Server GUI Configuration Tools

[George Farris]

On Tue, 2006-24-10 at 00:20 +0900, Arwyn Hainsworth wrote:

> A simple, easy server configuration GUI is a must for most small
> businesses, since they generally don't have the resources to get
> decent IT staff that can admin a linux box. That said, a local X-based
> GUI would not be a good idea, some of the reasons have already been
> mentioned I believe, so I won't repeat them. 
> 
> What I would like to see is a _remote_ Gtk-based GUI that connects
> securely to a daemon that runs on the server. No X overhead, no Apache
> overhead, just a small daemon. If done properly, this could help make
> inroads into the cheap, easy, small business server market, which is
> still MSs domain. 
> 
> I'm up for assisting with a spec. Does someone want to write it, so I
> can 'assist'. :)

This is a good idea, however, I would really like to see a
curses/console front end as well.  There are many times one has to do
something fairly simple but too many steps via the command line.

Also, one may not always have a computer around to configure the server,
standing in a server room for example.  Console tools have ALWAYS been a
life saver when dealing with servers and I highly recommend Ubuntu
doesn't leave that out.  Even a simple task as creating a user is much
easy in a curses form than trying to remember all the command line
switches to adduser.  Safer too, get it right once and don't worry about
it again.  Ssh is just way to handy, add a bit of sugar to the console
tools even as a backup.

Cheers