Re: [cobalt-users] IROOT & IMANAGER

["Robert G. Fisher" <rfisher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 10:23:21AM -0600, Tony wrote:
> Agreed...The IU profile was actually just as important as the GUI when we
> bought our first Raq1. I mentioned the GUI as primary because at the time
> there were ZERO third-party 'control-panel' GUI's available. 

Well, there was linuxconf -- but this doesn't really support distributed
administration amongst different sites w/ different users being able to
add accounts.

And now, there are packaged systems to install on top of RedHat
distributions to make file management tasks easier through a
web browser.

Honestly, I'm the kind of geek who abstains from GUI use whenever
possible -- only emerging for a few apps such as Netscape to view
say /. and UserFriendly because font and images tags are pretty
useless to lynx.  

Various sytems out there are engineering their own interfaces that
gives the customer greater granuity of control than the cobalt GUI.

I don't have a RaQ3, but from what I've seen it seems a lot of the
scenarious I had hoped for are now available via the interface. 

A few things that would be nice to include in a new system would be
say OpenLDAP, OpenSSH, way to configure the snmpd service via the
browser, GUI support for volume sharing via NFS and Samba, Sendmail 8.10
(Come on, being able to establish relay rules based on authenticated
 smtp sessions is far better than the pop-before-relay scenarious)
and the biggest thing I'd love to see -- better implementation and
variety in backup volume support and management.  I know they support
Legato, but why not try for other kinds as well -- Amanda shouldn't
be too difficult.

The other big thing I'd like is perhaps a Flash-RAM bootup store
that would hold the kernel image and mirror a /boot partition from
the drive -- the Flash-RAM would also be used to store the compressed
rescue image so that it could be possible to restore a truly trashed
system without either taking the case apart to attach the drive to
another server or sending the unit back to Cobalt.

-- 
Robert G. Fisher		     NEOCOM Microspecialists Inc. 
System Administrator/Programmer      (540) 666-9533 x 116