Wild-eyed thinking aloud: Python System Management Infrastructure

[Quinn Dunkan]

On 7 Aug 2001 09:26:54 -0700, Aahz Maruch <aahz at panix.com> wrote:
>In article <jtg0b5guox.fsf at wazor.biostat.wisc.edu>,
>William Annis  <annis at biostat.wisc.edu> wrote:
>>
>>        I was with you up to the web interface.  I don't know about
>>you, but *this* sysadmin breaks out in hives at the idea of putting
>>system control and configuration behind a web server... by definition
>>a public service.
>
>On the gut level, I kind of agree with you.  But let's walk through
>this, shall we?  What, really, is the difference between a telnet
>session and a web session?

Security:  I can install and use ssh easily.  For http, I'm not so sure.  It's
probably pretty easy if you know what you're doing, but I recall all sorts of
stuff about apache patches, httpd.conf changes, certificate authorities,
authentication realms, etc.

Complexity:  With an ssh link you can use plain text.  Over http you have to
use complicated html and use some giant bloated browser to see it.  I use
systems that have no web browser, but do have ssh.  And a web thing is going
to have some complicated nest of cgi scripts that will wind up doing the same
stuff you can do directly with a shell.

Debugging:  I hate debugging web stuff.

Speed:  Web forms are slow and clumsy.

Flexibility:  It's quite handy to write shell or python scripts to mangle and
pipe things into system configuration tools, or grab the output and pass it
somewhere else.

And most importantly, what would a web interface give you?  It just seems like
a slower, more complicated and awkward way to solve the same problems.  It's
like using a complicated remote-control robot to clean your room instead of
just walking in and picking stuff up.  Or, since this is a hypothetical
management system, using a remote control robot to manipulate a a control
panel to manipulate a herd of remote control robots to clean a bunch of rooms.