ideal config management framework [was: CPU Frequency Scaling]

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Dec 05, 2006 at 11:41:40AM -0800, Florin Andrei wrote:
> Long-term, it's actually best for the sysadmin to only have to deal with 
> _one_ interface for all configuration tasks. Automating config changes 
> will be made consistent and trivial. Just think of it, you could run 
> (fictional example) something like...

Long term isn't here yet. It's fine to design for long term, but to get from
here to there, please don't throw out "now".

[...]
> I hate the freakin' text files with passion. It would be great if all 

This is a fine viewpoint. It is, however, not universal, and it's better for
Fedora if it's not treated as the gospel.

The system you're proposing seems okay enough, especially if you can get it
to work across platforms. 

It's a lot more useful for me (or anyone in a large heterogeneous
environment) to know how to edit Sendmail and Apache configs on any platform
than it is for me to have a tool that edits any arbitrary config on one
specific platform. Even if the config file is as frustrating as sendmail's.
In fact, the tool is merely annoying, because it becomes a special case.
Being a special case is not how we win.

I realize this specific thread started by talking about a specific case for
which there is no existing functionality, but the basic principle still
applies.



-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org          <http://mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>              <http://linux.bu.edu/>