[ale] Unix Automation?

[Lightner, Jeff]

Being a long time UNIX admin that has also been doing Linux since around
96 I'll have to say he sounds like a one flavor kind of person.   Each
UNIX variant had its own way of doing things but under the covers most
of the basic commands were the same with a few flag variations.   I've
met many an admin that will tell you AIX is the greatest thing since
sliced bread while others will tell you Solaris is or HP-UX is or...
Usually what I find is the opinion is based on whichever variant the
speaker has the most experience with.

As others have mentioned he may be talking about tools used for
administration.   They mention SMITTY for AIX (and SMIT before that).
HP-UX has "SAM".   One thing I like about SAM is that if you don't know
how to do a task from command line you can simply watch what SAM does to
learn the command line.   Most SysAdmins spend more time in command line
than in config tools.   (I used to hate Solaris' tools though - they
were a hodgepodge and not all tied together like SAM and SMITTY.  Not
having used Solaris in the last 6 years I can't say whether they've
gotten better.)

Since many of the administrative tools on Linux are actually distro
specific they are somewhat analogous to the difference in UNIX variants.
That doesn't make them better or worse (or more mature or less mature) -
just different.

Also I don't really think it is a matter of maturity but rather of
different life cycles.   Linux (or more appropriately FOSS) has a faster
rate of change than UNIX.   This is one reason why many UNIX variants
now ship "supported" versions of various FOSS packages - it is simply
cheaper and easier to keep up with that than to roll your own from
scratch.   

>From my experience most GNU/FOSS commands have more options and better
functionality than the UNIX commands of the same name. 

To me UNIX is UNIX and in that same viewpoint Linux is UNIX (ignoring
arguments about cloning etc...) and so long as I have a command line
with the same basic commands I can generally figure out what else I need
to know.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Chris Fowler
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 9:10 AM
To: ale at pcartwright.com; Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] Unix Automation?

On Mon, 2011-04-18 at 09:02 -0400, Paul Cartwright wrote:
> On 4/18/2011 8:51 AM, Chris Fowler wrote:
> > As I said before.  When I got into Linux vi was our config tool and
we
> > learned more about UNIX then than a noob will learn today in the
same
> > amount of time.  If you had to download a base X config and then
> > configure it for your desktop using vi then raise your hand....
> > Everyone else get off my lawn!
>  
> 
> Before I learned Linux I did UNIX admin. When I started UNIX admin, I
> did it all using:
> vi & config files
> UNIX shell scripts & command-line tools
> 
> I configured LP, UUCP, DNS, users, shared folders, backups, and more.
> There was no X, there were no menus.
> 
> 

Good.  I'll get the fold out lawn chairs and we can drink beer and tell
the kids to get off the lawn.

AIX did hide a lot in smitty and it caused me all types of hurt when
things would go south and I had to figure out how to figure those
problems out.  Abstractions are there to make things easier on the user
or admin but they make it harder to solve problems during a crisis and
then the abstraction breaks.



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