Very Computer

Hi,

I'm writing a paper regarding text-based admin. vs. GUI based admin.
I'll thank you for answering these questions:

1. Can you define your experience with the following: (1 none, 5 expert)
    a. Windows.
    b. Unix (any version)
2. Please rank the following approaches for administration. (1. hate it, 5
the best)
   a. text based administration(configuration files)
   b. GUI based administration
   c. both
3. Can you explain the reasons for the selections you made ?

Thanks,
Avi.

Do you post the results?
Where do you post the results?

--
Kurt Mueller

This we be a part of my Msc. thesis.
I'm trying to compare vaious topics in Linux, Windows and QNX.
Administration is a sub-topic in my "Ease of use" chapter.

Avi.

On Thu, 11 May 2000 14:11:17 +0200,

+ This we be a part of my Msc. thesis.
+ I'm trying to compare vaious topics in Linux, Windows and QNX.
+ Administration is a sub-topic in my "Ease of use" chapter.

You're aware you'll have a biased sampling? and your committee is
OK with it?

James
--
Consulting Minister for Consultants, DNRC
The Bill of Rights is paid in Responsibilities - Jean McGuire
To cure your perl CGI problems, please look at:
<url:http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html>

It's OK.
Just a small section which tries to understand people thoughs about this
issue. Not something I would call "statistically accurate" :-)

Avi.

On Thu, 11 May 2000 16:51:36 +0200,

+ It's OK.
+ Just a small section which tries to understand people thoughs about this
+ issue. Not something I would call "statistically accurate" :-)

Ah, ok. :)

James
--
Consulting Minister for Consultants, DNRC
The Bill of Rights is paid in Responsibilities - Jean McGuire
To cure your perl CGI problems, please look at:
<url:http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html>

2

Quote:> >     b. Unix (any version)

4

Quote:> > 2. Please rank the following approaches for administration. (1. hate
> > it, 5
> > the best)
> >    a. text based administration(configuration files)
4
> >    b. GUI based administration
3
> >    c. both
4
> > 3. Can you explain the reasons for the selections you made ?

First I d' like to say, that it is good to have ascii-files
for the admin, so you can easy make printouts, save it to
diskettes, copy it to other machines, make a lot of comments
in it (DO YOU??), and so on.

For the experienced admin, it is better to have text-based
admin because you only need your favourite text editor to
change settings. (Maybe sometimes the manual).

For the not so experienced admin, it may be of help, to have
a GUI which offers choices, makes hints, presents you all
the fill ins, makes also some checks. So you don't need
to have the manual allways at hand.

So the best would be, a GUI, that reads and writes text-based
configuration files.

For the complexity of todays systems, I don't think
that there can be only GUI admin. How would a GUI for
eg a firewall look like?

Do you ask for the typical system administrator tasks, or
also things like choosing a printer, setting paper size
and the like?

Gruessli

--
Kurt Mueller

I'm a bit new to NT, I'm just completing my MCSE but I have a few years of
experience in Linux/Unix systems.
From my experience I think that text based admin in the most of the cases is
the best solution, you may disagree but lets see....

If you have to create 3000 accounts, with mail accounts, create a home
folder and assign permissions to those folders; it would take un eternity to
do in a GUI, but with a program like Excel you can create a script in no
time.

Of course a based GUI is usefull, there are a lot of task that you can do
using it, but if you have large amount of tasks my view is always text-based
scripts and commands.

I think my experience with Linux, and the kind of admin in Linux made me
take this way, but thinks about it...

    Pedro Sousa

Quote:> Hi,

> I'm writing a paper regarding text-based admin. vs. GUI based admin.
> I'll thank you for answering these questions:

> 1. Can you define your experience with the following: (1 none, 5 expert)
>     a. Windows.
>     b. Unix (any version)
> 2. Please rank the following approaches for administration. (1. hate it, 5
> the best)
>    a. text based administration(configuration files)
>    b. GUI based administration
>    c. both
> 3. Can you explain the reasons for the selections you made ?

> Thanks,
> Avi.

First off:

Excel has a GUI interface. It's a protected trademark of Microsoft It's
ONLY for Windows & MACOS.

