Re: [cobalt-users] Severe Security Problem Between Sites

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

On Tue, Mar 28, 2000 at 10:11:39AM -0500, Christy wrote:
> There are no real help files, no tech support, nothing.  
> I bought a Raq 3 recently.  I don't think I will buy another.   
> I have no where to turn for reliable support.

Perhaps...but the concept is to 'dumb it down' so you don't
need to worry about the internals.  Though if you're displeased
with the lack of features, support, and responsiveness to 
requests or comments delivered to Cobalt's proper channels
then by all means look for alternatives.

> It would be great if I could look in O'Reilly books and get 
> the answer.  They made their Interface proprietary and it 
> doesn't work correctly with standard Apache and Linux changes.

Actually -- this IS standard Apache.  The only thing the interface
touches is a way to automate going through the configuration files
for Apache & Proftpd for the virtual sites.

I'd wager that 90% of what I do on the cobalt servers we host 
deal with things outside the interface, or things the interface
allows you to do but that I prefer to do from the command line
such as change a person's alloted disk space (edquota).

The bulk of the know-how to tackle this came from various O'Reilley
books as well as the LSAG and NAG documetns (Linux Systems Administrator
Guide and Network Administrators Guide) along with the slew of HOWTOs
available from http://www.linuxdocs.org/ -- also
http://www.linuxnewbies.org/ could be helpful.

Also, their interface is left wide open for you to look through.
Practically everything involved with the cobalt interface is either
third party OpenSource software you can check out the documentation
for yourself, or is wrapped in a collection of perl modules and
scripts.  Although, granted, I find it irritating to have management
throw money at a web application box such as the RaQ then decide it
should take on some other tasks which send me scurrying through
/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/auto/Cobalt/ heirarchies to grok what the
interface is doing at any given point to know why such and such is
happening.

> So where does that leave me? Looking somewhere else for my next machine.

Not only that, looking through more documentation.  Generally speaking,
at this point, when you want more than you get from a canned web server,
you'll wind up start looking into doing more and more directly rather
than using someone else's idea of how you'd like to manage your own
server.

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