[Discuss] webmin

[feenberg at nber.org (Daniel Feenberg)]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2013, Bill Bogstad wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 2:14 PM, joe at polcari.com <joe at polcari.com> wrote:
>>   The problem I have with GUI administration is if you make a mistake, you never quite know what file got configured incorrectly, then you end up troubleshooting the GUI to find out what to fix. 10 points for open-source. But if you know what you're doing in the first place, it's nice to click once and get it done.
>
> I know it had its detractors (including me), but I think that IBM's
> SMIT for AIX had a good idea.    Put a "gui/text-based" wrapper around
> the command line tools/config files and then show the user of the

GUIs are nice for once a year tasks, but hell on repeated setups, so it is 
good to have both. The problem I see with providing both is that often the 
GUI writes over the text file, which disables the 
command-line/programmable interface.

daniel feenberg
NBER