Darren New wrote:
> 
> Can you tell me a good remote administration suite for Linux machines?

I can't tell you if it's *good* (I haven't tested), but one such suite
is Webmin. I have seen couple of others too, but I can't remember the
names. If I had bunch of machines to care about, I would search test those.

> Something that will, say, let me install software on a bunch of desktop
> machines, show me what's installed there, update things, make backups,
> restore data, and so on?

Distributed administration again? I don't know if those remote admin
suites handle multiple computers with one command.

> Sure, but it's trivial and I don't have to do it by logging in, is what
> I meant.  It's pretty trivial even without AD.

Basically that trivialism comes from Windows's habit to try to access
another computer with the username and password you're currently logged
in with. I don't know any other system that does that, but increasing
number of software that allow saving passwords.

> I mean, Apache reads a file for its configuration. The file is either
> local to the machine, or on a network-shared directory.

Yes.

> Sure. My point is that Linux doesn't really have remote administration.
> It has remote access to the local administration. Often just as good or
> better, but you need the right tools to make that easier.

There are remote admin softwares, but because as you say, remote login
is usually at least as good, they are pretty unknown and silent
projects. Distributed admin (eg. "install software X to machins A, B and
C") is something that surely would be useful and would outuseful remote
login in many cases.

> You can't remotely reboot a Linux machine without logging into it, for
> example. But once you log in, you can do anything you could do if you
> were sitting there. (Of course, the latter is true of Windows, too.)

Eg. Webmin has reboot possibility. If logging in to Webmin equals
logging on to the machine, then yes.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message