TurnKey Linux's take on Ubuntu appliance development: KISS

[Neal McBurnett]

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 12:27:32PM +0200, Liraz Siri wrote:
> Soren Hansen wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 09, 2009 at 07:22:32AM -0200, Carlos Ribeiro wrote:
> >> I'm still not sure if this is as big a deal is it may seem. The
> >> package itself would not alter any system-level configuration file
> >> during its installation. It would provide a script that needs to be
> >> explictily invoked by the user, where it would (more or less
> >> automatically) tune the config files. It's not that much different
> >> than webmin or any other system configuration panel, with the
> >> exception that it's done automatically.
> > 
> > You will notice that webmin is also not support on Ubuntu or Debian..
> 
> Yes, it's a shame. We like Webmin a lot and so do our users. It's
> installed by default in all turnkey appliances and available through our
> package repository.
> 
> >> Also, merging is already a problem even when we simply manually edit
> >> the config files. I see that as a limitation of the packaging system,
> >> and it happens whenever one tries to upgrade/dist-upgrade a heavily
> >> customized system. Some packages are already much smarter in this
> >> regard than others (for instance, it's a long time since I have any
> >> trouble with Apache2) - but others always give me trouble.
> > 
> > This is exactly the sort of problem that will be exacerbated by scripts
> > or whatnot going around editing conffiles. One thing is being reminded
> > of changes you've manually made to a conffile with a text editor when
> > you're doing an upgrade. It's quite a different situation if a script
> > has made changes to a bunch of files and you then have to make a
> > decision about whether you want to keep the patched version of the new
> > one from the updated package. You have no way to answer this question
> > properly, because you a) didn't make the change yourself and b) likely
> > don't understand the motivation behind the specific change, since that's
> > exactly the sort of things that such scripts (or webmin or whatever) are
> > meant to /hide/ from you.
> 
> Are you implying we should attempt to *force* everyone to learn
> configuration file formats and tweak everything by hand? You can do that
> if you like, Webmin doesn't change anything unless you ask it to. But
> for users that don't want to climb that learning curve, Webmin provides
> a web interface that allows users to edit configuration files in a
> slightly more user-friendly fashion.
> 
> If package upgrades assume users are tweaking configuration formats with
> Vim (my favorite) rather than a higher-level tool, perhaps we need to
> figure out how to fix that.
> 
> Frankly, I don't understand anti-Webmin sentiment in Debian and Ubuntu.
> It's always seemed kind of elitist to me.

Thanks folks for this discussion - very valuable.

Two config-related approaches haven't come up yet: Ebox and Augeas.
Liraz, have you all looked at those, either as existing solutions or
as case studies to learn from?

There has been a bit of allusion to the "who's in charge"
complications of making Ubuntu packages for systems that have their
own packaging/dependency/install/update management systems already.
I'll note offhand ruby, python, perl, eclipse et al.  This might be a
good time to review insights from those experiences.

To the TurnKey Linuxs folks, I give my thanks for helping push the
envelope here.  I'll note again here that the example set in Ubuntu
over the last few years by Scott, Ante and others on improving mail
server packaging and integration should be helpful in working out how
to improve integration and packaging for other services.  I've found
the Ubuntu communtity and server team to be very welcoming and easy to
join.  And there is lots of leverage here!

Cheers,

Neal McBurnett                 http://neal.mcburnett.org/