RFC: Centrilized managment console

[Neal McBurnett]

Re: 
 https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/ubuntu-centralized-services-administrator

First, thanks!  I think something along the lines of a simplified
admin for servers is critically important for Ubuntu to deliver on its
mission.  And I do think that due to the huge demand, we need a GUI
option, whether or not I use it....

And I also suffer from what I think many on the team do - as a
Unix/Linux hacker for over 30 years, I'm used to the command line and
don't want some simplified tool to muck things up for me - I'm not one
of the target users, and find it hard to find time to get myself in
that mindset and work on this stuff.

But like Dan I also think there is power in "a network-centric
management view".

Now I need some clarifications.  Forgive the brusk tone.  I don't know
the answers - I just think some more clarity and comparison and
investigation will help.

Re: the rationale.

What do you mean by "most of them make some non standard
configurations files, which make difficult for sysadmins to tune their
services.".  Won't the proposed ucsa xml files be the same thing?

Re: the use case: how will this let Bob later "edit the config files
by hand" without the tool getting confused?

Launchpad is littered with unimplemented simple server admin specs.
Why will this be so successful that upstreams or packagers will do the
hard work of doing good backends?

Or why not work with or build on eBox or webmin, and just make a new user
interface (if you think ncurses will really be popular with the Alices
and Bobs of the world)?

Cheers,

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