From owner-freebsd-chat Sun Sep 28 22:47:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id WAA18897 for chat-outgoing; Sun, 28 Sep 1997 22:47:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from word.smith.net.au ([203.38.152.122]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id WAA18890 for ; Sun, 28 Sep 1997 22:47:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from word.smith.net.au (localhost.smith.net.au [127.0.0.1]) by word.smith.net.au (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA00459; Mon, 29 Sep 1997 15:14:16 +0930 (CST) Message-Id: <199709290544.PAA00459@word.smith.net.au> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: Wes Peters cc: Greg Lehey , chat@freebsd.org, mike@smith.net.au, sef@kithrup.com Subject: Re: Microsoft brainrot (was: r-cmds and DNS and /etc/host.conf) In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 28 Sep 1997 23:35:31 CST." <199709290535.XAA22463@obie.softweyr.ml.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 15:14:14 +0930 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > existing system you have to do a search and replace. With the mickey > soft GUI, you have to click on every host and change it's IP address > manually. With the idealized, designed-by-Wes GUI tool, you simply > change the network address for the domain and all of the hosts in that > domain 'inherit' the new information. If any of them conflict, > i.e. you're changing from a class b to class c network and some host > addresses are > 255, the tool warns you and displays the now-flawed > hosts in a manner that signifies they are no longer working. (Grey them > out, put a red circle-slash over them, whatever.) ... and of course because the tool is able to talk to these hosts as well, it has previously verified that it has authorisation to change their addresses and will reconfigure them on the fly as part of the commit operation which brings the new DNS stuff online. Juliet's transaction management isn't that good yet, unfortunately, but it's pretty close. (ie. This *can* be done, and it's Not That Hard.) > Don't forget that as you identify problems, it is possible to work out > visually intuitive solutions to them. Microsoft obviously cannot be > bothered to do this, but we can. I think, from looking at the MS stuff, that part of their problem is that the configuration UI is developed by the same people that wrote the code that it configures, thus there is no crossing of domains to do intuitive things. > And Mike, if we can hook up with SEF's compatriot, I'd like to take a > stab at this. He is interested in turning out such a tool using Tk, so > your Tcl experience may pay off here. I've learned a little about Tcl, > and want to learn more about Tk, and would very much like to do design > work on this tool. Sure. I/we really need some push to move this along, and a consumer for Juliet (ie. Romeo) would help immensely. You can grab the current state of play with it from ftp://smith.net.au/FreeBSD/juliet.tar.gz; note that you'll want to read the code to work it out, and please ask questions about it because I just haven't got enough of the design down in words yet. mike