[wpkg-users] More ways of defining hosts in hosts.xml - end

[K.E.Jones at bton.ac.uk]

Hi,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wpkg-users-bounces at lists.wpkg.org [mailto:wpkg-users-
> bounces at lists.wpkg.org] On Behalf Of Jindrich Vorlicek
> Sent: 22 April 2009 23:35
> To: wpkg-users at lists.wpkg.org
> Subject: [wpkg-users] More ways of defining hosts in hosts.xml - end
> 
> I tested my patched wpkg.js on Windows XP Professional SP3 computers
> joined to Windows Server 2003 domain.
> I tested it a year and it works for me well.
> 
> So try my patch and if you will think, that my changes are useful,
> maybe could be used (or its parts) in next version of wpkg.
> 
> If you want detailed description of all new functions, you can find it
> at http://bugzilla.wpkg.org/show_bug.cgi?id=118
> (as decription off Patched wpkg.js v.1.1.0-M6)
>
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 Brilliant!

 There's some incredibly useful stuff in there. I'd really like to see
it become
part of WPKG!

 It's making me think of a few alternative ways of implementing it
though.
I'm sorry I don't speak your native tongue so if any of this doesn't
make
sense let me know and I'll try and re-write it in babelfish friendly
words.

 I've thrown in a few ideas myself but one of the arguments about adding
extra facilities like this is that you always end up adding new XML
elements
or properties to handle. This makes it difficult for people to write a
Web
management system. That's something I feel would really get WPKG
noticed.

 With your original code as an example and inspiration, I implemented my
own
"Group Membership" but I tried a different direction. I added it as
another
"test" as it went through the matching process. I based it one the
principal
that names are quite often unique so if a host id didn't match one test
it
was safe for it to be matched against another.

 Maybe it would be easy to think about it like this;

 <host id="<match criteria>[;<match criteria>...]" profile-id="abc"/>

 and then write a good parser that tries to match the host ID to each
type of
test step by step as WPKG already does.

 A machine name should be unique, a group name should be unique, IP
addresses should
be easy to identify and maybe it's easy to also identify an OU path?

 If you see what I mean...

 I really like the idea of using ";" so you can have multiple hosts
getting a certain
profile. It makes sense to handle "collections" of hosts. It really
works well in my head.

 If you've followed this far then what I'm thinking about is;

 <host id="computer01"...
 <host id="computer01;computer02"...
 <host id="salesgroup"...
 <host id="computer01;salesgroup"...
 <host id="192.168.0.4;computer02;salesgoup"...
 <host id="192.168.0.1-100;computer02;salesgroup"...
 <host id="192.168.0.1-100;ou=sales dc=fabrikam
dc=com;computer02;salesgroup"...
 <host id="192.168.0.*;computer*;sales*"...

 It all just boils down to some good code to "recognise" each match
rather than add
new elements and complications to the parsing.

 I think that that might be a really good and easy way of getting your
add-ons
easily put into WPKG. It just seems a lot neater and easy to understand.

 What do you think?

Regards,

Keith

PS: If Rainer think this has merit you could easily apply it everywhere
so
it you don't need things like /applymultiple

 I was thinking that the following would be really cool;

 <host id="match1;match2;match3" profile="profile1;profile2"/>

 Not only would it give you what you need but it would also remove the
awkward,

 <host id="computer01" profile-id="xyz"><profile id="abc"></host>

I've always felt that WPKG needed to handle the profile property vs
element issue.
It really would make things simpler on the coding front.

 There's no reason why the matches couldn't also be regex expressions
:-)

PPS: Sorry I haven't added my commitment for a while. Work has been
unusually difficult!

PPPS: It also make another thought spring to mind. How about;

 <check "rule1 and (rule2 or rule3)">

 Where rule1 etc are different checks... Now that would save all the
awkward parsing
of XML elements there as well.

 Hrmmm... WPKG 3.0 I think... lots to do before that idea...