[K12OSN] synaptic and K12LSTP repositories

Mike Heins k12osn at perusion.com
Sun Aug 21 18:22:11 UTC 2005


Quoting Les Mikesell (les at futuresource.com):
> On Sun, 2005-08-21 at 12:30, Petre Scheie wrote:
> > Ah, yes, so it is.  I think Webmin has a BSD license.  Is there a reason 
> > it's not shipped with K12LTSP or Fedora?
> 
> It could just be historical - long ago RedHat shipped something called
> linuxconf which was an ambitious but slightly insane GUI management tool
> that configured everything whether you liked it or not.  Then they did
> all those python redhat-config-xxx tools instead that store all kinds
> of gunk that really belongs in individual program config files under
> /etc/sysconfig and this became the RedHat way of doing things even
> after the tools were renamed system-config-xxx.  This approach makes
> things easier to edit programmatically at the expense of people who
> expect application config files to contain everything in one place.
> Usually the RH/fedora init scripts pull values from the /etc/sysconfig
> files and pass them to the applications on the command line at startup
> so the programs aren't modified but they don't do quite what you
> expect if you just look at the application's own config file.
> 
> Webmin takes a more distribution-agnostic approach by trying to parse
> existing config files in their native form - but of course it now
> has to accommodate the munged versions on RH/fedora systems too,
> which tends to be a moving target as the system-config-xxx tools
> are added and tweaked.  Personally, I'd rather have seen all the
> effort go into making webmin better or helping people understand
> the native config files instead of avoid them...

I think it more has to do with there being quite a few people who think
having an SUID-root CGI program is insane. They would have a big problem
with putting that out there by default, and I don't think I can blame
them too much.

In practice, webmin seems to be pretty secure and there are a lot
of people using it successfully. I will admit to placing it a couple
of places where the system administrators don't have strong Linux
knowledge. But I don't think it is the right way to run a railroad
if you have an alternative.

-- 
Mike Heins
Perusion -- Expert Interchange Consulting    http://www.perusion.com/
phone +1.765.647.1295  tollfree 800-949-1889 <mike at perusion.com>

People who want to share their religious views with you
almost never want you to share yours with them. -- Dave Barry




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