freebsd-stable Digest, Vol 134, Issue 5

[Brad Knowles]

At 8:05 AM -0500 2005-11-04, Mike O'Dell wrote:

>  Brett is too polite, so i'll say it for him.

	I don't think that Brett has ever been accused of being "too 
polite" by anyone ever before, so this would definitely be a first.

>  Brett Glass was sweating problems like this when
>  many people on this list were still in diapers.

	True.  I wasn't in diapers at the time he was doing this kind of 
stuff, but I probably was still in college at that point, and we are 
talking fifteen to twenty years ago.

>  Dismissive condescending responses like this one
>  are *way* outa line.

	Not necessarily true.  Brett does get a lot of crap sent his way 
that he may not deserve in that particular instance, but his overall 
attitude and response pattern over the past several years has earned 
him that kind of treatment.  As a general rule, he usually gets what 
he deserves.

	He has certainly earned a great deal of disrespect from me.

>  There is a well-worked example of this "shit/noshit" approach to config
>  management and it's cisco ios configs.
>
>  anyone who believes this works well has clearly not done enough of it.

	For Brett, the old approach works just fine, because it's what he 
has been using for the past twenty years (or so), and that's what 
he's used to.  Problem is, we have demonstrated repeatedly that many 
newbies come along and delete stuff from their kernel config that 
they don't understand and they shoot themselves in the foot.

	When they do that, they come to this mailing list (and other 
related mailing lists), and ask all sorts of ignorant questions -- 
not necessarily stupid questions, but definitely ignorant.  Worse, 
many others just call FreeBSD a bunch of crap and never give it 
another try.


	We have no alternative.

	We know the old approach isn't working for the newbies, and we 
need to do something else that works better for them and helps avoid 
as much foot-shooting as possible.  The current "option/nooption" 
approach may not be the best solution to this problem, but it is a 
reasonably well understood solution, and is certainly better than a 
lot of other alternatives.

	Yes, the option/nooption solution may make life a little more 
difficult for the greybeards (or anyone else wanting a somewhat more 
complex kernel configuration where the built-in defaults are not 
necessarily desirable), but there are relatively few greybeards 
around, at least compared to the newbies.  Moreover, the greybeards 
are more likely to be able to come up with alternative solutions that 
may be better than either the old approach or the new one, and may be 
in a position to help implement their improved solution.


	So, while I don't qualify as a greybeard myself, I don't have 
that much sympathy for anyone who just wishes that the clock would 
roll back and everything would go back to the way it was.

	If the new solution isn't working for you and you've been in this 
business long enough to be a greybeard, then you should have enough 
experience to help us work out a better solution.


	From where I sit, Brett is just bitching and not providing any 
useful contribution.

>  let me be very clear here:  we have a worked example of the approach
>  	and it sucks flaming red bugs

	It has it's problems, yes.  But large sites like AOL that use 
automated configuration management tools for their thousands and tens 
of thousands of cisco routers is proof that it can be made to work 
reasonably well on even the largest scales.

	Been there, saw that, and even you aren't going to be able to 
convince me otherwise.

	No, it's not perfect.  Sometimes you get nineteen hour downtimes 
that causes all e-mail across the entire Internet to break down.  But 
it does work most of the time, and the reliability/uptime factor has 
been pushed out to several nines.

>  No, the Department of Snarky Replies doesn't even want to discuss the matter
>  given their authoritative experience across all time and space.

	Brett is not a good person to throw stones here.  His "works fine 
here" is just as useless as Kris's response.  As such, I would 
recommend that maybe you might want to avoid throwing stones on 
Brett's behalf.


	When everything is said and done, past technical accomplishments 
mean little if you can't play nice with others.

	Brett has earned a great deal of disrespect from me, because of 
his previous anti-social behaviour, and remarkable lack of useful 
contributions in recent history.  On those same criteria, I've 
definitely got a lot more respect for Kris than many other people who 
are currently associated with the project.


	Where you want to place yourself on that spectrum is your choice, 
but the best thing would be if everyone would stop attacking everyone 
else, and get down to the real issue of trying to find a better 
solution.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.