<div>On 2/22/06, Liam Proven <<a href="mailto:lproven@gmail.com">lproven@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> On 2/22/06, Joao Inacio <<a href="mailto:jcinacio@gmail.com">jcinacio@gmail.com</a>> wrote: > Yes, i think that this would be the ideal place to start. > next thing IMHO would be put an administration interface on top of it, > and that's were it gets trickier... Yes, definitely. It seems to me that there would be 3 stages to building such a specialist distro: [1] Assembling the components (probably, into metapackages) & offering an installer to load them onto a PC. [2] Doing some reasonable pre-configuration on them. [3] Putting an admin web GUI on the front. Part 1 is easy. Part 2 is a little more complicated, but far from impossible. It is comparable to the work that's been done tying the components of the Ubuntu desktop together. E.g. for a LAMP server, we'd need to: - configure a default empty database in MySQL; - install a default start page & a rudimentary public site as a directory under Apache, with some very basic template files, for people to get started by modifying; - an FTP server to allow stuff to be uploaded to the server; - and some moderately-privileged site-admin accounts who can upload stuff without having full root privileges. (Disclaimer: I've never used LAMP and know little about it!) Part 3 is the hard bit. Webmin will do it but could do with a lot of simplification. Just installing the relevant modules for each metapackage would be a good start, so that, e.g., if the user installs a LAMP server, they get a version of Webmin that only has AMP-related modules (plus system-wide stuff), no modules for Samba/email/etc. This would make it a lot less intimidating.</blockquote><div> If I understand and know correctly, webmin is not in dapper. Ebox or something else may? </div> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">However, some people seem to have strong feelings against Webmin. I would be interested to know why this is. Long ago - like 8-9y ago or more - I saw it have some problems with configuring Samba, where it failed to read the existing configuration directives in smb.conf and added its own conflicting ones on the end, but it has gone through many versions since then and I am sure it is better now. Alternatively, we could look at adapting one of the other admin-GUI systems. It seems to me that a good place to /start/ would be with perhaps just a stage 1&2 system: just preinstallation & basic pre-configuration. That's more than Debian does for the user! If it was quickly taken up and proved successful, it might generate interest in something more complete? The risk is that if it /didn't/ take off, it might kill off interest and support, of course. > beeing this targeted at dapper +1 for obvious reasons, i would think > that it's feasable to build something from scratch but of course that > would be up to cannonical (in-house or bounty?) True!</blockquote><div> No need to rush up. Even if this project starts now, it is impossible to get it on Ubuntu Server CD for Dapper. Alternativly, we can always include it into universe and promote to main in dapper+1 if it shows usefull. </div> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">> actually, even for dapper it wouldn't be any difficult just to create > a meta-package that depends on apache2, perl, php and mysql: > > $ sudo apt-get install lamp-server Exactly so! This would bring us back up to parity with what the standard Debian installer does. > To summarize, i just want to say that whatever the future plans for > ubuntu server are, they will be good as long as something is done that > guives the user a choice to install a "non-base" system. Agreed.</blockquote><div> Actually, there won't be non-base system. Ubuntu installer strives to do most things to installer itself, and not to the user. That being said , there will be no -pre or -post install configurations of packages or whateva. If the project ran good, then the ubuntu-instant-server package would be installed and you would have the choice of doing whatever you want. I'll try greping my irc logs sometime today for a detailed plan, and let you know if I find it. Best regards, Mario </div> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">-- Liam Proven · <a href="http://livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=lproven">http://livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=lproven </a> Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 · Mob: +44 7939-087884 · Fax: +44 870 1271528 AOL/AIM/iChat: <a href="mailto:liamproven@aol.com">liamproven@aol.com</a> · MSN/Messenger: <a href="mailto:lproven@hotmail.com">lproven@hotmail.com </a> Yahoo: <a href="mailto:liamproven@yahoo.co.uk">liamproven@yahoo.co.uk</a> · Skype: liamproven · ICQ: 73187508 Gmail/Google Talk/Orkut: <a href="mailto:lproven@gmail.com">lproven@gmail.com</a> -- ubuntu-server mailing list <a href="mailto:ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com</a> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server</a> </blockquote> </div>