Pointless rant: Red Hat Enterprise Server sucks!

[Craig White]

On Sun, 2007-08-05 at 12:59 -0700, Kurt Granroth wrote:
> Okay, okay, maybe RH ES doesn't really suck.  It is, after all, the most
> common server Linux (in the guise of CentOS, commonly).  And it is ultra
> stable.  Plus, every third party package has support for it.  In fact,
> that's why I'm using it.  Zimbra only supplies x86_64 packages for RH ES
> variants.
> 
> But come on!  It's not 1997 anymore.  Why do I have to do so many bloody
> things by hand?
> 
> Let's start by setting the hostname.  In SUSE, this can be done like so:
> 
> 1. Start up yast
> 2. Select the Hostname module
> 3. Enter my hostname
> 
> That's it.  Under CentOS 5:
> 
> 1. Try to find a central config app... and fail.  There's no such thing!
> 2. Search online and find that you use the system-config-network utility
> to set it.
> 3. I am doing everything remotely via a text console (no X... it's a
> server after all) so I start it up.  Oops!  It only supports modifying
> the network card (and in an ULTRA simplistic manner -- no advanced
> settings at all).  Apparently setting the hostname is something only GUI
> sysadmins will want to do.
> 3. Okay, fine.  Let's do it by hand.  Search online to find what files
> need to be modified.
> 4. Modify the /etc/sysconfig/network file
> 5. Modify the /etc/hosts file
> 6. Restart the network
> 
> Okay, let's try something a bit harder.  I want to setup BIND as a
> master name server for my domain.  Under SUSE:
> 
> 1. Start up yast
> 2. Select the DNS Server module
> 3. Select "Yes" to allow it to install bind and bind-chroot
> 4. Enter in my domain info (still have to know what A, MX, CNAMEs and
> the like mean... but at least it's structured very nicely)
> 5. Select Finish
> 
> Under CentOS:
> 
> 1. Do a 'find' for all files that have 'bind' in the name hoping one
> sounds like a config utility.  No go.
> 2. Do a 'yum search bind' and scour through all the packages there.
> Apparently there is a 'system-config-bind' utility.  Finally!  'yum
> install system-config-bind'... WTF?  It's a Gnome app!  I am NOT going
> to install X and the Gnome libs just for a simple config utility!.  This
> is a bloody SERVER!!
> 3. yum install bind bind-chroot
> 4. Look in /etc for named.conf.  None.  Look in /var/named/chroot/etc
> for named.conf.  Still no go.  Look for a named.conf to start with
> ANYWHERE on the system.  Nope.
> 5. Start searching online for how to configure a full named.conf file
> 6. Screw it.  I fire up SUSE on a vmware host, and configure BIND there
> 7. rsync -a /var/lib/named/ centos:/var/named/chroot/
> 8. service named restart
> 
> I don't even want to think about how many more steps there would have
> been if not for step 6 and SUSE.  And don't even get me started on how
> LONG it takes to do things the SUSE way vs the RH way.
> 
> Later, I'm planning on setting up some iSCSI targets.  Will there be a
> RH config panel for that?  Ha!  There's a SUSE one so I'm just going to
> configure it in SUSE and rsync the files over.
> 
> Shame on you, Red Hat!  You've been around for a very long time.  Plenty
> of time to create a coherent set of configuration utilities that work
> equally well in text mode as in a GUI.  SUSE has had this for *years*.
----
Shame on you Kurt for thinking that Red Hat should pander to your SuSE
driven expectations.

First off, the full host name configuration tool smacks you in the face
on install. With a little planning before the install, this would have
never been an issue in the first place.

Red Hat even by minimal setup will install X and it's pretty much
expected that their market will run X on their servers, right or wrong,
it's what they do. Therefore, those that need the crutches of GUI
configuration tools (or quasi-gui text based) are fully satiated. Unless
you absolutely customize the install, it's extremely hard to make it not
install X. In fact, given your understanding of RHEL (CentOS
derivative), I'm quite certain that your bluster above ignores
completely that x was installed and is already running (try ps |grep
xfs)

Therefore, if you had installed the system-config-* utilities, you could
ssh with X forwarding and still run the GUI driven configuration widgets
on your own desktop. (Though to be fair, I think that their
system-config-bind or is it named? sucks and never use it).

You could install webmin and use that (definitely my preferred tool for
Cron/DNS/DHCP/LDAP Users and Groups/Cyrus-imapd and now, their new
version provides full Bacula support) and sat back and rocked. Out of
the box, webmin understands chroot based bind (named on RHEL) and is one
of the few DNS management tools that doesn't totally suck.

Now, considering your methodology of creating the files on SuSE and
using rsync to bring them over tells me that you completely turned off
Selinux because you would have pulled out every hair on your head if
selinux were not disabled.

Now, as for how long things take comparison between RHEL and SuSE...I am
quite certain that it would take me 3-4 times longer to do the same
things I do on SuSE than on RHEL but I recognize it's because I
understand RHEL and use it all the time and I have to feel my way around
on SuSE. I never thought it pertinent to trash SuSE on the PLUG list
though. 

Yes, you're correct...there is no Yast, nor equivalent on RHEL. I see
that as a plus, not a minus....different strokes for different folks.

Thanks for the pointless rant - probably would have been better directed
at the Zimbra folk who chose the RHEL platform for their product than to
this list but perhaps not unexpected coming from someone who has
eschewed their Linux desktop in favor of Mac OSX.

Craig