Ryan,
On Fri, 7 Jul 2000, Ryan Hayle wrote:
ryan Yes, that approach makes a lot of sense--what I was asking was whether
some
ryan such system exists already. Unfortunately, I've also got to try to train
ryan NT-monkeys to do this, and so I need some type of GUI or web interface,
ryan which was why I was considering qmail, and the qmailadmin program. I
guess
ryan I'm just looking for some simple solution to avoid having to write and do
ryan all of this myself. Definitely an area where Linux is lacking...perhaps
it
ryan is something I could work on--a Debian-specific solution of some kind.
ryan
ryan In general, however do most ISP's simply go and write custom scripts for
ryan everything? Or do they just do it manually? I've only got about 10
domains
ryan right now, but once we get more, I can easily imagine a nightmarish
ryan situation--forgetting one file, setting one permission wrong, or
something.
I know, that's how our little ISP started. We understood that the key to success
would be software, software software.
As far as I know, and speaking very generally:
- The large ones ( Thousands of virtual hosts ) essentially employ a person
who's job it is to look after
just one aspect, ie DNS server, Web servers, mail relays etc. There is
enough work in just each area to keep someone ( or perhaps a whole
division) occupied. They get a large software supplier/systems integrator
like Sun, Microsoft, IBM etc. to write software systems for them.
- The medium ones (hundreds-thousands of virtual hosts) Develop their own
systems, scripts, procedures in-house. I would class siliconBLUE in here.
There is often a significant investment in the software developed and
these, after all, are commercial organisations that will want to make some
return on that investment. They won't generally put their software in the
public domain because:
1. They have a signicant investment in software development that
they will want to recover.
2. They won't want to give away any competitive edge.
- The small ones do it all manually. This is a nightmare as numbers grow.
I am a complete supporter of public domain software and I particularly like the
Debian approach. Most of the GUI type tools I have seen, though, tend to be just
a GUI interface on the front of existing processes and systems. They don't
actually add much and the user still needs to know most of the technicalities of
what they are doing. If you are going to write software for front desk monkeys
(no disrespect intended) then you need to think about a conceptual
layer/model/paradigm that is above the technicalities, that your staff can
understand in whole.
Then program to that conceptual model so that the staff only interact with that
model, manipulating it to do what they want. The software should then handle the
real systems underneath to produce the result that they want.
For example, they might want to:
Add a new domain and virtual web server.
The software could handle that. They don't necessarily need to know that this
task involves manipulating DNS zone files and adding a virtual host entry to a
web server. The software should handle those real things.
Cheers
Mike
ryan
ryan
ryan
ryan Thanks,
ryan Ryan
ryan
ryan -Original Message-
ryan From: Jeremy C. Reed [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ryan Sent: Friday, 07 July, 2000 3:19 PM
ryan To: Ryan Hayle
ryan Cc: 'debian-isp@lists.debian.org'
ryan Subject: Re: Virtual Domain Solution
ryan
ryan
ryan On Fri, 7 Jul 2000, Ryan Hayle wrote:
ryan
ryanThis is an overly general question, but I've found very little info
ryanon this so I thought I would ask here. What is the best
ryan solution for
ryanISP hosting of virtual domains? Are there any integrated packages
ryanwhich can handle web/email/ftp access on a per-domain, per-user
ryanbasis?
ryan
ryan Do you need websites for all of your users?
ryan
ryanRight now, I am using exim for email, with gnu-pop3d and the virtual
ryandomains patch. I am adding each virtual domain to the apache config
ryanmanually, and then to the exim config, storing everything in
ryan/virtual/domain.com. I'm not even getting into FTP access. There
ryanmust be a better way to do this.
ryan
ryan What do you mean by a better way? Is it because you are
ryan doing all the
ryan setups manually with each step one at a time? You may want to
ryan make some
ryan scripts to automate your steps.
ryan
ryan I think you just need a few scripts:
ryan
ryan 1) add a new domain script
ryan a) add zone info for dns
ryan b) add domain-name to your mail local deliveries file
ryan (maybe in your
ryancase: /etc/virtual/domains)
ryan c) add a user to Unix password database (/etc/passwd) for the
ryanwebsite/webmaster
ryan d) create home and
