Frank Rietveld wrote:
> > Everything is automatic. My ifup even knows Linux 2.0/2.1/2.2 since
> > some network commands are changed. Try that in Slackware.
> Same as my last statement, ifdown doesn't always work, on the webserver,
> ip's that are removed by ifdown are still bound to the eth-card...
> Okay, maybe I did something wrong, but again, such scripts make ppl
> beleive they'll get an error message.
>
> So my point is: Make such scripts for real newbies or don't make em
> at all, it makes things confusing.
Well. We can consider the two statements:
1. if something may be wrong, it will do
2. more things are human-proof, more the underline software is complex
The first (a famous murphy law) is not enougth in the mind of
programmers that produces nice things like scripts, etc. etc. Don't
forget to check what really happens. If in doubt, check twice :-)
The latter is the core of our problems. BSD approach to system
initialization is simple, so is simple to learn. The simpliest thing to
learn in BSD style is that you must do a lot of work manually. The
script don't fail. You do it, so is your problem ;-)
If you run Linux (or other os) in your home pc, is good to have all the
stuffs in a few scripts. But try to manage a bunch of systems in this
way and you get lost at the light speed. The same if you want to have a
package that automatically add a service startup in the init scripts. It
isn't only a painfull work of batch editing, but is really prone to do a
lot of mistakes, because who really known what you put in these init
scripts? What happen if you manually edit the scripts? Batch editing
involves use of keywords/string to match blocks of text to add or
remove, and this is really easy to break.
On the other side, SysV style is not so easy to understand, but is more
easy to manage in a large environment. But I must agree, It's is not
really true in current Linux implementations, like RedHat. The use of
separate space for scripts, datas and common functions is a good choice,
the same for a proper use of symlinks, but *HEY!*, I sed "proper use"
...
It's is really hard to avoid the temptation to make complex things when
you can do it simple :-) And as I can see, the RedHat people are falling
in this hole. The idea of /etc/sysconfig dir was good. But a lot of
vital datas are spread across the filesystem, some in /etc dir, some in
/etc/packagenames/ dir, some hidden in those network self-configuring
script, some other are produced on-the-fly by nice cryptic programs like
linuxconf (this kind of "utilities" tends to induce a state of
depression in sysadmins :)
We are installing a lot of ISDN cards in our systems. I've tried to
figure how to setup a ifup/ifdown using RH conventions, and after some
days of frustrating work, I've create my own script "isdn" placed in the
init.d directory, that use a plain data text "isdn.cfg" in
/etc/sysconfig dir. Geee, is not so difficult to make simple things :-)
We don't want an unique moloch config place like the incubus-register
file of windoze, neither a neural-network like config system that
bounces inside itself hundreds of times before to say "hey, i must
activate this program with this parameters". What we want is a simple
but scalable configuration sctructure, than is able to mantain a
separation from "admin level" and "system level": a place where data's
are kept (admin level, where people can easily change the parameters),
and a place where scripts are kept (system level, people don't need to
change them at all).
At least we can avoid the use of symlinks, simply using a convention
like, say, in the datafile used by the script we define a variable
called "SERVICENAME_STARTUP" that can have the values ON, OFF or MANUAL
(trivial meaning).
BTW, to keep this thread OT :-), I have a question related to 2.2
release: in a machine running 2.2.0-pre6 we have a eth0:1 and eth0:2
(virtual interfaces) configured. Running 2.0.36 release both of them
were initializated at system startup, running 2.2 not. I'm able to do an
"ifup eth0:1" manually after boot, and the "eth0" interface is well
managed during startup. What I missed?
--
Kanna (Lorenzo Canovi) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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