1 If you want to build a new server, and you're talking to someone who isn't
2 a sysadmin, the stuff that you know is generally going to go something like
5 Someone needs a server. They want one of those
6 Linux ones, have a gopher server, and they want
7 it blue. Several other requirements specific to
18 Really specific list of things to do to make it happen:
19 Figure out a hostname. Allocate an IP. Put the IP in DNS.
20 Get the right VLAN. Go to the store and get some blue paint.
21 Get a hypervisor with enough free capacity. Put the host in
22 the accounting system. Setup the guest. Configure the installer
23 for the required distro. kick off the install. Add some user
24 accounts. Setup a gopher server. Firewall the gopher server
25 from Jeremy because he doesn't like blue (and dozens more)
30 Do the stuff in the list
33 The miracle is normally a sysadmin. She's probably also got about 50
34 scripts to automate the rest as well, because like any good sysadmin,
35 her first priority was to automate herself out of a job. It will still
36 take a while to go through and run them in the right order, but for
37 more complicated builds, there's no one-size-fits-all script, so bits
38 and pieces around the place will have to be set off by hand.
40 make magic is desiged to be the miracle.
42 It figures out what has to be done, what order to do it in. It
43 keeps track of which steps have been done, and makes sure that
44 everything is done a correct right order. It can hook into
45 systems like mudpuppy and orchestra to automate the steps
46 themselves, the combination of which can do complex, unique
47 builds without any human intervention.