Policies and principles

Design and implementation

In all design and implementation choices:

• Prefer obviousness over cleverness, even if longer or more complex,
• Assume those who come after you aren't as expert as you,
• If there's the remotest possibility that it may be misunderstood, add comments,
• Bad grammar, bad spelling, bad punctuation and/or bad layout are better than no documentation,
• Install the minimum software and configuration on a host or server to achieve desired functionality. This increases security and decreases maintenance. In particular, hosts which don't need user-login capability shouldn't have it configured, and hosts which don't need particular functionality or software shouldn't have it installed,
• Following on from the previous point, this project is an opportunity to get rid of cruft which has accumulated over more than 20 years of life with conform. As such, yours truly (Peter), is going to make a concerted effort to say no to as much as possible to things being included — software, configuration, accounts, hosts, etc.

Otherwise:

• Design
• Setup
• Implementation
• Separating old and new
• Operation

The light-touch approach

There's a philosophy behind the way New World is set up. This is the "light touch approach" and goes like this:

Leave Debian-installed configurations and defaults alone unless there is an actual operational or functional need to be addressed.

Thus:

Changes for cosmetic reasons	No
Changes for management or administrative convenience	No
Etcetera	No

Grab-bag of unsorted notes

Also refer to DNS for usage policy for the different DNS domains