argus-server: argus interface monitoring confusion

[Richard Gadsden]

On Tue, 20 May 2003, Carter Bullard wrote:

> Hey Richard,
>    Your example is best done with two independent
> images of argus, especially from an OS perspective.

Yup, that's how we do it today... as far as I can tell, using multiple
argus instances isn't just the -best- way, it's the -only- way to get such
things to work.

But I'm sure there are others besides myself who, especially in the early
stages of learning argus, have spent a lot of time trying things with
command line options and configuration files that looked like they should
work, but turned out not to. Eliminating some of the ambiguity (not quite
the right word) in the user interface would be helpful to future users.
 
>    I think that the problem is that people are not
> happy with a lot of flexibility and want the software
> to keep them from making dumb mistakes.  Since you
> can specify multiple interfaces in configuration
> files and the command line, it doesn't seem too
> long of a stretch to imply the desire of the user.
> Does he/she really want to open two interfaces?
> If so they should explicitly declare that in a
> single place, rather than putting one in one file
> and having to add the second in another.

No argument here. The root of most of the dumb mistakes and confusion
seems to be the (often surprising) way that additive options in config
files are currently being interpreted. Which strategy would best honor the
principle of least surprise:

 1) No more than one configuration file allowed per invocation?

 2) Multiple config files allowed, but no 'overlapping' additive options
allowed between them?

 3) Multiple config files allowed, but options which are additive on the
command line don't behave additively -within- config files?

 4) Multiple config files allowed, but options which are additive on the 
command line don't behave additively -between- config files?

 5) A simpler and more intuitive strategy which eludes me?

Personally, I think 2), 3) & 4) are too complicated. So the choices on the
table are so far rather limited...

Thanks,
Richard