> Something tells me somebody agrees with me, as no perl/sh/tktcl script has
> gotten into the tree for this purpose.

The problem i think here is that in order to run some perl or tcl/tk script
from the basic distrib, you'd have to incorporate perl or tcl/tk into the tree
itself.

And i only know of perl that it's under quite some development, which i think
keeps people from doing so. Speaking exp. of tk, you even need X for that...
and you sure don't want to spread programs that need additional components you
don't provide. (Reminds me of some M$-DOS commands (V5.0 or so) that required
Windoze to run).


> 2) As far as a Curses/SMIT style interface, should the curses interface
>    be an added option for the regular adduser, kinda like Sun did it with
>    some of their tools? That way shell scripts could be built around these
>    tools, yet the admin would have the option of a menu.

Yes, using adduser from a batch-job without any interaction would be an
absolute must for me. The GUI-version could offer the possibility to add groups
of users, which have similar logins then (like user01-user42).


>    How about the X interface being an option program that would come from the
>    same sources perhaps, but be #ifdef'd out for normal distributions.

I'd rather see that X-program as a pure X-interface, which archives all it's
functionally by invoking adduser by hand then. Modularity. :)


> How do people feel about a menu system like SMIT that can be configured
> from a menu config file? That way things like X can be put onto the admin
> suite without recompiling (for lack of a better name) BSDadmin (or just
> bsdadmin).

basically, command-line adduser/deluser would be enough, a curses or X version
would be a nice toy.

Besides adduser/deluser, i'd think about what functions such a tool should
offer first. Frontent for the stuff in /etc/netstart comes to my mind,
/etc/hostname.*, mygate, myname, maybe /etc/resolv.conf; maybe /etc/fstab and
/etc/exports; facility to setup YP (NIS) client (/etc/defaultdomain, mkdir
/var/yp); printing (local and remote); timezone(/etc/localtime). (That's all
that comes to my mind from a first glance at /etc... one might find more :-).

The really critical point would be here that bsdadmin or whatever you call it
should be only a frontend to the files above, and there should be some
preview-capability so the user can see exactly see what's going on even before
invoking the command.


Enjoy,

	Hubert

P.S.: Note for add/deluser: you might add a hook for entering things in
      /etc/aliases.

-- 
=============== Hubert Feyrer ============================================
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