topic Re: Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management in Operating System - HP-UX

Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management

Duncan Edmonstone — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:14:18 GMT

Please take a moment to read the following from Connect (the independent HP user group) and consider completing the survey.

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As an HP-UX system administrator, Connect and
HP are looking for your feedback. Please take a few minutes to complete the HP-UX System Administrator Survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ATP5WUG9HgOjf9oVNMt0Lw_3d_3d. The survey has been specifically designed to obtain input from users like you.

How will the information be used? The purpose of this survey is to validate customer requirements in system and software management and infrastructure services. The information provided will be used to influence HP's investments and provide an opportunity to improve customer experience and satisfaction with HP-UX 11i solutions.

Why complete the survey? In addition to providing feedback that will influence product direction, we will also give away an HP-UX dress shirt to one lucky winner in a random drawing of survey participants. Due to government regulations, we are unable to ship prizes outside the U.S.

We appreciate your taking the time to provide feedback. Please feel free to contact me with questions.

Best regards,

_____________________________________________

BARBARA O'CONNOR

Connect - Your Independent HP Business Technology Community

Visit us online at www.connect-community.org.

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Replies here indicating you've completed the survey won't earn you any points! Say something interesting though and I might assign some points.

Regards,

Duncan

Re: Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management

Pete Randall — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:40:07 GMT

something interesting

Sorry, Duncan - couldn't resist.

Pete

Re: Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management

Duncan Edmonstone — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:42:26 GMT

Ha!

Well as you were the first Pete, you can have a few! No more easy ones though...

Duncan

Re: Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management

Mel Burslan — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:44:19 GMT

I do not understand the effort to dumb down the system administrators by way of SMH and similar tools. If you are a unix admin of any flavor, you'd better know how to use the command line to do your job.

HP on the other hand, is pushing people to do sysadmin tasks by using a point and click interface. Thank you but no thank you. If I wanted to be a click happy admin, I would have chosen to go to the dark side and deal with Redmond's finest with a lot more job prospects. When the bad things go down, you as the person in charge of the business, do not want you runix admin to poke around to figure out what the problem is one click at a time. You expect them to use the command line and pipes and what not to get to the bottom of the problem in the shortest time possible.

I do not get the point of this effort but again, a company who hired Carly as a CEO, dumping the lucrative instrumentation part of its business as the Agilent spin off and position a scientific company as commodity PC manufacturer, I think, can be expected to do many other unwise things.

I am going to step down from my soapbox now. :)

Re: Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management

Ivan Krastev — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:47:37 GMT

Found some missing topics - integration of some of the Internet Express tools.

regards,
ivan

Re: Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management

Duncan Edmonstone — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:50:03 GMT

Mel,

As i even dream in command-line interfaces I share your revulsion for all things GUI'ish.

But then I also know plenty of operator-level admins who *are note to be trusted* at the command line - for these guys the granular access controls I can grant around SIM/SMH are absolutely perfact.

I see no harm in providing GUI and CLI - I'm not aware of any situations where we *force* you to use a GUI? (I'm ready to be corrected...)

HTH

Duncan

Re: Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management

Tim Nelson — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:52:07 GMT

Would be really interesting to see the results, especially for the SMH and SIM questions. (gui helpers to assist those that do not know what they are doing)

I am a anti-windowizer. "UX admins don't need no stinking windows/menus/secret config wizards". ;)

Thanks for the thread Duncan.

T.

Re: Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management

TTr — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:55:51 GMT

I could not agree more with Mel, Duncan and Tim. I need to update my personal quote to include these new tools that hide everything from you...

Re: Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management

Court Campbell — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:28:37 GMT

Yeah, it looks like hp is taking the suse approach to administration. If you have ever seen yast, you know what I am talking about. I personally would like to see more gnu apps in newer versions of the os, ie, core-utils, find-utils, etc. Oh and the watch command would be really cool. My 2 cents.

Re: Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management

John Payne_2 — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:35:23 GMT

As one of those places looking for ways to move operator level people out of the command line, we need to be able to find ways for them to be able to reset/restore/restart services in some sort of GUI fashion... That doesn't mean the command line goes away for the sysadmin. The command line is core to what Unix/Linux is. A problem with it is when you have 50 or 200 or 1000 machines, all the same, and all needing the same modification at or near the same time. tools HPSIM (or running an expect script) help greatly in these types of changes...

John

Re: Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management

Andres_13 — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:55:03 GMT

I really would hate if HP try to "hide" all the configuration tasks from the user, I'm a lover of command line and I believe that a mouse and HP-UX doesn't match.

GNU's apps are always welcome nad useful.

Re: Give your opinion on HP-UX System & Software Management

James R. Ferguson — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:22:43 GMT

Hi Duncan:

I agree with Mel's post, but:

In balance, providing *both* a GUI and a CLI is fine. This accomodates both the novice and the occasional need to do function-X, where one doesn't have great familarlity and/or one only does 'X' once in a great while.

Having either a GUI or a CLI tool that produces output designed to be easily parsed is most desirable. The '-F' switch to 'ioscan' and the 'k(m|c)tune' output are two good examples that come to mind.

Having text-based output allows scripting and CLI interfaces (of course) that can feed each other leads to standardization; repetition (with fidelity); and intrinsic documentation of a process.

If you are going to offer a GUI, at least offer a log of the commands generated. SAM did an 'ok" job at this, but AIX's SMIT does a better job, in my opinion.

Regards!

...JRF...