Re: [seul-edu] Introduction and question

["Stephen C. Daukas" <stephen@daukas.com>]

At 11:35 PM 6/10/2002, Dave wrote:
[snip]
>One thing I haven't seen discussed is the
>availability of management tools. Is there something
>along the lines of Novell's zenworks to manage Linux
>workstations. I use zenworks to install application
>software, apply patches, change system settings etc on
[snip]

There are several answers to your question, depending on what linux 
distribution you are using.
Of course, the real answer is that you need to understand what is going on 
under the hood because that is the only way you will be able to take on 
whatever comes your way.

The search for a grand unified sysadmin tool for UNIX has been going on for 
years (at least 20 that I'm familiar with).  None of the ones that have 
been put forth have obviated the need for knowing what config file does 
what and how.  HP, Sun, IBM, and with the latest UNIX variants known as 
Linux, RedHat, SuSE, etc., etc., have all introduced sysadmin tools for the 
OS as well as some of the GNU tools out there.  Some of these tools are 
more perverse than others and some did a great job for some of the tasks, 
but there has never been one that did it all in a completely reliable 
way.  I'm most familiar with Red Hat and SuSE linux.  Redhat had deprecated 
their admin tool known as linuxconf.  SuSE should probably do the same with 
YAST.  (Neither of these tools will work with the other distro.)  The 
underlying issue here is that the way in which the config files are 
organized and named is different from distribution to distribution!  You 
have to know how each distribution organized the files system and whether 
it messed with the (de facto) UNIX conventions (e.g., the RC file 
structure) or not.

As part of each distribution trying to differentiate themselves and gain 
market share, they have managed to perpetuate the same issues that plagued 
UNIX back in the 80's...  Each is different, each presents its own set of 
admin tools, and each has their following that will claim one is better 
than the other.  Short answer:  you will not find one tool that will allow 
you to completely manage a heterogeneous linux environment, at least not 
yet.  ;-)

Having said all that, there are tools available that will help, but they 
may require you to run a service you had no plans to otherwise run.  Take 
for example, WebMin - a reasonably nice graphical admin tool that requires 
you to run a web server.  This handles many things reasonably well, but 
isn't perfect.   Then again, it may be "good enough" for what your 
situation requires on the Linux side of things.  There is also the option 
of running something like VNC that would give you a desktop for each 
machine you want to manage, including Windows.  This approach is similar to 
an old-style way admins used to manage multiple UNIX workstations using 
telnet, but this adds an interesting level of complexity and requires 
constant care and feeding by a human.  Using any of these tools, however, 
will not help you when your systems gets tied-up in knots and the tool 
itself, can't seem to write a locked file, or claims it fixed the problem 
when it didn't, or stops working altogether for some unknown reason!

Anyway, enough said. Good luck in your search.

Steve