[mdlug] OT: Microsoft Monopoly

[Jonathan Billings]

On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 09:26:40AM -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> >   At least with plain text, you can
> > put the configuration into proper version control and use a
> > configuration management tool to manage things centrally.
> 
> Sure, *you* can.  But that's just the point.  Everyone roll-your-own
> solution to system administration isn't good system administration.  You
> get hit by a bus.... and pity the poor fool who has to come in to manage
> your systems.

I disagree, using configuration management software *IS* good system
administration.  

The use of version control and a central configuration management
infrastructure is one of the reasons why it is easier for the "poor
fool" to take over.  Changes are documented, and they all come from a
central location.  Check out Puppet, CFengine, Bcfg2, Chef, Radmind,
etc. 

I've run into too many inexperienced sysadmins who just log in to
each system and configured them individually, or reinvented a
management infrastructure completely in their own private world.
Considering you've been a UNIX/Linux admin for 15 years, I'm sure
you've experienced the benefits of a properly managed infrastructure.
It's not reasonable to make a change per-system anymore, although I do
still use vi to edit files before checking them in to the VCS. 

--

I think the reason there is no central registry for all configuration
languages is due to the fact that Linux (and UNIX) has a considerable
amount of history using text files for configuration.  MS was able to
pull off a central registry largely because of it's absolute control
over the OS and it's office products.

On the other hand, there is a diverse source of open source software,
and getting everyone to agree on something like a central
configuration database is rather difficult.  This is why there are a
handful of very popular desktop environments, each with their own
unique capabilities.  It is the nature of an open environment. 

There have been attempts to create a generic configuration
infrastructure in the past (ASN.1? NetInfo?) and several current
implementations (XDG, GConf) but no unified interface.

I've actually found that Augeas (http://augeas.net/) is an interesting
solution to the many-text-config file problem.  It makes the settings
in configuration files available in a tree-like object that you can
manage from a single API, even from a shell script.


-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>