Re: [Linuxcoe-devel] GOSA and LinuxCOE

[Bryan G. <bry...@hp...>]

Bruno,

On Sat, Apr 04, 2009 at 11:59:53PM +0000, Cornec, Bruno (Open Source and Linux Technology Architect) wrote:
> Some of you may know I'm interested in producing a dploy.org project
> gathering LinuxCOE, Mondorescue, mrepo and additional glue between all
> those bricks.
> 
> During my visit of Solutions Linux 2009 in Paris
> (http://solutionslinux.fr/), I encountered Benoit Mortier, who is working 
> for OpenSides (http://www.opensides.be/) and contributes to the GOSA
> project (http://freshmeat.net/projects/gosa).

Nice.

> Gosa is a framework providing a management Web interface for users,
> groups, systems, ... based around an LDAP server. Everything is stored
> in LDAP, making it easy for inter-systems communication and queries +
> allows easy HA and replication.
> Demo at https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/wiki/demo
> 
> And also exists GOSA-SI which provides deployment services for systems
> based on GOSA + a DHCP+LDAP patch and a TFTP+LDAP server. Which makes
> deployment very easy using that infrastructure. In fact much simpler and
> dynamic that what I was working on :-)

Even better.

> They work mostly with Debian, and this system has been developed for the
> city of Munich (DE) and supports thousands of systems.
> 
> Benoit kindly offered 3 hours of his time to explain me how all that was
> working, and I really think that my Dploy.org idea should migrate to
> that platform as:
> 
> 0/ It's GPL
> 1/ They have a nice Web interface, much better than what I ever could
> code (written in PHP + Templates).
> 2/ They have a plugin interface so making addition of services as easy
> as possible.
> 3/ They are using perl for GOSA-SI plugins
> 4/ They do not have an imaging solution. So I could plug Mondorescue.
> 5/ They have support for Linux, LTSP and Windows deployment but using
>    only FAI (Linux) and opsi (Windows)
> 6/ They use trac for their infra (I love ;-)
> 7/ They plan on an OCS Inventory integration
> 8/ They even have packages (deb and rpm)
> 
> We could work with them to integrate LinuxCOE as is, and benefit from
> the nice Web interface they have on top of LinuxCOE.

Even better.  And sounds similar to the integration I've been helping
with for the openQRM project ( http://www.openqrm.com/ ).

> Then I think that LinuxCOE could provide code to enhance their project,
> allowing them to have native deployment support for RPM based distro.
> They already have a profile notion, not sure how that's overlaping.
> They do not have replay feature.
> 
> What do you think ?

Go for it, full steam ahead. IMHO, the more integration aspects, the better,
and follows the "tool" mentality, where each does what's best.

bryang