[rhelv6-list] LDAP without the cruft

[Bryan J Smith]

William Hopkins <we.hopkins at gmail.com> wrote:

> I understand for many of them they gain popularity because they make
>
desktop maintenance easier, but I resist their encroachment in the server
>
world;
>

This is probably the most over-stated falsehood.  Most of the new solutions
actually target Server solutions more better than Desktop integration.
 There is a heavy request for many features, including resource and other
management, not just services.

E.g., when it comes to system control and management, I've been at sites
who run either Cluster Suite (Luci/Ricci) on a standalone system just to
track/handle resource changes, or monit from EPEL as an alternative.

Both are not remotely as effective as something that uses the pre-existing,
message passing in the kernel and device layers, let alone looks at sockets
to ... gasp ... verifies if a service is actually running.  It's also going
to finally standardize monitoring tools, instead of a lot of different
solutions out there that "poll" things (quite inefficient).

More on the system security side, SSSD finally updates some very, very
legacy and aged, disseparate modules, and vastly improve them.  E.g., in
its LDAP modules, SSSD actually uses more updated OpenLDAP client libraries
than some of the older ones (some are way out of compliance too).

Even many in the Debian world has a lot of praise for SSSD.  I know many
Ubuntu users who don't want to go back.  ;)

 philosophically they don't line up with the UNIX/Linux mindset.
>

And probably the second most over-stated falsehood.  This was also stated
when System-V like init came about during UNIX standardization efforts in
the '80s and early '90s.  And then it was stated again when people were Red
Hat "pushing SysV-init on everyone" in the later '90s.

Many other UNIX flavors have moved to modern system control and management
solutions, and dropped "static" shell files as well.


>  Luckily, in the Linux world we are still allowed to choose.
>

Depends.  A lot of the old solutions just don't do much in comparison.
 They don't have features or modules for many things.  And some are way
outta compliance in several respects.


> Anyway, that's my little rant on that subject, thanks for your help.
>

Unfamiliarity bothers a lot of people.  But most of the "common arguments"
are actually falsehoods that have no basis in UNIX history, only UNIX
assumption.  ;)

-- bjs
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