to all
configuration and management aspects of the machines inadvertently
fails as one almost always has to go into the "registry" to fix
something a user (also called viruse) did or didn't do.<br>
<br>
Furthermore, totally interfaced control over a complex backend is
also failure-proned. One of my IT colleagues experienced weird name
resolution problems that were eventually resolved by deleting entries
in an AD using OpenLDAP tools accessing the said AD through a
translation backend (the interface to the AD failed to report the
keys...even the search engine for the advanced management)<br>
<br>
Obviously, this view is a can-O-worms and I really don't want to
start this philosophical debate. My point is actually that I want the
project to adhere to the Gentoo philosophy as closely as possible and I
can hardly see how this can be the case when I _impose _ some
configuration decisions (ie: I'm not asking the user what ACL to put
into slapd and how to construct system-auth).<br>
<br>
This said, my approach at modifying the configuration files is
using a "general" .conf file (ie: we could call it either a
domain-def.conf or local-machine-def.conf file) which (would/should)
sources as much information form the gentoo-specific /etc/conf.d file
and patch in where specifics aren't defined. If this can be accepted by
the powers that my be in Gentoo as an approach to "guiding" the initial
setup of a machine (as performed by src_install (or should it be
pkg_setup) ) then fine!<br>
<br>
But, like I said when choosing to make the script, some of the
steps need to be accomplished in an authoritative manner and in a
specific sequence, which cannot be guaranteed by portage.<br>
<br>
Now, following what Donnie pointed me to on the Seed Linux mailing list
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://groups.google.com/group/seed-linux-dev/browse_frm/thread/d5ab069f47de4b76">http://groups.google.com/group/seed-linux-dev/browse_frm/thread/d5ab069f47de4b76</a>?
) and more specifically this post about global configuration
management:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://groups.google.com/group/seed-linux-dev/browse_thread/thread/73cb8a4fef940903">http://groups.google.com/group/seed-linux-dev/browse_thread/thread/73cb8a4fef940903</a>
, I believe we have something interesting that may result from merging
my script into proper Seed Linux Ebuilds and getting some consensus on
the configuration definition.<br>
<br>
Eric<br>
<br>
PS: To answer the original e-mails question: yeah, I think the
philosophy applies to the project. At the end, the user is supposed to
end up with a working system that remains 100% a Gentoo system (with
minimal overlay interaction) most of the hard work being
auto-configuration to _get going_... The user is then free to go and
break it all by modifying the config files, the I will painstakingly
keep as close to the proposed ones from the original ebuilds ;)<br>
<br>
Donnie Berkholz wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:20080618224600.GF24320@comet
" type="cite">
<pre wrap="">On 22:07 Mon 16 Jun , Eric Thibodeau wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">_*LDAP:*_
I spent many hours (way over the 30 hours I had promised myself to
pass/week on SoC) creating an LDAP-as-auth-backend auto-install script.
It's not simple because Gentoo's philosophy is that ebuilds do as little as
possible and the admin does the work.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Hmmm ... you might want to read
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/philosophy.xml">http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/philosophy.xml</a> again and consider how it
applies to this project.
Thanks,
Donnie
</pre>
</blockquote>
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