Hi,

I know unix gurus love the command line. How many of you actually run a hosting business with no control panel [or atleast no commercial control panel?]

Thanks
Balaji

s/no control panel/no administrative control panel/g ?

I mean, lusers are going to want a touchy feely gooey to play with, and there's just too many lusers out there to ignore their market presence entirely.

And in any case, I think the answer to your question will be "not many". The population of unix gurus (defined roughly as people who are comfortable writing code to add functionality to major system/kernel software) is rather limited around here.

lusers? is there something wrong with your keyboard?:stickout

I am a command line addict, even under Windows, but I think there is nothing wrong with using a GUI frontend. Some tasks are even faster to accomplish with it.

Setting up accounts, GUI. It just takes way to long to input everything by hand, especially in the DBs. I write my own GUIs so I know exactly what they are doing and why.

Snooping around, fixing things, and general administration, cmdline all the way.

Um, if you can create accounts in a single step through a GUI, you can create accounts in a single step through a commandline script.

I actually use the GUI for the DB stuff and making it look all pretty for me in a web browser. One click to view a lot of information, easily update the DB just by filling out a form, among many other things. All the actual setting up of an account on the server is done by cmdline scripts.

Works well for me :)

Originally posted by MotleyFool
I know unix gurus love the command line. How many of you actually run a hosting business with no control panel [or atleast no commercial control panel?]


But, control panel can't do all that you need to know to admin a server. I know how to start/stop a service via control panel but I still do it via comman line. I check for my system daily via comman line to. Mostly I interact with mysql server via command line too ... In fact, I use command line much more than using Control Panel ... I think that's the best way for you as a webhost ... Too many webhost nowadays think that a Control Panel will let them to be a competent sysadmin capable of entering webhosting business instantly; when they face a real problem and their beloved control panel won't do anything to solve it, they are basically screwed ... In short, Control Panel is mainly for customers, not for the sysadmin (except, a lame sysadmin ;) )

cheers,
:beer:

When working, I use command line most of the time, mostly for programming and sysadmin-ing, we do use our own control panel however.

I used to use command line all the times, adding new users, removing users, and everything else. But it was cumbersome and error prone. When adding new users, we had to execute several command line, editing a few file, restarting service, and so on so forth. It could take more than one hour until the user account can be used properly! That kind of job is better automated by control panel or similar software.

My suggestion is if you know your way around your server, your energy is better spent on increasing your other staffs productivity. Basic stuff like adding new users is better handled by other staff. You need to concentrate on how to make your other staff do their job more efficiently, rather than doing the job yourself. If you happen doing a job regularly, you should try to offload the job to other staff, and try to make his job easier. The point is command line guru is scarce, if you have the talent, you should offload repetitive task to other staff and do something more important yourself.

Maybe my case is similar to the majority of us (maybe)

I entered the hosting bussiness a few years ago as a reseller, i was a complete idiot on linux and only used control panels.

But i am one of those idiots that take things too seriously when the matter is learning. One time a client ask me what was PHP and MySQL.... as you can imagine i had absolutely no idea!! (i was a front pager). I felt like a complete moron. Well i learned PHP and MySQL in two weeks all by myself (php.net and sitepointforums.com).

A few months ago i had my first dedicated server. Again i still was a complete idiot on beeing a sysadmin. But i trusted WHM. Now i know that the best way to handle a server is by the command line. Well, i´m learning like hell... still too much to learn but i can now do basic but critical stuff like examining logs, search for files, general file system admin, customizing config files and other stuff.

I´m learning basically from the GREAT support team from VenturesOnline and from these forums.

Sorry about my bad english :P

Originally posted by luisfalcon
I´m learning basically from the GREAT support team from VenturesOnline and from these forums.

Yes, what would be the world without forums or the Net generally? I am an IT addict since more than 17 years and learned a lot from books or trial/error, but Usenet and WWW are extremely hepful. WHT e.g. helps a lot to educate the people.

Originally posted by Walter
Yes, what would be the world without forums or the Net generally?

People would have to *gasp* RTFM. Or in some cases, RTFSC.

Either way they'd probably end up understanding far more (albeit after considerably greater effort).

cperciva, that's not true for many people. Do a look at my small office at home, I'll show you all my books about prog. languages, Linux, NT, PHP, project management and so on. And I am not even an admin.

There are many people for whom it is not true; but there are many people for whom it is true.

Especially once people have companies founded and are spending all of their time dealing with the day to day management of their companies, it is very tempting for them to take the immediate solution to their problems (eg shut down a runaway cgi script) rather than take the time to learn to do things properly (eg set resource limits on cgi scripts).

But I've ranted about that several times before, so I'll stop now.