[Mailman-Developers] Access options for command line tasks

JC Dill lists05 at equinephotoart.com
Tue Jan 3 19:13:57 CET 2006


Barry Warsaw wrote:

>I'm actually thinking we need /less/ magic in command line scripts,
>especially for typical user and admin tasks, because I think
>increasingly, fewer people have access to the command line (or know what
>to do with it when they've got it).
>  
>
Wearing my product manager's hat here - I request that EVERY 
administrative function be usable in all 3 methods - via the command 
line, via email, and via the admin webpage.  The underlying function 
would always be the command line task but it could then be called via 
the other 2 methods.  If this is not already a feature of MM3, I'm 
formally making it a request now.  Please???

As a work-around for those who don't have direct command line access, 
and for ease of implementation in the web UI, I suggest we build a tool 
that takes a line of text via web form input, processes it on the 
command line, and spits the resulting command line text back out on a 
web page (concatenated with previous (in the past x minutes) commands 
and their results from this user, e.g. a screenshot of the command line 
interface).  This tool would be a work-around for all the places where 
we haven't built a more elegant web interface for the given command line 
tool/function.  The server admin should have options to enable or 
disable this access when installing mailman, or when 
installing/configuring each new list.  Are there security implications 
with this that are not easily addressed?

Finally, to address Barry's concern that many people don't know what to 
do with the command line - even if they don't know what to do, it's 
still useful for them to have access to it.  I've done a lot of work on 
other people's PCs where I access the command line and type a few 
commands and this gets me info to help me solve their problem.  In some 
cases I talk them thru using the command line themselves (e.g. tell them 
how to do a ping, or tracert).  If this tool was not available at all, 
it would make it much harder for me to help them fix their problems.  I 
expect that similar things will happen when experienced mailing list 
server admins try to help novices, so we avoid designing a system 
without the tools that the experienced server admins need to get the job 
done.

jc




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