[Web-SIG] windows, pywebd, webctl

[Brian Sutherland]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2007 at 10:01:20AM -0400, Jim Fulton wrote:
> 
> On Mar 12, 2007, at 1:26 AM, Brian Sutherland wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 01:22:58PM -0500, Chad Whitacre wrote:
> >> Jim,
> >>
> >> First, your comments re: paying attention to sysadmins are
> >> well-taken. Thanks.
> >
> > I was pointed to this conversation and would like to comment  
> > wearing my
> > sysadmin hat about what I would like. How I think web applications
> > should be installed on unix. Basically, I'll just go through what
> > happens when I install apache, squid or postgres on linux.
> >
> > When I install an application that is a daemon,
> 
> There is an interesting subtlety here.  I think of Zope (or  
> applications built using Zope components) as applications that can be  
> run as one or more daemons.  To me, a daemon is a particular instance  
> of an application, not the application itself.  I (and my SAs) prefer  
> to separate software installation from configuration.  We prefer that  
> these be 2 steps.  We often run multiple daemons of the same  
> application on a single machine. The configuration of these daemons  
> (and cron jobs, and so on) are controlled from a central  
> configuration database that is mostly independent of the software  
> install.  We don't want deamons installed automatically when an  
> application is installed.

Then perhaps you are more interested in a structure like the one
postgresql uses, where there is a namespace in /etc and /var/lib for the
specific instance of postgres. All, however, are run as the same system
user. 

Also, I'll note that a well designed packaging system should _never_
blindly overwrite already existing files in /etc, so I would implement
your case as:

* Install predefined configuration files in /etc
* Install daemon package

-- 
Brian Sutherland