And Finnaly, if you've got to make 3000+ user accounts, from scratch,
you've got a real problem.

I've been working with UNIX & NT for years.  NT was disappointing when it
took 6 and a half service packs to get it "stable".  But UNIX has always
been a * to get up & running for the first time, and I've got one hell
of a headache trying to get new IS staffers to "warm-up" to administering
a UNIX platform.

Win2K is probably the best of both worlds.  

Sorry guys, but I just prefer a GUI to a text mode.

Nope - trivial issue for a Unix admin -

(This sort of thing is a regular occurrence in universities)

Quote:> I've been working with UNIX & NT for years.  NT was disappointing when it
> took 6 and a half service packs to get it "stable".  But UNIX has always
> been a * to get up & running for the first time, and I've got one hell
> of a headache trying to get new IS staffers to "warm-up" to administering
> a UNIX platform.

It depends on what you mean by Unix -

SCO? yeah, that's a * to get set up.
Red Hat? pretty straightforward.
SGI? no sweat.

Quote:> Win2K is probably the best of both worlds.

win2k is the best of the pee cee world, that's all.
It's taken some baby steps to be a bit more like Unix,
but it still has a long, long way to go.

Problem is, Unix won't sit still and wait patiently for
microsoft to catch up -

Quote:> Sorry guys, but I just prefer a GUI to a text mode.

Unix gives you both, plus web-based admin.

jjs

On Sat, 08 Jul 2000 06:14:16 GMT,

+
+ > And Finnaly, if you've got to make 3000+ user accounts, from scratch,
+ > you've got a real problem.
+
+ Nope - trivial issue for a Unix admin -
+ (This sort of thing is a regular occurrence in universities)

You're not talking about the incoming freshmen class, are you? ;)

+ > been a * to get up & running for the first time, and I've got one hell
+ > of a headache trying to get new IS staffers to "warm-up" to administering
+ > a UNIX platform.

Give 'em a box. Tell 'em what to install. Check. Tell 'em what they
did wrong. Tell 'em to wipe the disk and start again. Continue
until they pass. Give 'em a week. Then tell 'em to do it again.

Brownie points for those who kept notes.

+ It depends on what you mean by Unix -

+ SGI? no sweat.

Only if you're smart enough to check the passwd file...

James
--
Consulting Minister for Consultants, DNRC
The Bill of Rights is paid in Responsibilities - Jean McGuire
To cure your perl CGI problems, please look at:
<url:http://www.veryComputer.com/;

I've been administering NT, VMS, and Unix to varying
degrees.  A GUI may be quicker for the novice, but command
line administration is equally fast.  I often create batch files
in VMS to add a dozen or more users to a license database
and it takes only  minutes to write, and I can reuse
it several times a year.  Better yet, I have a record of what
I've done.

If I want a record of all the users on the system, I
point the output to a file;  type " mcr authorize show/user * "
and bam, I have a record of 100 users in a text file.

Anyway, NT is the newbie in town.  UNIX is 30 years old,
and VMS is 22.  Last year, the DB people at the major
Pharmaceutical I consulted at still didn't trust NT enough
to put critical Oracle App's on it.  They kept 60% of their
Oracle on VMS and 30% on UNIX.  At the bank I'm at now,
they only put the "light duty" stuff on NT.  They still move
all the money around with VMS. It's not practical to
do control-alt-delete when you're transferring a trillion
bucks a week between banks.

Bill

First off:

Excel has a GUI interface. It's a protected trademark of Microsoft It's
ONLY for Windows & MACOS.

And Finnaly, if you've got to make 3000+ user accounts, from scratch,
you've got a real problem.

I've been working with UNIX & NT for years.  NT was disappointing when it
took 6 and a half service packs to get it "stable".  But UNIX has always
been a * to get up & running for the first time, and I've got one hell
of a headache trying to get new IS staffers to "warm-up" to administering
a UNIX platform.

Win2K is probably the best of both worlds.

Sorry guys, but I just prefer a GUI to a text mode.

