Eric,

Not trying to fan the flames here, but I am curious. What do you mean by
"manage" the system? Are you gathering statistics via SNMP or something
along those lines? Also, to automate logins to remote systems, would
Perl/Expect and ssh solve the problem?

Just my curiosity, not trying to tell you (or the business) how to operate.

Cheers,
Garrett
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Lee Green" <eric@badtux.org>
To: <plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 2:05 PM
Subject: Re: LAMP web server


> On Wednesday 22 January 2003 01:09 pm, David Mandala wrote:
> > I am a bit confused, I routinely install Red Hat without X or "X"
> > capabilities and it is quite easily maintained and managed. In fact I
> > only have X installed on my personal work stations, not at all on my
> > servers or on the embedded devices I work with (with the exception of
> > the embedded devices that are supposed to have a GUI).
> >
> > Can you explain further, how did you arrive at the conclusion that they
> > require X in order to manage them?
>
> Let's just put it this way. I spent the first few months of my employment
at
> my current job as part of a team writing a system management web console
for
> Red Hat Linux that would allow us to manage all aspects of a Red Hat
system
> without "X". I won't tell you how much money we spent on that piece of
> software, but it was not cheap. (Sorry, it's proprietary, integrated as
part
> of our storage clustering solution). I became quite adept at managing a
Red
> Hat system without "X" while cleaning up what alpha copies of our software
> did to various system files (!), and compared to distros designed for hand
> management (or *BSD), Red Hat is a pain in the #$%@!. The various files
are
> scattered willy-nilly rather than being where, e.g., the Samba Makefile
> normally puts them, and many files were not designed to be edited by
humans
> at all (*YOU* reconstruct an ifcfg-eth0 file that got accidentally zeroed
out
> -- WITHOUT going to another Red Hat machine and simply copying that one
> over).
>
> Anything is doable with Linux. Some things, however, are more aggravation
than
> they're worth. Managing a Red Hat system without "X", in my opinion, is
one
> of those. We did it, and do it, because a third party commercial driver we
> need is only supported under Red Hat. But a) it's a pain in the $W#%@ to
get
> the distro pared down to the point where the "X" libraries and associate
> bloat aren't needed on your hard drive, and b) the system is a pain in the
> #$@%@ to manage once you get it pared to that point. We did it. We do it.
It
> works. But it wasn't just a case of toss the disk into the drive and
install.
> (Toss *WHICH* disk into the drive?! Red Hat is a multi-disk set now!). And
> oh, another beef: the Red Hat installer is the most slug-slow thing I've
ever
> encountered. I don't know what happened between 6.2 and 7.3, but the
> installer went from being a speedy li'l bugger to being slower than the
> Windows installer. AGH!
>
> I've been using Red Hat Linux since version 3.0.3, BTW, so I do know a
LITTLE
> bit about Red Hat Linux...
>
> --
> Eric Lee Green          GnuPG public key at
http://badtux.org/eric/eric.gpg
>           mailto:eric@badtux.org  Web: http://www.badtux.org
>
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