Re: Building a web-based system administration interface in Perl

Interesting project idea!

Having also used WebMin at a previous job for a few years, I agree with your points about it. I have not used eBox. Just looking at it now, it appears to be a special version of Ubuntu that would run in a virtual machine of some kind.

Although it sounds like a lot more than a single weekend of hacking will produce, this wheel really needs to be reinvented. It would be nice to see this written on Catalyst or Mojo.

Features:

Publish/Subscribe Eventing System:
It would be nice to be able to "subscribe" to certain events, eg: "user.created" or "module.installed" or whatever.
Plugin Marketplace:
The ability to buy/sell/give-away-for-free plugins to help manage/install things with this tool would be really nice. You could start with the ability to install packages with yum/apt-get/emerge and go from there.

Probably loads more, but as long as it does what you need, you're done!

Comment on Re: Building a web-based system administration interface in Perl

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Re^2: Building a web-based system administration interface in Perl by afoken (Chancellor) on Apr 08, 2009 at 22:14 UTC
DON'T use yum/apt-get/emerge/rpm to install plugins. Not all distributions use that tools, some use other tools, some don't use package managers at all. Distributing plugins should be easy. Having to generate 5 or 10 different package formats, each with 5 or 10 different packages for different distribution versions, ist just too much work. The Webmin way, a renamed and compressed tar file, works quite well. We could discuss if we want old or new style tars, with or without GNU extensions, or some other archive format, like arj, lha, cpio or zip. Alexander -- Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)	[reply]
Re^3: Building a web-based system administration interface in Perl by jdrago_999 (Hermit) on Apr 08, 2009 at 23:53 UTC
DON'T use yum/apt-get/emerge/rpm to install plugins. They certainly have their problems, but reinventing the software-installation wheel might not be a solution. I like the idea of writing a simple plugin like this (thinking out loud here): `Given httpd is installed When update is available Then notify me@my-email.com` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Building a web-based system administration interface in Perl by afoken (Chancellor) on Apr 09, 2009 at 07:18 UTC
I don't want to reinvent the wheel. But I also do not want do create 20 different bundles for each and every plugin just because the various OSes and OS distributions use different package managers. If the OS maintainers wish to make the new tool available, they can pack it into their kind of bundle. Debian, SuSE, and Redhat do exactly this with perl and thousands of other software packages. Most (all) "perl plugins" on CPAN are distributed as tar files, and some of them are repackaged into OS specific bundles if the OS maintainers like them. This works quite well, and completely eliminates the need to generate something else than simple tar files for plugin authors. Your idea of an update poller looks more like a job for the OS specific package manager, combined with cron. Webmin and the new tool work as web-based tool, which is a completely different thing. Of course, it would be possible to write a plugin that installs such a cron job and takes care of poll interval, notification address, and selected packages. The cron script could be part of the plugin, but it would better be part of the package manager, or a plugin for the package manager. That way, every user of the OS could use the notification tool, even if they do not want to install Webmin or the new tool. Alexander -- Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)	[reply]
Re^2: Building a web-based system administration interface in Perl by wazoox (Prior) on Apr 09, 2009 at 10:18 UTC
* Publish/Subscribe Eventing System: It would be nice to be able to "subscribe" to certain events, eg: "user.created" or "module.installed" or whatever. That's a good idea! I take notes :) * Plugin Marketplace: The ability to buy/sell/give-away-for-free plugins to help manage/install things with this tool would be really nice. You could start with the ability to install packages with yum/apt-get/emerge and go from there. Yup, this one is already on the map :) Actually it's even somewhat a core part of the whole project (which is bigger than an administrative interface)	[reply]