On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Avi Alkalay wrote:
Yeah, thats because Elektra main goal is not to help sysadmins, but to help unrelated programs to colaborate automaticaly. this way, helping the sysadmin is an inevitable consequence.
It seems to me configuration data in an Elektra like format DOES help sysadmins with managing system configuration even without fancy applications. The sysadmin just needs to begin treating configuration data as a series of "command directives" instead big bang application/subsystem file edits.
With the right type of command line viewer / editor read-ability of raw config actually improves IMO.
example:
cfg_mgr -interactive
display /dhcp/sw/dhcpd/subnets/10.202.46.0-24/*
use-host-decl-names = on options/log-servers = 10.202.46.2 hosts/ws001/fixed-address = 192.168.0.1 hosts/ws001/default-lease-time = 10000 hosts/ws001/filename = /lts/vmlinuz-2.4.26-ltsp-1 hosts/ws001/hw = ethernet:00:11:22:33:44:55
edit -format (ini,xml,text etc...) /dhcp/sw/dhcpd/subnets/10.202.46.0-24/
vi/emacs etc.. starts up with the the above information in the specified format (xml, ini, plain text) and the admin may now change values, add new hosts, options etc... as though it was a file.
The above functionality would just as easily be accessible via the command prompt with the right -switches.
Cheers, Shane