Explaining e-smith layer - learning by doing

I do too.
But how to say …It’s still hash.
Perhaps @filippo_carletti already said elegantly:

Edit: Initialy I wanted to write harsh… :ghost:

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Mode troll on, I’m not a bad guy :smile:

Developers have a curious way to apprehend life, all is algorithms. What is incomprehensible for you, is clear for them. They do love to write their code, the most unreadable for you, just to demonstrate their level, and of course with less comments as possible because they are really lazy people.

mode troll off.

I have just one advice for you Jim and for all people who want to play with neth code, firstable try to read code of some modules, forget for now the documentation that you found obscure …Once you will have some examples in mind you will understand better what the documentation is talking.

The documentation should, could, must be enhanced, but if you have not the point of view of a developer, it is useless.

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You are my hero! :rocket:

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I’m not a developer but posts like this inspires me! Amazing insights, really! Thanks Steph

You MUST be our dev_team coordinator! You could be a good mentor for anyone else.
What do think guys? @giacomo, @davidep, @filippo_carletti, @alep, @Stll0, @vcc, @mabeleira, @medworthy, @dz00te, @fasttech, @GG_jr, @Adam @jim @Ctek

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If I’m well understand, you are fully qualified to rewrite this stuff to make it more afordable :wink:

What do you thing about doing tutorials, writing but until video tutorials too, how to install the Nethserver developer environment?
Making tutorial about the basics about the db manipulation?

jim… re-read carefully (and at least twice) the link I posted twice in the other topic… all you need is here and in NS documentation… moreover, follow stephdl advice, get the developer poit of view, be curious.

I’d read the link…SME Server:Documentation:Developers Manual - SME Server

This one where we can see:

Note:
Copyright © 2002-2006 Mitel Corporation
Last updated: $Date: 2006/05/29 09:02:22 $

and

The section describes the general structure of the configuration
database. The actual entries and properties are subject to change
between releases.

I already see in this forum video tutorial about the Nethserver installation…

But sorry… Sorry to try to shake this forum with ideas, with suggestions, with interogations, with debates.

well… a 10 years old math book is still good… start reading it… you’ll learn a lot… when you’ll have some questions, here we are…

but atm it seems that you want someone else do something to make you learn :slight_smile:
just read… be curious

(I read it in 2 days, printed on paper…)

I appreciate what you’re doing, I read your posts carefully and always try to give you my best answers.

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me too, of course

but every change request, to improve something, must come from some knowledge… I mean… if I don’t know how things work, I just can guess and propose… If I know the internals, I can also judge and understand, and propose improvements…

Keep in mind that english is not my mother tong.

@filippo_carletti
You alway reply with courtesy and pertinence

@zamboni
you seem more resistent at change proposal. :wink:
I’m curious… But I have difficulties with this e-smith layer. Am I the only one?

And one more time I don’t 100% agree :grin:
A change can be done with a new or fresh point of view or another perspective.

yes… but you can’t propose to change a mechanical part in an engine without knowing how the engine works and/or how that part is supposed to work
you can obvioously propose to change the whole engine, but before doing so, you must know everything about the engine, cause tomorrow you can’t say “ops, I miss a feature I had and I need”
and, more, re-engieeering something means bugs, many bugs, and then debug, tests, problems…

and this (the fact thar requests for changes come without knowing how things work) is demonstrated by all the requests to use a different framework to redesign the web ui, without knowing that the web part is only a plus… it shows (get) and save (post) datas… al the logic is elsewhere…

about this: here, we are talking about an enterprise grade linux distribution, i.e. something where people invest work, money, and where “my” customers put their data…
in this perspective, I don’t need a fancy UI, I need a rock solid product, that simply works in reliable, predictive and vervbose mode.
you (generally speaking) see only a new distro with a good UI, to be compared (but just by the aestethic side) to zentyal or other… in other words, you (generally speakin) are attracted more from how it appears than how it works.
you (generally speaking) can afford a distro change in your home server twice, 3 times an year…

me, as sysadm, must think about “my” data from now to 3/4 years ahead… and my customers can’t afford a flaky server.

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I teach my work mates to use the db commands and to explain the e-smith layer concepts… they understand the thing in a quite small time…
I don’t know you, don’t know how do you approach to new things…
thne only suggestion I can give to you is:
install a VM adn destroy it, try everything, see the effects of your input… all forgettig, in the first instance, the UI…
if you don’t jump into, you never understand, even with video 3d tutorial with 7.1 surround audio

No you’re not! :smile:
I remember I had some troubles at the beginning, still I have problems when events have cross-dependencies and I have to write some difficult script for the db migration!

So, I surely understand your point, and I’d also like to use some of the new tools. I looked into some configuration management projects such as Puppet, Salt and Ansible (the one I like most), but all tools have a steep learning curve.
There is no easy way to replace the current e-smith layer, but probably it’s time to integrate some new tool!

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No, you’re not. I had the same problem, but … I have the same problem every time I face a new big tool.
But there’s a great thing about e-smith system: you don’t have binary blobs, just easy readable scripts! And you can always “follow the path” without the needs of boring developer documentation.

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Yes, I am
But a familly is time consuming… I must choose priorities :smiley:

This… is why I hesitate to invest heavily in NS, for in the end, I need to be able to depend on a distro to serve my clients, well past tomorrow, and here we are talking about throwing out the bathwater and filling the tub with milk…

Why not learn e-smith if necessary, I think in most cases there’s no need for the end user (admin) to have to delve into esmith anyway. Even I’m only delving because of some small tweak I desire, ie; bypass current office files from filtering.

I like the way I can relatively quickly setup an office server using NS, and it’s underlying stability, relatively, my ClearOS installs are suddenly slammed with dozens of updates, I’m waiting to see them hit NS.

In the end I want to be able to let my clients know they can depend on their server for more than a few years… Zentyal really fucked me there.

in most cases you don’t need to know how NS works internally, you’re right 100%
but since we are in development section, we’re talking about why “you” must know and understand all the internals if you want improve/change them :smile:

99% updates come from upstream and you’re strongly adviced to apply them…
I already observed here that locking the repos to a release of upstream distro is wrong, since I wnat and I need to keep my systems uptodate… this is something I don’t like in NS, but I know that devs are working on it.

well… this is a cons of dealing with a distro that is NOT community driven… money talks
NS is still young, but it’s OOSS and the firm behind it (Nethesis) has not interest in locking it or pruning some features…

finally, about your desires: the only way to tweak NS is to dig into… hard to understand at a beginning, you’ll have a powerfull tool in your hands tomorrow

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6 posts were split to a new topic: How to set up a dev environment?