[OT] Debian mailinglists [was: RE: Debian or Ubuntu?]

[Mario Vukelic]

On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 16:47 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
> I didn't think so, but I'll try a different approach :-)
> 
> I help maintain a machine hosting about 6 or 7 different web servers, all
> proxied by one Apache virtual host.  They're all identical from a
> configuration viewpoint, except for the actual internal URL, but every time
> the actual administrator wants to create a new instance, he has to call me
> to write the changes to the Apache config - and all _I_ do is copy and
> paste the last line of the rewrite rules and then change the URLs.  A
> monkey could do it... and would cost a lot less than me.

We have been using a different definition of "configuration". To me,
configuration means the inital setup of the conf file, with its possibly
many, many options. 

What you described here, I would have called "deployment" or maybe
"instantiation". And I agree, there is probably a high number of far
better methods to do this than the procedure you seem to use.

The funny thing is, however, that these methods are _only possible
because apache lets you hand-edit the config files (or rather, allows
you to machine-generate them). If your proposal were in place, you would
be out of luck if the designer of the GUI configurator had for some
reason not thought of your specific situation.