[OT] Re: Windows and DLLs

[Nils Philippsen <nils wombat dialup fht-esslingen de>]

On Sat, 3 Oct 1998, Tim Moore wrote:

> Nils Philippsen wrote:
> > 
> > On Thu, 1 Oct 1998, David Jeske wrote:
> > > On Thu, Oct 01, 1998 at 09:11:17PM +0200, Jochem Huhmann wrote:
> > > > On Wed, 30 Sep 1998 17:24:08 PDT David Jeske wrote:
>
[snip]
> 
> But your implication is that this is impossible currently, which it's
> not. Users can *already* install their own copies of netscape. This is a
> policy decision between a sysadmin and his or her users, not something
> the OS should enforce uniformly. The OS should make it easy to do
> whatever you want to do.

I didn't (mean to) imply that it is impossible, but it is less easy than a
shrink-wrap-installer. I never said the OS should force this in any way
(btw. this has nothing to do with the OS, at least as I define OS. This is
a pure application level thing -- the installer / packager / whatever is
still an application). If it's not easy users will less likely do it which
is less hazzle for me.

> 
> Furthermore, it should be relatively easy to have some periodic cron job
> look for lots of duplicate apps and notify the sysadmin so that he or
> she can install it globaly and email the users who have it telling them
> they should delete their personal copies. Hell, it should be easy for

But how would you accomplish without either missing some installed
programs or annoying the admin with "false alarms". This doesn't solve the
"user installs bleeding edge app -- which is not installed systemwide --
for himself but fails to notify the admin so (s)he can instalkl it for the
benefit of all users"-problem, too.

> the system to tell if the same app is installed in a system directory
> and in your own directory and offer to delete your copy for you.

I'm not sure about automatisms (and apps trying to be very clever) -- nice
if they work, but crap if not.

> 
> If disk space is such a concern, why not just put a quota on people's
> accounts?

Because they should be able to use the space they need for their data. If
anyone has got a program which he or she needs I don't mind installing it
for them (if it doesn't compromise security, of course). Small example:
Currently there are about 150 users on one of our systems (it is a small
Linux server, official, but no big deal). If I would permit users to
installing netscape/StarOffice et alii by themselves the now sufficient
1GB of space on /home would be sucked up within 4 weeks maximum.

Nevertheless I don't oppose systems providing the described functionality,
but an admin should be able to disable them, if needed (as we all may have
learned this is a question of needs :-).

> 
> > > Compare this with the current UNIX system of installing apps, where
> > > users _cant_ install apps, because many apps are hard-coded to find
> > > their datafiles in "/usr/local/<appname>".
> > 
> > As I am very confident with users not able to install the apps alone (or
> > at least not that easily) it would be a good mechanism if apps worked out
> > of the box in different directories (/opt, /usr, /usr/local, ...).
> 
> That's all that's being proposed (assuming that you mean that it could
> work in arbitrary directories, not just the ones you listed). A side
> effect of this is that it would work in people's home directories.

And I stated (admittedly very terse) that I want to be able to disable
this for home directories. Any problem?

[snip]
> Furthermore, not everyone will be willing or able to write a shell
> script.

Then I hope that those people are only "administering" their home machine
on which the known system(s) (rpm, deb, ...) should work well enough (if
polished up a bit), as I don't see the need to be able to install multiple
versions of an app on a home system with < 5 users. Despite this, I don't
want to hinder anyone developing such a scheme (but please keep in mind us
poor admins who wan't to have a little bit of control *beg*).

> 
> > > What libs and datafiles are you trying to update? If I'm a user, and I
> > > install my own privte version of my email program, (which I can do on
> > > UNIX if I pull down the source), you sure as heck shouldn't be mucking
> > > with it.
> > 
> > You should be one of my users -- we sure would have big fun together, at
> > least with this attitude of letting the admin do the dirty stuff, but heck
> > I may do what I want on this system (even if it's not mine).
> 
> Well, there's a certain line you have to walk on either side. If I'm
> renting an apartment, I recognize that the room doesn't belong to me,
> and that there are certain restrictions on my use of it. But I don't
> want my landlord going through my closet and desk and throwing out
> anything he or she doesn't like.

As our users don't rent our services (we are a college, and in Germany you
don't pay for studying on a public college), we have more possibilities to
impose certain restrictions on the use of the system, if we think they're
appropriate to minimize work and they don't hinder the users from using
the system. As everyone should have realized I don't want to prevent
the use of any applications (modulo security holes), but I want to keep
the amount of my work down and the free disk space high. I hate redundancy
(read: multiply installed apps) except in the scope of high availability
issues. This has nothing to do with being "a fascist admin", because the
users don't experience any damage or loss through this, on the contrary
the apps might be setup better if an experienced admin installs them than
a normal user. To speak in the terms of your example, I very well go
through the rooms, throw out every washing machine, vacuum cleaner and 
lawn mower and put them into the storage room, garage or where else they
may belong. This might free some space for a nice painting or a sofa :-)

Nils
-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nils Philippsen                  @college: nils@rhlx01.rz.fht-esslingen.de
Vogelsangstrasse 115             @home:    nils@wombat.dialup.fht-esslingen.de
D 70197 Stuttgart                phone:    +49-711-6599405
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Maybe I should patent stupidity so every lawyer will owe me BIG !!
(mpare@cadvision.com)