Find it in ServerLand
December 14th, 2005I wrote up a bunch of cruft related to a server management app. Corey has worked on such an app…. in fact the tool I purpose would probably use his app.
The Ubuntu community provided all the framework for the discussion. Also, I really think they can pull it off.
December 15th, 2005 at 12:54 am
Great idea. I hope it works out. It’d make for less sleepless nights and 4am pages.
December 15th, 2005 at 1:49 am
Red Carpet, specifically the rc daemon, was going to solve at least the package management side of things (and as a byproduct, the “which machines need security updates” issue, as well as providing a means to deploy packages to remote machines from a centralized console). It even mostly worked; but then it disappeared into the Novell, and was munged and reborn as something else. The existing code had some issues that may or may not have been fixed (I heard a rewrite of the server was in the works), though it may be a useful starting point.
December 15th, 2005 at 2:36 am
Given the description, this app sounds 1. awesome, 2. great for a (secure) web frontend. On that note:
It doesn’t do entirely what you want, but something like PHPSysInfo is an interesting start. It is a simple PHP script that pulls a lot of system information on a single machine.
http://phpsysinfo.sourceforge.net/
If you take that app, and make it into a script that reports to a central application/webpage, then you are halfway there. Then, add some user customizable database fields (Serial number, purchase date, what have you) to finish off the stats and reporting information.
December 22nd, 2005 at 11:06 pm
Gentoo installer folks are beginning to work on a web-based installation, provisioning and management framework that’s distro-neutral. You may be interested in following (or supporting!) their effort as well.
It could be useful to get them together with Ubuntu, if both parties are so inclined.