README

If you want to build a new server, and you're talking to someone who isn't
a sysadmin, the stuff that you know is generally going to go something like
this:

	Someone needs a server. They want one of those
	Linux ones, have a gopher server, and they want
	it blue. Several other requirements specific to
	them

	   |
	   V

	A miracle happens

	   |
	   V

	Really specific list of things to do to make it happen: 
	Figure out a hostname. Allocate an IP. Put the IP in DNS.
	Get the right VLAN. Go to the store and get some blue paint.
	Get a hypervisor with enough free capacity. Put the host in 
	the accounting system. Setup the guest. Configure the installer 
	for the required distro.  kick off the install. Add some user 
	accounts. Setup a gopher server. Firewall the gopher server 
	from Jeremy because he doesn't like blue (and dozens more)

	   |
	   V

	Do the stuff in the list


The miracle is normally a sysadmin. She's probably also got about 50
scripts to automate the rest as well, because like any good sysadmin,
her first priority was to automate herself out of a job. It will still
take a while to go through and run them in the right order, but for
more complicated builds, there's no one-size-fits-all script, so bits
and pieces around the place will have to be set off by hand.

make-magic is desiged to be the miracle.

It figures out what has to be done, what order to do it in. It
keeps track of which steps have been done, and makes sure that 
everything is done a correct right order.   It can hook into 
systems like mudpuppy and orchestra to automate the steps 
themselves, the combination of which can do complex, unique
builds without any human intervention.

mudpuppy (a python based automation agent to do the tasks that
make-magic sets it) is available at:

https://github.com/anchor/mudpuppy