The Strengths and Weakness of Fedora/RHEL OS management

Stephen J. Smoogen smooge at gmail.com
Sun Mar 26 04:32:30 UTC 2006


On 3/25/06, Shane Stixrud <shane at geeklords.org> wrote:
> Greetings,
>

....

> I was recently tasked with standardizing/documenting our Linux server
> build/configuration process and as part of this process began training
> some of our Windows/Novell administrators to be able to carry out some of
> these basic tasks.  It was this second part of helping train people that
> caused me to examine and re-examine the processes I used for this
> standardization.
>
> My goal was simple in theory, I would use pxe+kickstart and enforce
> standard configurations and policies via a series of post scripts while
> attempting to keep readability, simplicity and supportability from a
> "non-unix guru" perspective as my guiding light (A wise man once said:
> Make it as simple as possible but no simpler).  For those interested an
> example of what I came up with it can be obtained here:
> http://geeklords.org/~shane/kickstart
>
> The process turned out to be not quite as simple as the theory but very
> educational none the less.  To start with I had a number of ways I could
> manipulate my fresh Linux install.
>
> 1) I could create a custom RPM that had all of the changes imbedded in
> config files and rpm scripts that merely overwrote the pre-existing ones.
> Problem being this approach hides the complexity of what all was being
> changed and why.
>
> 2) Use cfengine after the kickstart install.  This of course has some
> advantages over the rpm method but it also hides the same complexity and
> adds some of its own.
>

I am completely missing the point of this letter I realize.. but
doesnt your "The Right Way" also hide all the complex things too. It
either does that or removes a lot of functionality that some admin
needs to complete a job in a slightly different environment... which
means enforcing that everyone's enviromental needs matches what you
are laying out. I have to cover 8 different field environments and
tasks that require that the same tools do something slightly different
each time. Now I can build 8 versions of the same tool that reuses 90%
of the same code or I can increase the complexity of the each tool to
cover all cases.


--
Stephen J Smoogen.
CSIRT/Linux System Administrator




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