Standards Update, Part 8: IEEE 1003.7 (system administration)

[Shane P. McCarron]

[ These Standards Updates are published after each IEEE 1003
meeting, and are commissioned by the USENIX Association.
See Part 1 for contact information.  -mod ]


      An update on UNIX|= Standards Activities - Part 8

                    POSIX 1003.7 Update

                     November 18, 1988

           Shane P. McCarron, NAPS International

1003.7 - System Administration

This new working group met as a Birds of a Feather session
during the Hawaii meeting.  During that session the group
convenor outlined the goals and solicited input from the
attendees.  At a subsequent meeting in Monterey (in
conjunction with the Usenix Large System Administration
Workshop) the group took the input from that meeting and the
work that had been going on off line and began producing a
draft document.

So, what is the purpose of this body?  To define a portable
user interface for System Administration Utilities which
would allow users to administer systems in a portable way,
and allow developers to build system administration tools on
top of consistent underlying commands and libraries.  Since
the work of this body will overlap with almost every other
P1003 working group (and possibly other groups outside of
POSIX), coordination is a major part of the standard
development effort.  Also, because the charter of this group
is so broad (what is an administrative tool, anyway?), it is
going to take quite a while to complete the standard.

Just to give you a rough idea of what is going to covered by
this group, here are some possible areas:  machine startup,
process management, network, software licensing management,
user management, password management, etc...  At the meeting
in Hawaii it quickly became apparent that the scope of this
group is too large to accomplish anything in a reasonable
period of time.  Some of the time at the Monterey meeting
was spent narrowing the scope of the group to a more
manageable size.  The group tried to identify items which
could form a basic set of libraries and commands, and could
be finalized in a two to three year time frame.  After the
initial standard is released, there may be continuing work
into areas that the first cut was not able to address.

__________

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                           - 2 -

When I last wrote about this group, I was very critical of
its charter and the possibility of it succeeding.  I think
it only fair to relate that a number of people wrote me and
said that I was too judgemental, and that I should take a
wait and see attitude.  Bowing to the will of the people, I
am not going to draw any conclusions about the working group
at this time.  After the January meeting, when they have
formalized the areas they are going to address, I will
relate all of that information and you can decide if what
they are doing is a good thing.  In the interim, if you want
more information, or would like to share your opinions with
me, please drop me a line.

The Watchdog Committee's contact on 1003.7 is Mark Colburn.
Her can be reached at:

          Mark Colburn
          NAPS International
          117 Mackubin St.
          Suite 1
          St. Paul, MN  55102
          (612) 224-9108
          mark at naps.mn.org


Volume-Number: Volume 15, Number 44