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Miscellaneous

This chapter has some background information on STORE: The background and history of STORE, the authors, the current TODO list, and where to reach us.

The problem background

STORE was created out of the needs that we felt, managing a large, heterogenous network of Unix machines. Despite claims in trade rags, administrating unix isn't trivial. A list of factors create complexity in the total system (different hardware, different OSes, lots of third-party programs, different versions of "everything"). This complexity makes for a messy and unmanageable system. Some of the most common problems a system administrator meets is:

These are the problems STORE is trying to solve.

The history of STORE

The idea and basic concepts behind STORE has evolved from the similar "depot" system made by NIST and CMU. The first pilot version was implemented (mostly with shell scripts) and saw some use on the student computing labs.

Later, a new and enhanced prototype version was implemented on behalf of the IMF by Anders Christensen, a student at IDT, as a half-year project (spring of 1992). It was renamed STORE so as not to be confused with the NIST/CMU depot system.

At this time, the basic concepts were well-defined. Coming into full use at IMF and Alkymi, many of the more practical tools made possible by STORE was written, and needed optimizations was implemented. During the following year, the internals of STORE changed a great deal, and attempts was made to translate most of the programs' external interfaces into English.

About the authors

The original versions of STORE was conceived and implemented by Anders Christensen. Arne Henrik Juul did a lot of the improvements and further hacking as well as writing the examples on how to install software under STORE. Steinar Bang wrote the original version of this TeXinfo document, translating documentation written by the other two and adding some of his own. Also involved with the underlying algorithms has been Tor Egge.

Todo list

This section holds the current todo list for STORE:

Contact persons

For electronic mail contact, try arnej@lise.unit.no and if you do not receive a prompt answer, try storeadm@imf.unit.no whereby you'll reach a greater group using STORE.

The primary distribution site for STORE is ftp.unit.no, our local FTP server. Currently it is put into the /local/store directory in the anonymous FTP area.

To reach us by phone, try:


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