| William H. Magill on Mon, 10 Feb 2003 11:35:09 -0500 |
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On Friday, February 7, 2003, at 03:47 PM, christophe barbe wrote: needs to be. The three words you will hear a lot from OS X users is "it just works". I must disagree - OS X Server, does "just work." However, it works as one System Administrator envisions it to work -- not as you or I might want it to work. Quite frankly, I have this same problem with Linux, Tru64 Unix and all of the other variants I work with -- they all "work," but not the way I want them to work. OS X client is much more "bullet-proof" than OS X Server for one simple reason: On the client side, it is much easier to make one size fit 90+% of the user community. On the Server side, it is impossible. I've been working with OS X Server since it was AppleShareIP and continually harp on Apple about the fact that they "enhance" things to make them work with the GUI and that really causes all kinds of problems simply because they do not document what they have done. [BTW - OS X Server is ONLY the Admin GUIs and the Server Apps. There is no other difference between the Server and Client. That may change in the future, but today, they are identical. Which, amongst other things, means that the Client has A LOT of capabilities which are simply "unknown."] Frequently, as with Apache, Apple implements options which are all part and parcel of "normal" Apache, but which are not "normally" used. Case in point is their use of includes in the configuration file. Unless you read the httpd.conf file CAREFULLY, you don't realize that the GUI creates a conf include file which overrides almost everything in the base file -- but it is included as the LAST line of the normal conf file. This is where it belongs, but until you actually realize that it is there, it causes all kinds of problems -- because the overrides make it appear that things are not working. Apple also implements a Cache server for Apache on Server which causes confusion. All of this is not an easy thing to do -- trying to make command line apps pay attention to a GUI which is actually simplifying the interface (ie not presenting you with hundreds of options that you have no interest in and no knowledge about their implication); while still allowing the command line interface to participate. The biggest issue I have with Server, and which Apple is slowly fixing -- changes that you make to config files DO get lost on upgrades if they were not made via the GUI. But this is NOT different than upgrading most any other Unix OS or app... it's just that it "is not what we expect to happen." For Apple, this is a wrenching philosophical change -- the idea that they really do NOT control what is going on; that other people have a different idea of how things should be done. But those of us working with the Server group have been successful at getting many things like this changed... some of the changes take a lot longer than we'd like, but then we're used to working with Vendors and know that their priorities are not our priorities.
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