On Sun, 2 Jul 2000 22:49:37 +0100, "Pedro Miguel de Almeida Sousa"

[snip reply - sorry, I couldn't find the original post in my newsreader)

1. a) 5 b) 3
2. a) 4 b) 2 c) 5
3. I've been working with Windows web servers for a long time, and to a
lesser extent unix servers. I've found increasingly that once I know how a
server works I can set it up more efficiently in a configuration file than
clicking buttons.
The reason I rated both as highest is because providing both gives the best
of both worlds. I personally prefer text based, but if both can be
implemented at once, all the better.

Kind Regards,
-Martin
--
Martin Atkins - Reply address is ROT13 encoded

Quote:

> >> I'm writing a paper regarding text-based admin. vs. GUI based admin.
> >> I'll thank you for answering these questions:

> >> 1. Can you define your experience with the following: (1 none, 5 expert)
> >>     a. Windows.
> >>     b. Unix (any version)
> >> 2. Please rank the following approaches for administration. (1. hate it, 5
> >> the best)
> >>    a. text based administration(configuration files)
> >>    b. GUI based administration
> >>    c. both
> >> 3. Can you explain the reasons for the selections you made ?

> >> Thanks,
> >> Avi.

1. a) 3  b)4
2. a)3   b)2  c)5
3.  I like GUI's because I can prop my feet up and point and click for viewing.
GUI's promote laziness, mental as well as physical. Point, click, choose
default....I primarily work with Linux in KDE,  and I have found that I end up
doing most of my work in a terminal window.  Most admin tasks tend to be
repititive,  and even if you have the appropriate GUI tool its far quicker (read
more cost effective) to use a command line.  The GUI tool may be more efficient
for the initial setup,  but after that  the command line is easier and faster.
For configuration files,  a text based system is vastly superior.  When you make
a change you can comment out the old entry, enter the new one, with comments on
what, when ,who and why the change wa made.  Your notes are right there in the
file.  Restart the service in question (not reboot machine) and if it works as
expected, fine, if not, try again.  Compare to editing a Windows registry.
I suggest that the learning curve for all those "horrid little text files" on a
Unix system  is far less than that required for really being able to
*competently* edit any Windows registry.  GUI tools definitely have their
place,  but any system based on a totally on a GUI interface will be inherently
less flexible, less stable, more bloated, offer less granularity of control, and
in the long run be more expensive to administrate.  It is far quicker and much
less expensive to develop to develop command line utilities for administrative
tasks than comparable GUI tools.  Also it is often simpler and quicker to read
the documentation for a command line utility to find out how to use it than to
go through all the menu's and help system with a comparable GUI utility.  Given
a choice between a comparable GUI tool and command line tool, if I can
accomplish the task with the GUI without taking my feet off my desk, I'll use
the GUI, even if it takes twice as long........

I often submit such files as a batch job, so that I have a log file of what happened too.

Quote:> If I want a record of all the users on the system, I
> point the output to a file;  type " mcr authorize show/user * "
> and bam, I have a record of 100 users in a text file.

Same goes for 5,000 users :-)

BTW, my startup files have:

$ define /system sysuaf sys$common:[sysexe]sysuaf.dat

and my login has

$ auth == $authorize

then I can do:

$ auth show username

Quote:> Anyway, NT is the newbie in town.  UNIX is 30 years old,
> and VMS is 22.  Last year, the DB people at the major
> Pharmaceutical I consulted at still didn't trust NT enough
> to put critical Oracle App's on it.  They kept 60% of their
> Oracle on VMS and 30% on UNIX.  At the bank I'm at now,
> they only put the "light duty" stuff on NT.  They still move
> all the money around with VMS. It's not practical to
> do control-alt-delete when you're transferring a trillion
> bucks a week between banks.

Grrr. I had the dubious pleasure just before the New Year of
watching a cash machine reboot into NT. Needless to say I took
a decent amount of cash from another machine just in case (Y2K and
all that).

Likewise, I work for a bank, and the big bucks get transferred by
VMS. My system monitoring program (an in-house app) gives me about
3 messages a day - backup started, backup finished, and a list of secure
files accessed by the backup. The only reason those system are ever
closed is for a s/w upgrade or power failure (yes, even the best UPS
system can, and does, fail, albeit very occasionally).

Sorry, Linux fans. To get back on topic, I believe that both a GUI and
command line interface have their merits, but like William, my preference
is for command line stuff.

Paul Sture