Re: A bridge too far ...



On Fri, 2008-02-15 at 12:06 -0800, Clark Dunson wrote:
> Friendly Gnomers;

Sounds like a lot of pebkac to me.

> The hostname is usually set by the ‘hostname’ program, but not in the
> Gnome case.  We cannot set the hostname and recover several of our
> systems due to your design choice, which by every standard is not
> Unix-like.

Can you provide proof of this inability to set the hostname with the
hostname command?  What output do you get if you do:

# hostname
# hostname foo
# hostname

> Consider what’s happened.  We cloned a drive and booted it on another
> machine.  Oops, we forgot to shutdown the original system before we
> turned on the clone.  Our DHCP server refused to give an IP address to
> the same hostname twice.

DHCP leases should NOT be determined based on hostnames.  Your DHCP
server is broken.  DHCP leases are determined based on the client ID
which is commonly the mac address prefixed by a hardware type.

>   Of course.  That’s called ‘security’.  Result?  The cloned system
> failed the network.

"failed the network"?  Your network crashed because of some interaction
between one DHCP client and the DHCP server?  That sounds like a very
fragile configuration -- one which I would fire a network administrator
for building.

> That’s all good.  On a normal Unix box, we could just use the command
> ‘hostname newname’ to change the hostname, and then reboot.

Ahhh.  Not likely, no.  The hostname command is a "runtime" setting
only.  If you want to change the hostname over a reboot you need to
change it wherever your distribution stores it.  This has NOTHING to do
with Gnome.  It's Linux distribution dependent.

> But not on a Gnome machine.  The ‘real’ hostname is kept and set by
> Gnome?!?  Booooooooooo!!!

Do you have any proof of this assertion other than the above
misunderstanding of how hostname is set on a Linux system?

> Gnome (Ubuntu 7.0.4) now blocks us PERMANENTLY from changing the
> hostname.

No it doesn't.

> And Gnome overrides su/root?!?

What does this mean?

> Whathehellis this dialog box?!?:

And what does this mean?

If you'd care to describe the symptoms you are seeing rather than going
off on a rant (which I don't even know why I am responding to) maybe
somebody could provide some assistance to what is likely just more
pebkac and misunderstanding.

> "You are not allowed to access the system configuration"

More pebkac.

> That is really bogus.  I'm root!!!  Keep doing stuff like this and you
> might as well just hand the future to Windows Vista.

Hrm.  It's obvious that you are not calm and rational.  You might get
more help if you calm down and describe your problems rationally.

> Our Admin is winning the day with management by saying we should be on
> Windows Embedded.  The way things are going now, he may win.  Our only
> out?  Spend the next two weeks re-cloning, hit our delivery schedule,
> and eat the $$$$ - or scotch Gnome.

Or hire somebody who actually knows what he is doing.  My dad used to
say "a bad workman always blames his tools".

> The -backend- scripts *.pl are not happy, and you have just unravelled
> three decades of Unix wisdom.  How dare you create state inside of
> Gnome that overrides Unix, that not even ‘su’ can fix?!

More pebkac.  There is no system state in Gnome.  It's all independent.
Yes, some tools written for Gnome can administer those external system
configurations but they are not inside Gnome as you wrongly assert.

> Sorry to sound abusive, but I know of no other way to impress upon you
> how serious this situation is, and what risk you have introduced to
> the entire Linux community via your design choice.

LOL.  You are too much.  No Linux community is at any risk from Gnome.
Your panic is a classic example of somebody who's in over his head and
trying to blame others.  If you really are that much in a panic go and
hire a competent Linux consultant and you will see the errors in your
ways.

> Until we hear of a work around or a fix, we are proposing to cut all
> of our machines back to runlevel three.

I guess that's supposed to be some kind of threat or ultimatum?  Not
sure who cares.

> (If it can even be done in Ubuntu).  We have no other way of knowing
> what other similar decisions your team has made, and a damn strong
> customer who is in no mood for this kind of BS.

LOL.  Customer?  Of who or what?  Customer of Gnome?  Have you purchased
something that leads you to think that we are in some kind of
customer/vendor relationship?  If you want to make threats and claims of
"a damn strong customer", perhaps you need to take your complaints back
to wherever you spent your money.

> I’m sure, given my quasi-hostile tone, that you are turned off,

Quite!

> but any insight or guidance you could offer would be greatly
> appreciated.

Even if you do calm down and start describing your problems rationally,
it's likely that your attitude here has already made up minds about
helping you.

Good luck.

b.

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