Top Five Open Source Packages for System Administrators (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

O'ReillyNet picks the top five most useful and widely applicable open source administrative tools. "The top honor in my top five tools list goes to Cfengine, written by Mark Burgess. Cfengine is a wonderful tool for configuring and maintaining Unix computer systems. Cfengine is a stand-alone tool (set of tools), which administers and configures computers according to the instructions in its configuration files."

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Top Five Open Source Packages for System Administrators (O'ReillyNet)

Posted May 30, 2003 18:36 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

I was an automated configurator sceptic for a long time until I was forced kicking and screaming to use cfengine where I currently work. I hope I am human enough to admit that I was very wrong, and cfengine is one of the best darn tools since sliced time (or time slices I cant remmeber). We have several groups able to keep thousands of linux desktops uptodate, configured correctly, and running with the manpower that could only run dozens of machines in the past.

Saved my bacon.

a tip and my #6

Posted May 30, 2003 19:00 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

I recently found out that you can have a background image displayed behind the GRUB menu. Here's the tutorial with the info:
http://ruslug.rutgers.edu/~mcgrof/grub-images/

GNU GRUB version 2 is slowly in the works and looks like it's gonna kick even more ass: http://www.nongnu.org/pupa/
Thanks to Okuji Yoshinori and others for their great work.

I'd add apt-get to any list of great sys-admin packages but since it doesn't work with all disros I can see why O'Reilly left it out :)

Ciaran O'Riordan

re: Apt-get

Posted May 30, 2003 19:41 UTC (Fri) by stuart (subscriber, #623) [Link]

Here, here. That and Debian's "stable" release -- it does what it says on the tin.

Sigh

Posted May 31, 2003 5:27 UTC (Sat) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Folks, it's "Hear, hear." That's because it's a short way of saying "Listen to what the man said."

re: Apt-get

Posted May 31, 2003 20:52 UTC (Sat) by penguinwarriors (guest, #11563) [Link]

ever try debian unstable? the highest windblows i've used is windblows 98
and debian UNSTABLE has proved to be more stable than windblows 98SE!!!

how much more can microsoft suck.

oh well. if linux is God, debian is Jesus and windows must be the devil.

debian forever, microsoft/SCO must die horribly.

openssh

Posted May 31, 2003 5:29 UTC (Sat) by andre (guest, #11559) [Link]

it's ridiculous that grub is on the list and openssh isn't.

cfengine.spec

Posted May 31, 2003 15:33 UTC (Sat) by heinlein (guest, #1029) [Link]

There's been lots of talk on the help-cfengine mailing list about whether to include an official rpm spec file in the distribution tarball. Until it becomes a reality, or until Mark Burgess distributes an official rpm, here's a spec file that works on Red Hat 7.2, 8.0, and 9.

Regardless of whether you'd rank cfengine the top tool, it's definitely worth investigating. It sure simplifies things for me!