Re: Trying ARK feedback

Harlan wrote:

> I'm noticing it's a lot of work for me to get from try-ark
> to even a single production host.

While this msg was a good prompt for some fun hacking
yesterday (thanks, Harlan :-), I should go on record to say
that I Just Don't Get This (even though I have all the time
in the world for Harlan's expertise).

Want to run (Sidai-style) ARK stuff on one host?  OK, you
gotta tell ARK about it; something like...

   <host name="slicker" xml-version="1">
   <status>active</status>
   <prototypes>
	<prototype team="." name="sparc-solaris" />
   </prototypes>
   <ip-addresses><list>	<item>130.209.242.51</item>
   </list></ip-addresses>
   </host>

I count about 4 small pieces of info.  (As I showed
yesterday, if you needed to create a whole bunch of those, a
script could chomp through them pretty fast.)

OK, we've also said, "And it's one of our Suns running
Solaris" (<prototype team="."  name="sparc-solaris" />).
You gotta say what that means:

   <host name="sparc-solaris" xml-version="1" prototype="yes">
   <description>
   SPARC hardware running Solaris 2.x or later
   </description>
   <prototypes>    <prototype team="sidai" name="sparc-solaris" />
		   <prototype team="." 	name="ALL"		/>
   </prototypes>
   </host>

That says: inherit whatever the Sidai sparc-solaris
proto-host has to say (which is usually where particular
programs are located).  If you don't want to know/use that
stuff, don't use the prototype.

We've also said: that we have our own team's ALL proto-host
as a prototype; that is:

   <host name="ALL" xml-version="1" prototype="yes">
   <description>
   Any host at all at glasli1
   </description>
   <prototypes>
     <prototype team="sidai" name="ALL" />
   </prototypes>
   
   <domainname>dcs.gla.ac.uk</domainname>
   
   <gateway>130.209.240.48</gateway>
   
   <name-servers><list>
     <item>130.209.240.49</item>
     <item>130.209.240.50</item>
   </list></name-servers>
   
   <ARK>
   <string>@team:ark-dirs:OUR@/bin/ark</string>
   <constraint><dependency type="optional" name="arkbase" /></constraint>
   </ARK>
   
   <!-- I've snipped out lots of stuff -->
   </host>

That's where we pick up "stuff that's true about all of our
hosts but perhaps not anyone else's".

As far as I can tell, every individual "fact" is being
recorded in exactly one place; can't do better than that,
can we :-?

Yes, we have the huff-and-puff verbosity of XML, but that's
the price of tagging along (sorry...) with a standard.  At
least it's conceptually simple.

The complexity of your hosts' prototype structure and what
you choose to put in all of that is up to you.  You don't
have to record all this stuff if you don't care about it and
aren't going to use it.  Ditto packages.  Ditto users.
Ditto anything else you feel bothered to record in this way.

I've spent about 10 minutes on the glasli1 hosts' structure
over the life of the entire Arusha Project.  I may be
missing something (please tell me!), but I'm basically
baffled how this stuff could be a killer.

Will