Hi there,

System Administrators know they need to document their systems, but
often don't. In large environments, there are professional tools to
automate this, but these are usually overkill for home users or SOHO /
Small Business environments.

I was working at some sort of 'automatic system documentation' script
for my own servers, and found it turned out quite well, so I thought
maybe the ubuntu server team would be interested in having a look at it
and maybe use it in Ubuntu Server.


I've made a blueprint in Launchpad, with some pointers to rationale, use
cases, design, and a working proof-of-concept script, a.o.
I don't know if you'll get notified automatically, hence this e-mail to
draw your attention to it.

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/automaticsystemdocumentation


regards,
Koen Noens








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On Saturday 17 May 2008 15:56:45 Koen Noens wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> System Administrators know they need to document their systems, but
> often don't. In large environments, there are professional tools to
> automate this, but these are usually overkill for home users or SOHO /
> Small Business environments.
>
> I was working at some sort of 'automatic system documentation' script
> for my own servers, and found it turned out quite well, so I thought
> maybe the ubuntu server team would be interested in having a look at it
> and maybe use it in Ubuntu Server.
>
>
> I've made a blueprint in Launchpad, with some pointers to rationale, use
> cases, design, and a working proof-of-concept script, a.o.
> I don't know if you'll get notified automatically, hence this e-mail to
> draw your attention to it.
>
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/automaticsystemdocumentation

Thanks Koen,
You may want to refer to cfg2html (1) for some ideas. I've subscribed to the
blueprint.

Dave Thacker
Admin, Ubuntu Nebraska Loco Team

(1)http://www.cfg2html.com/




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Koen Noens wrote:
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/automaticsystemdocumentation

I think this could be quite useful, although I'm currently looking at
using Puppet to manage our systems so the actual configuration would be
on the puppetmaster anyway. I've used a tool from Novell previously that
may prove useful in developing the script further:

http://www.novell.com/communities/node/2332

--
Paul Elliott, UNIX Systems Administrator
Computing Service, University of York


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Koen Noens wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> System Administrators know they need to document their systems, but
> often don't. In large environments, there are professional tools to
> automate this, but these are usually overkill for home users or SOHO /
> Small Business environments.
>
> I was working at some sort of 'automatic system documentation' script
> for my own servers, and found it turned out quite well, so I thought
> maybe the ubuntu server team would be interested in having a look at it
> and maybe use it in Ubuntu Server.
>
>
> I've made a blueprint in Launchpad, with some pointers to rationale, use
> cases, design, and a working proof-of-concept script, a.o.
> I don't know if you'll get notified automatically, hence this e-mail to
> draw your attention to it.
>
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/automaticsystemdocumentation
>
>
> regards,
> Koen Noens
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Hi Koen,

having read through your blueprint, what you suggest as a concept seems
solid, however is a shell script the best way to do this ?

There are tools available, one mentioned in a previous reply that will
do this in a much neater format, such as cfg2html, and is employed
already by enterprise tool kits,

SME's may have multiple machines running multiple distros/unix varients
, therefore is a shell script the way to take this forward ?
Your shell script is not dynamic and does not account for any additional
auditing, such as Ldap authentication (just an easy example), or a
central repository, for a one server environment your concept seems spot
on, but then a one server environment - would you need to do this ?

Monitoring tools such as nagios are also invaluable for displaying the
status of certain real time environments and hardware.

I can see the goal your suggesting, but for it to be useful to SME's it
needs to be more generic and more of a tool in the same way nagios is,
for multiple distros and bigger scope for customisation, application
listing, authentication options, etc etc.

Matt


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On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 3:56 PM, Koen Noens <koen.noens@telenet.be> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> System Administrators know they need to document their systems, but
> often don't. In large environments, there are professional tools to
> automate this, but these are usually overkill for home users or SOHO /
> Small Business environments.
>
> I was working at some sort of 'automatic system documentation' script
> for my own servers, and found it turned out quite well, so I thought
> maybe the ubuntu server team would be interested in having a look at it
> and maybe use it in Ubuntu Server.
>
>
> I've made a blueprint in Launchpad, with some pointers to rationale, use
> cases, design, and a working proof-of-concept script, a.o.
> I don't know if you'll get notified automatically, hence this e-mail to
> draw your attention to it.
>
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/automaticsystemdocumentation
>
>
> regards,
> Koen Noens
>

FYI: There is already a tool that pretty much does this exact thing in
RHEL called "sosreport". A port of this to Ubuntu would be nice
though.

James

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