Where is the IPTABLES rule set?

[Bill Rugolsky Jr.]

On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 11:51:30AM -0500, Bob Kryger wrote:
> I never use the GUIs.  I don't feel that, in general, they give you the
> functions and control you need. Nor is using a GUI good for learning
> what is really going on in the system, and how to properly and
> effectively admin a system.
 
I am aghast that we have gone backwards from AIX "smit" and Linuxconf
in earlier (Red Hat!) distros.  A GUI configuration tool should:

    1. Have a command line interface.

    2. Generate a script log that shows the exact commands required
       to reproduce the changes, and can be massaged through light editing
       to abstract it.  [By "exact" I mean, restore your system to the
       snapshot taken before running the tool, run the script through
       the command-line interface, and it should reproduce the exact
       same result.]

    3. Provide an optional list of every configuration file that has
       been touched by an operation.

    4. Integrate with a revision control system, so that the
       history of configuration changes is recorded somewhere.

    ...

This is not rocket science at all(*), but unfortunately people who are
"good" GUI developers never grokked Unix (or Plan 9!), and think that
the whole world is a single !@#$% desktop machine.  So we get Windows
95 running over a POSIX core.  Lovely. :-(

Please, someone prove me wrong! Point me to an active project that
aims to satisfy any of the above criteria; I'm not out there actively
looking, so perhaps such a beast exists.

	-Bill

(*) The "rocket science" is in having applications respond to dynamic
    updates, using, e.g., Gconf.  I grant that this is an order-of-magnitude
    more difficult.