I had the privilege of giving not one but two talks at the Red Hat Summit–both about open source systems management topics. A good deal of this content was also shared with a different audience at FudCON–the Fedora Users and Developers Conference. This was a great trip to Boston, and a fantastic chance to talk with users, administrators, and developers of all types.
The first talk I had a part in was Func, which I co-presented with Adrian Likins. Func, as mentioned before in Red Hat Magazine, is an API for controlling lots of nodes for arbitrary systems management tasks. It is ideally suited for replacing legacy SSH infrastructure as well as building new network applications that require secure network communications infrastructure.
We gave an overview for folks that hadn’t heard of Func before, and showed off several examples of things you can do with the Python API. Interest in Func is growing, and lots of folks are using it in ways we hadn’t originally intended (which is, of course, the idea). » Read more
Func had an interesting beginning. It began not in a whiteboard-lined conference room, but in a small coffeeshop in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Greg DeKoenigsberg, Adrian Likins, Seth Vidal, and I were discussing how to make Linux easier to manage for large install bases. That’s when we came up with the idea for Func.
While Fedora contains excellent open source management applications for a variety of tasks, it still lacked a good remote scripting framework roughly analogous to the features provided by system-config-* applications. It turns out this was something many of us wanted to write for a long time–but for some reason, we never did. So, why not build it? » Read more
There are a vast number of fantastic open source projects out there, though for every one that is widely adopted, there are many that remain cloaked in relative obscurity. How can the open source development model best be leveraged to take advantage of community feedback, ideas, and testing, and ultimately gather code contributions? If you are just thinking about open sourcing a new project, what steps can you take to ensure a vibrant community? If you already have an open source project, how can you make your community more active? The community can make any project stronger, but they are not built automatically.
If you’ve ever had to install a large number of Linux systems, you are probably aware how tedious the install process can be. While tools like kickstart can help automate an installation, there are other pieces to the puzzle. There really hasn’t been a tool to unify all the ways you can install Linux–until now.
The most common way to do network installations is network booting via PXE, which requires setup of a TFTP server and DHCP configuration. However, PXE is not viable in some situations due to external constraints–for instance, what if your department does not have control of your DHCP server? What if you are at home and don’t have a server of your own? Solutions for installing machines without PXE are useful in those cases. For virtualization technology like Xen and KVM, other fully automatic installation solutions are required. » Read more
