[nycbug-talk] mad uptime

[Rick Aliwalas]

On Fri, 2 Jul 2004, Isaac Levy wrote:

> Hi Rick,
> 
> > osx I assume?  I went to the osx class here at usenix and got an 
> > extreme
> > headache keeping up with all the windows/icons/drop-downs etc shown to
> > administer the box.  It's so much easier to edit a text file - but the
> > instructor focused on the mac way.  Which is fine but awful hard to
> > follow - for me at least.
> 
> Understandable- but to be straight, it's really all there, and nicely 
> organized once you dive into it IMO.
>
> >
> > It was mentioned a few times how great it was that apple is embracing
> > open source and its positive impact etc etc.  As far as I can tell,
> > apple benefits from oss _far_ more than the other way around.
> 
> As a serious apple fan, I'm tending to agree right now...
> 
> > Funny, I
> > got flamed by some folks in the class when I innocently asked (ok, 
> > trolled)
> > what applications are they running that warrant a G5 server as opposed 
> > to a
> > *BSD box.  They came at me hard w/ the old windows argument that unix
> > cmd-line is too cryptic, the learning curve is to high, its easier to
> > train admins to use a gui,...
> 
> Right.  *sigh*  This is exactly what I've been trying to express (To 
> Apple, in various ways) about their foray into the server world...  
> They have a hard time separating the Windows/Novel IT world which they 
> have competed in for years, from us UNIX folks- and loose business 
> because of it.
> 
> They have a cool agenda, and have a lot of cool GUI work that comes 
> from years of competing with NT etc..., but their sales folks need to 
> step back and LISTEN to what the *Open Source UNIX Sysadmins* REALLY 
> want.

For sure.  Just from a practical standpoint.  Suppose you have to administer
several Mac servers in a remote location behind multiple firewalls.
Having good cmd line equivalents to the admin tools will make life
much easier.  It's hard to script a gui...

> I know you didn't ask for it, but my answer to that question is this:
> If you are involved with clustered supercomputing, G5 Servers are an 
> inexpensive dream to work with.  If you are working in an educational 
> enviornment or small orginization who needs a basic org. server 
> internally, and don't have massive resources to keep IT on staff to run 
> it, an XServe is great.  Also, if you are a sysadmin who comes from the 
> NT/Novel/GUI world of things, (these folks getting fewer and fewer 
> nowadays), it's dreamy too.
> If you are doing any server-side graphics processing and mass storage, 
> on the public internet or internally, again, dreamy...

I definitely asked for it ;)  That's good info as I was under the impression
that the G5 servers were seriously expensive.

> But, to be really honest, those GUI tools don't make for a very 
> controllable front-line webserver, period.  I'll go out on a limb to 
> say that those of us around the Open UNIX world usually have extreme 
> expectations of the tools we use.  With that stated, the Apple sales 
> teams are not really in any position to support our needs, though the 
> UNIX end of the OS itself is delightfully consistent and fantastic to 
> work with.
> Basically, I'm saying, the IT culture they have been selling to for 
> years doesn't quite understand us yet- and I feel your experience here 
> was a good example of this.

They are definitely doing something right based on the huge number of
Apple laptops I saw at USENIX.

> The Apple guy who lectured at nycbug months back, Patrick, was really 
> good here- he clearly and eloquently communicated a lot about the UNIX 
> core- and actually barely touched on the GUI tools at all- (though 
> NYCBUG folks seemed to want to see more of them!)
> 
> --
> It's a tough battle here not just for Apple IMHO, but for any IT- as 
> there are a lot of challenges as IT comes through some significant 
> changes, and the 45+ year old technology of the Terminal again begins 
> to take the lead as the de-facto environment for sysadmins everywhere.
>
> > The highlight of the class was when the instructor ran the following
> > cmd
> > from a Terminal :
> >
> >       % ls -l | say

> Oh- just now tried that, that's cute.  :|  I'm sad to hear that your
> apple time at Usenix was poorly spent.

To clarify - I did learn a great deal about the heritage and architecture
of osx.  What I did expect more of however was the cmd line equivalents
of the gui, NetInfo, etc.

One thing that blew me away was the folder that contained gui frontends for
nslookup, etc.  I was stunned to see a gui nmap frontend - in both osx
server and client!  I can just picture a corporate Mac user setting off
bells and whistles port scanning his network ;)

Thanks for the feedback Isaac.

-rick