The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.

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Re: RedHat control panel?



On Thu, 24 Oct 1996, Christoph Lameter wrote:

> >> What about web-based config managers?  
> >
> > yes, web based config tools are much better - they can be used in X
> > (with netscape or mosaic or chimera etc) and in text mode with lynx
> > (as long as the HTML is written so that it looks good in text mode)
>
> I have used Spinner and my main reason for ditching it was the web
> configuration which was slow and not clear enough. Its much easier
> to edit a textfile and see all the things you do before having the
> software read it. One reason Windows is such a horror is the graphical
> configuration where you never know what changes change what else in
> other places.

yep, i agree.  I **MUCH** prefer textfile configuration.  However, lots of
people dont like it, and for some tasks it can be simpler to use a GUI.

that's why my config idea is based around text config files with web/gui
stuff layered on top.


BTW, by "much better" above i meant "given a choice between generic
web-based config tools usable with any browser, and tools based on
X, tk, curses, or whatever THEN the generic web based tools are much
better".

The bottom line, though, is that vi (or ae if you prefer :) can be used
in any environment - virtual console, X window, telnet session, etc.


> > The only problem is that they would depend on installation of apache
> > or cern. IMO a small price to pay.
>
> Big price because much can go wrong with the webserver/browser +
> networking.

true. actually it doesn't have to be apache. it could be a special
purpose "web server" which sits on another port - as long as it talks
http, can run cgi programs, and you can control access to it, it will do
the job. of course, writing such a program is probably more work than
setting up apache to do the job :)

I agree with one point implicit in what you're saying: don't trust a web
based config as the ONLY way of configuring the machine...if it breaks
then the whole system is broken. Which is yet another reason behind
separating the guts of the config system from the user interface - if
worse comes to worst you can just edit the text files and run make.


Craig

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