Re: [PLUG] UNIX administration survey

["William H. Magill" <magill@isc.upenn.edu>]

>   I was just wondering if any UNIX administrators out there could
>   to explain to me what technologies they're using for distributed
>   administration of their machines.  Examples: NIS, NIS+, Samba,
>   Webmin, LDAP, etc.  
>
First off, define Distributed Administration....

        Distributed Administration tools allow multiple, different people
        to add and create users, assign privledges, install software, etc.

        None of the tools you mention, with the exception of NIS are System
        Administration tools, let alone distributed.

There are two basic levels of System Administration -- Administering
the System and Administering Applications.

Administering the System deals mostly with:
1) installing and updating software that relates to running the box --
Kernel upgrades, security patches, new relases of the OS, etc. If you have
multiple boxes, you have version control issues across boxes -- keeping
patch levels consistant, is always a problem.  (Compilers, Interpreters,
etc usually are considered "system software"
2) monitoring the running system -- disk space, security intrusions, etc.
3) end user maintenance -- adding and deleting users, setting and enforcing
disk quotas, etc. NIS can be used for this last function, but unless you
have a lot of systems and a lot of users, it's more trouble than it is
worth. 

Administering Applications deals mostly with
1) installing and updating software that relates to running the application
-- an Appache web server, a SAMBA NT server, or some LDAP sever for
        example. 

The day-to-day operation of the applications, and their administration is
normally NOT a Systems Administration function.

>   I'm assembling this information so that I can give a
>   presentation to my organization about how I can incorporate a
>   Linux-based network that can work alongside the existing Windows
>   framework.  
>
I'm not certain what you are really asking. It's pretty trivial to create
two parallel networks that can work alongside each other. However, I doubt
that is what you are really trying to say.

If what you really mean is provide Windows file services from a Linux
server instead of an NT server, then that is a different kettle of fish.

One basic problem is -- if you have an NT server in the group, you must
do everything the NT way, period. you have no choice, since Microsoft's
server will not Interoperate with anything else. As long as the Microsoft
server is the master, and everyone else does what it says, then all will be
fine. But you will be using all Microsoft tools and techniques to
administer everything.

NT clients can work with a SAMBA server with no problem. But if an NT
server shows up, you will have excruciating problems trying to synchronize
them. (If the two servers are kept completely independent, the Client can
access both. But that is not usually what people want to do.)

-- 
                        www.tru64unix.compaq.com
                              www.tru64.org
                             comp.unix.tru64
                        
T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill                          Senior Systems Administrator
Information Services and Computing (ISC)   University of Pennsylvania
Internet: magill@isc.upenn.edu             magill@acm.org
http://www.isc-net.upenn.edu/~magill/

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