[NCLUG] using Bayesian networks for simple systems debugging?

[Matt]

Hi,

I was mulling over the fact that the worst part of owning a computer
is updating or modifying the software and hardware. I have a small
network at home so things aren't that complicated, but it's still a
time sink for me. Every time I change something or add a feature I
have to dig around on the internet to figure out how it's done.

At the same time there must be hundreds of thousands of networks that
are very similar to mine and all of these people have to learn this
stuff the hard way. Instead, how about using some form of knowledge
extraction technique that would examine all the configuration files
across a lot of systems to generate something that could look at a
specific configuration and let you know how it differs from the
closest configuration that works? If Bayesian networks are used to
determine if a message is spam couldn't it be used to determine if,
say, nfs on a small system is configured correctly? I'm guessing the
idea in general would work, but I'm wondering about the details. For
example, I'm guessing that for each type of configuration file there'd
have to be a description of how to parse it to collect information.
Also, people would have to decide what configuration information is
important. 

I doubt if something like this would work for any organization that
hires systems administrators, but could it work for people with small
systems? Think of the people with no computer knowledge but still have
a network at home.

Thanks,

Matt