Our top-10 female geek “helix”

(congrats!) suggested (jokingly) we could do an Ajax interface for configuration files.

Well, if you want, you can run a tomcat as root, and have it access your configuration files. If you’re crazy enough. :-)

No, there are actually secure ways of doing such things, if you want even with Ajax. Just have a secure web server for administration, which will then push the updated configuration file to the actual hosts e.g. via cfengine.

Since people still tend do read “all configuration files should be XML”, and “but I hate XML”: please get down.

We already have quite some XML-lookalike configuration files (e.g. apache). We have S-Expressions. We have some deeply nested INI files. We have true XML config files (e.g. /etc/fonts/fonts.conf).

All I’m asking is that we should maybe use one single format for all applications that have similar requirements for their configuration.

And no, not every application can be sanely configured with a linear, flat configuration file. Sometimes, a tree-based data model is much cleaner. You know, thats why we’re using a tree directory structure, and not flat files.

And face it, if you like it or not: XML is the most widely accepted choice for exchanging (tree structured) data. And if you manage systems, you want to be able to sanely exchange data between e.g. a configuration management tool and the service you’re configuring.