From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 14 03:30:54 2015 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher AECDH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id DE882941 for ; Wed, 14 Jan 2015 03:30:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-la0-x22a.google.com (mail-la0-x22a.google.com [IPv6:2a00:1450:4010:c03::22a]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (Client CN "smtp.gmail.com", Issuer "Google Internet Authority G2" (verified OK)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 59F30A5B for ; Wed, 14 Jan 2015 03:30:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-la0-f42.google.com with SMTP id gd6so6069887lab.1 for ; Tue, 13 Jan 2015 19:30:51 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject :from:to:cc:content-type; bh=NkmcfrsM5b8ffilaG6fqCqE+oBHEIebhLARNBWMCeag=; b=Zyz55oy7KuPH50HPRq5DtX9c9gXFzglij6Bt2TFrIvhMxDg/2okZ8OjnesSf5maqxT JhGkxLj7EVpTeDVGUofm0gkNIJU9ZLGE8yqzj/oPHAMRe9qIBQzjWsE6eoHSoEDvIWFK qQy50eTJzp0ceSsBhHocH4jan0ov4gc8O0FJmzPHqtiyVGtvRCnOK9uGO0Yh1D4oJl8K smC3AN6LUdxLAeer9Q50Qf6BMyj0P3N2kwg3YNUwuTV9q2yCiO4LvPnbZnywr14Qt8BQ GmPnO0zk7qeBmcO9tDLam4Guv5rVAG9Qi9d+GoQ19s6ZvphEWhZehUZ0AeSXSn8/o9vk rJ2A== MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.152.203.201 with SMTP id ks9mr1487774lac.57.1421206251156; Tue, 13 Jan 2015 19:30:51 -0800 (PST) Sender: crodr001@gmail.com Received: by 10.112.129.3 with HTTP; Tue, 13 Jan 2015 19:30:51 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: References: <20150114023330.GA80986@FreeBSD.org> Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 19:30:51 -0800 X-Google-Sender-Auth: dC5xeudJBfKxMOpqr1o-B3fhiJc Message-ID: Subject: Re: projects to better support FreeBSD sysadmins From: Craig Rodrigues To: Hunter Satterwhite Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.18-1 Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org, Deb Goodkin X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 03:30:54 -0000 On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 7:13 PM, Hunter Satterwhite < hsatterwhite@webassign.net> wrote: > Craig, > > Could you elaborate on these "problems"? Our data center is ~400 nodes and > 99% FreeBSD. We've used CFengine, we're implementing Puppet (and its going > great!), we use Ansible, and we also use languages such as Python, Ruby, > and Google's Go. Oh and not to mention we have a RESTful application > running on FreeBSD + node.js + MongoBD/MySQL. > > I think the project's focus is fine. Year after year we're given a > complete, enterprise Unix operating system and it's only getting better. > > I can point to two problems which I found today: (1) freebsd-update doesn't work so well in an automation environment without a real tty: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2015-January/053982.html This was pointed out to me by a devops expert who is helping me with automation for the http://jenkins.freebsd.org. (2) documentation for doing "kickstart" installs of FreeBSD is not as easy to find as for Linux: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2015-January/053970.html This was pointed out to me by another devops person I am working with who is familiar with setting up kickstart installs for Linux, but couldn't easily figure out how to do it for FreeBSD. These are very basic things and can be solved on their own, but I would like to see more of a focus on this kind of stuff at a project level, so that these problems don't exist in the first place, and things *just work*. For many people, the perception is that Linux is easier for devops people to work with than FreeBSD, and they can install/maintain many nodes in large cloud and datacenter environments more easily. I have seen in two companies where hundreds of FreeBSD nodes were migrated to Linux, because the IT/devops staff found Linux worked better at large scale than FreeBSD in the modern datacenter. I think the FreeBSD project is improving, but we can do better. -- Craig