On Jan 23, 2004, at 1:04 PM, Mitsu Hadeishi wrote:
> Yes, I know this has been discussed before, and I have read the
> discussion in
> the archives. However, I'd like to make a new argument in favor of a
> Webmin
> module for Exim.
I'm new to this list so I haven't seen any of the previous arguments
pro/con. My current stance, which can be swayed by a strong and
logical argument, is for a Webmin interface. Why?
1. It's possible to be somewhere they don't allow you to ssh out.
However, http(s) traffic is not hampered.
2. Being new to Exim, I was unfamiliar with the syntax and am still
not really completely comfortable with it. Time will help this.
3. When I first started using Webmin, it was not so much a crutch as a
teaching tool. I learned how to configure sendmail and bind using it,
and feel fairly confident now that I could roll my own in either case.
4. There is no point number four.
5. Although I already knew apache, the hints and tricks I picked up
using Webmin were quite helpful.
6. Postfix was completely foreign to me, and I can manage it with
Webmin better than manually editing the main.cf and other .cf files.
7. Using Webmin allows me to be able to put more tasks on more junior
administrators without them completely hosing the system because of
syntax errors. Of course this saves me time from fixing their errors,
but not on checking their work.
8. Even an experienced admin can appreciate the time saved when doing
things through a well designed (web) interface. I've found in the case
of bind and sendmail both that I can be much faster at finding and
correcting errors while using Webmin than without.
> The ideal GUI interface would allow one to "escape out" to the
> substratum in
> order to configure things that are not addressed in the GUI, leaving
> the more
> common tasks to the GUI. This is, for example, the approach taken by
> Mac OS
> X, which is a beautiful example of a GUI built on top of a full-power
> FreeBSD
> operating system "underneath." Most common things can be done with
> the GUI,
> some need to be done from the command line. It is possible to use both
> interfaces to configure the system.
The bind interface to Webmin illustrates this quite well. You can edit
manually even through the interface.
> An earlier mailing list participant mentioned that a naive user might
> use a
> Webmin module to configure an open relay, etc. Actually I don't
> really see
> why a GUI would necessarily make it easier to configure an open relay.
I would think a naive user would be more likely to have an open relay
without a GUI than with.
> I am not interested in a flame war here --- I just felt it was worth
> putting
> in some additional thoughts. I figure if a commercial outfit can make
> CPanel
> work with Exim, free software developers ought to be able to produce a
> workable Webmin config module.
Although a flame war could be a lot of fun, I'm older now and don't
type as quickly and with the same venom I did in my younger days. A 20
year old CS student could hand me my hat nowadays. =-)
-Michael
---------------------------------------
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they
are free.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
