Ubuntu Server graphical interface?

[Martin Hess]

I find people who think in terms of a few servers will at times find a  
desktop GUI compelling, but once you move to hundreds or thousands of  
servers the idea of connecting into a desktop GUI on each machine to  
administer is beyond ridiculous.

I think GUIs are fine but only if they can be used control whole  
swaths of machines at once i.e. :

	* upgrade some package on some set of machines
	* revert to prior package on some set of machines
	* compare machines for installed package differences
	* change netfilter policies on some set of machines to refuse or  
allow a certain type of traffic
	* start/stop service on some set of machines
	* change config file on some set of machines
	* ect...

The list of course is pretty much endless but you get the idea. When  
you have many machines it is pretty much out of the question to  
connect to each one and administer it individually by hand, either buy  
GUI or shell.

I think any server GUI that is consider should be scalable. It should  
be able to move beyond the needs of one or 2 servers and be able to  
handle many servers.

Proposal:

I propose creating requirements for a server GUI and then see if we  
can find anything that meets it. So far I think I've seen the following:

1) Optional - must not be required for Ubuntu Server
2) Secure - must not have known security issues, must have good known  
security architecture
3) Scalable - must be able to administer sets of machines (I know  
there is not necessarily any consensus on this one and people might  
reject it as a requirement)
4) ?

Shameless plug for #3:

* gets xwindows off the servers which is a know security risk and  
resource hog
* potentially can require nothing more than sshd and preshared keys on  
all the servers


On May 3, 2008, at 9:34 AM, Leandro Pereira de Lima e Silva wrote:

> I'm talking about virt-install, which will open a VNC connection to  
> the machine and only allow connections from localhost.
>
> Cheers, Leandro.
>
> 2008/5/3 Ante Karamatic <ivoks at grad.hr>:
> On Sat, 3 May 2008 12:15:07 -0300
> "Leandro Pereira de Lima e Silva" <leandro at limaesilva.com.br> wrote:
>
> > I think that is necessary for creating virtual machines following
> > Ubuntu Server guide, isn't it?
>
> If you are talking about virt-manager, then no. virt-manager is a tool
> you'll use on you workstation and manage virtual machines on a pool of
> ubuntu servers.
>
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>
>
>
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> Leandro Pereira de Lima e Silva --
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