From: Phillip Gawlowski <pg@...>
Date: 2009-12-21T02:09:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Linux network appliances managed via Sinatra

On 20.12.2009 17:59, Guido De Rosa wrote:

> There's an About page, and a README file in the source tree, but it's
> certainly not enough, I admit. Documentation is one of the most
> important lacks and a lot of work is certainly required in the near
> future. For now just try to download it and run in the most obvious way
> (./start.sh to daemonize or ruby onboard.rb to keep it in the
> foreground) not before having installed all the dependencies reported in
> README. And feel free to ask me anything you'll find unclear: this will
> help me to write better docs ;-)

Certainly. I'm setting up a Linux VM soon, to play around with things 
like OnBoard.

>> Will there be .deb / .rpm packages?
>
> Another good question would be: will there be a gem? ;-)  Well, packaging
> is not an hot priority in the next few days but it's one of the mid-term
> goals. Some work is required before this e.g.: 1) separation/extraction
> of a more general system configuration library from the UI; 2) too many
> hardcoded constants should be turned into user-editable config files 3)
> source files layout should be more "position-independent" to be packaged
> safely etc. etc.

Certainly. And while a gem would be nice, integrating an adminstrative 
tool with a package management system would make maintenance a lot easier.

Nothing beats "sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" in my experience. ;)


>> What about going down and dirty, like in Webmin (e.g. editing config
>> files directly)?
>
> This is a fundamental choice you make at the very start of a project
> like this. And was not my choice :-) OnBoard is not meant as a Webmin
> clone. It wants to be a sort of little OS in the OS, starting services
> by its own, having its own internal /etc directory etc. It's an
> opinionated choice, I admit :-) The idea is: when you uninstall OnBoard
> you will get the system as it was before.

That is a quite good idea. And opionated isn't a problem in itself. ;)

I was more curious about what to expect when installing OnBoard, and not 
looking for a replacement for Webmin.

> That said, thanks for your interesting opinions and feel free to
> fork/patch/implement you own ideas.

Once I have the time, I'll take a look. OnBoard is on my GitHub 
watchlist already. ;)

--
Phillip Gawlowski