Report on POSIX.7: System Administration

[Randall Atkinson]

Submitted-by: randall at Virginia.EDU (Randall Atkinson)

In article <1991Jun25.214723.7644 at uunet.uu.net>,
  Peter Collinson <pc at hillside.co.uk> writes:
>Submitted-by: pc at hillside.co.uk (Peter Collinson)
>
>USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee
>Stephen R. Walli <stephe at usenix.org>, Report Editor
>1003.7: System Administration
>
>Martin Kirk <m.kirk at xopen.co.uk> reports on the April 15-19,
>1991 meeting in Chicago, IL:

>Inevitably this change of direction led to charges that the group was
>inventing hand-over-fist, rather than following the ``traditional''
>standards model of codifying existing practice.  

  Judging from comments below, they are still ignoring existing
practice in historical UNIX-derived systems in some cases.  
If true, this is A Bad Thing.

>Part of the motivation for this decision was recognition that the
>problem space is vast and that trying to attack it over too large a
>front was a suicidal manoeuvre.  There was also an increased awareness
>of the related work of other organizations, such as the OSI Network
>Management Forum, the OSI Implementer's Workshop Network Management
>SIG, and X/Open.  As this other work comes to fruition, it will be
>available for use by POSIX.7 and will likely solve some of the
>thornier problems, such as interoperability.

  One would certainly hope that they are also tracking and taking
advantage of the good sized installed base that is already using SNMP
regularly.  With the draft security extensions now published by the
IETF, SNMP has a good body of real-world experience.  It would be best
if the POSIX.7 group tried to use that leverage to devise a good
standard.  This isn't an OSI vs. TCP/IP thing; they should take
advantage of the experience of both groups.

  While network management is becoming better understood, it isn't
entirely a solved problem yet and I hope the POSIX.7 folks will be
careful in what they choose to standardise.

>  An obvious source of candidate management tasks can be found in the
> existing administrative command set on the systems around us, and it
> would be a perverse decision indeed to introduce gratuitous changes to
> the style of that interface.  

Not only the style but also the content.  Standardise what already
is historical practice and try to avoid inventing new features
without actual implementation and user experience.

>The Print Management work is based on the MIT Palladium printing 
>system, which has the benefit of being well-aligned with the emerging 
>ISO distributed printing standard, DIS 10164.  

Palladium reportedly has an interface unlike those on historical
systems.  I'd much rather see lp/lpr and lprm/lpstat be standardised
as user interfaces than something unfamiliar to virtually all of
the existing users.

>Software Management has enjoyed a resurgence of interest within 
>POSIX.7 over the last 6 months, with source material being drawn from 
>DEC, HP, AT&T and Siemens-Nixdorf.

But is it based on historical systems ?  
What kinds of tools are being standardised here ?

>The third area, User Environment Management is a logical candidate for
>inclusion in the initial set of sub-projects.  
 
What is being managed here besides user-addition ?  
Could someone give examples maybe ?

Randall Atkinson
randall at Virginia.EDU





Volume-Number: Volume 24, Number 25