Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 14:33:04 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@freefall.cdrom.com> To: Mark Tinguely <tinguely@plains.nodak.edu> Cc: cacho@eureka.gdl.iteso.mx, hackers@freefall.cdrom.com, hasty@star-gate.com Subject: MBONE interfaces and snazzy install tools. Message-ID: <29855.796429984@freefall.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 28 Mar 95 16:09:04 CST." <199503282209.QAA08162@plains.nodak.edu>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> vat, nv, wb all have "record" and "replay" applications that let a > person record/play a multicast session to/from disk. unfortunately there > is no ability to syncronize the playing of vat with nv and/or wb. > > the mbone (anything to do with conferencing) is a good selling feature. > FreeBSD can now be the MBONE participant and MBONE router. It sounds from > reading freebsd mail there is getting more interest in conferencing, and > with more support of video capture cards, FreeBSD is a very cost effective > way to join the conferencing craze. Agreed. Now the only problem is that I've never even managed to test said stuff due to lack of an MBONE feed (I asked BARRNET, our provider, and they turned me down). Would someone with a better knowledge of the MBONE consider putting together one of Paul Traina's "meta packages" with a nice dialog based front-end installation script that asks all the appropriate questions? Your script can also assume that a PKG_BASE variable will exist which points to the location of the packages on the user's network or CDROM. Shouldn't really be more than asking a few questions, forking off a few pkg_adds and then possibly doing some final setup work to kick the happy FreeBSD user straight onto the MBONE. Which all brings up something I've been wanting to discuss for awhile: If people could provide me with more "components" like this in general, I'd be more than happy to add it to the overall all-singing, all-dancing installation framework. From the user's perspective, they'd just select "MBONE Setup" from the "Network Configuration" dialog menu and bang, they're in your mbone setup. The same goes for SLIP & PPP setup, kernel reconfiguration (which in Linux is done purely through menus and the cause of much criticism of FreeBSD on the net), etc etc. I pushed very hard to get more advanced tools like dialog and libforms into the system, and with the exception of myself and a couple of others, NOBODY is using them! :-( :-( I would be inordinately happy to see a reversal of this trend! C'mon folks - you can do some _very_ sexy interfaces for your favorite system admin pet peeve, and I'm *promising* to provide a global framework to put them all in for 2.1. But I can't write each and every individual piece myself, I need help! Contributions! This stuff isn't rocket science, it's just banging out simple shell and/or perl scripts and clueing the user into what's going on! For examples of this, look at pkg_manage, or the new kbdfont and kbdmap utilities that Wolfram was so kind to contribute. We need 50 more scripts like this, and if you're keen to find some niche of system administration that's not handled well, by all means talk to me, Paul Richards or Poul-Henning. All of us have a list of things longer than our arms! :-) Thanks!! And if you send me such a contribution, please include your postal address - I'll send you a free CD! :-) Jordan
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?29855.796429984>