Re: [cobalt-users] Why I'll Never do blah blah.. my $.02

["The A-Team" <propylon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been with ev1.net (now rackshack.net) for over a year now. When I was
hired, I knew nothing about linux, never even sat at a command prompt. My
first linux experience was being forced to watch my friend configure,
compile, and make a kernel update. After years of DOS, I was never so scared
in my life...
Over the year of being here, I have learned several things, several
undeniable facts about these machines.

First, let me show you this:
http://www.liquid-fiber.com/~opaque/stuff/378-days.jpg

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a RaQ2. There are 203 sites hosted on that
server, and it was probably up when I was first hired.

Cobalt RaQ's are incredible machines. They were built with the novice in
mind, but with flexability to satisfy almost all guru's. They are not power
houses, they are not dual xeon scsi raid load ballancing industrial servers.
They were built to manage mom and pops site, but with the power to do a
whole lot more. They can do DNS, SQL (local and remote), FrontPage,
different kinds of remote backups including scheduled FTP backups, and an
incredibly easy and powerful GUI that has distinct operations for system
admins, site admins, and site users.

Cobalt is a company, and they sell a product, not a service. You must first
understand business and things like patents and copywrites. Cobalt would
have never made it had they done everything the right way, because then
there would be no need for their servers. People could steal the OS and put
it on whatever they wanted. Cobalt had to pull a Microsoft, and do it their
way or they would have lost millions.. *cough*Macintosh*cough*

As I said before, when they hired me I knew nothing about linux, and I learn
more and more about the nuts and bolts of the Cobalt every day. I'm just a
support personel but Cobalt is the only linux I know, so to me it's
completely natural while to everyone else it's alien. Now it's gotten to the
point where I'm the answer guy and I find if I can't fix a standard Cobalt
problem, then chances are it's really... uh.. broke. They take time getting
used to, knowing how the general operation of services goes, you will have a
grounds to work from. Learning the literal meaning of the GUI interface and
not just what is assumed will get you even further.

Rules of thumb that I have learned:
1) IF IT CAN BE DONE THROUGH THE GUI, DO IT THROUGH THE GUI. - I can't
stress how many things break just because you change a little something here
or there.
2) Do not mess with the following services: Apache, Postgres, Perl - You
screw with these, you're playing with fire. Do not -ever- mess with these
(other than common config files) unless you know -exactly- what you are
doing. That means don't upgrade, don't move, don't touch unless it's a pkg,
and even then do a rigorous backup if it involves the kernel or system
sensative files.
3) Nothing is secure if it's plugged into a network. Remember the phrase "A
chain is only as strong as it's weakest link." Cobalt uses open source and
very common GNU software, but it's their OS, play by their rules.
4) If you don't know, ask. =]

K.. uh.. I'm done. I think that was a bit more than two cents.. probably
pushing two dimes and a nickle.. anyways...

The A-Team
Domain Support Guys
Everyone's Internet
propylon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

'I read your email.'

ps. About the RaQ backups, it does a back up of content.. -that is it- It
doesn't backup configuration files, user id's, symlinks, or the big daddy
himself the Cobalt Postgres database. For a successful backup, take an hour
of your life to learn how to create cron jobs, and how to script a physical
tar (everything or just the important things) that will then be uploaded to
a reliable ftp server.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Fitzpatrick" <webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <cobalt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 8:43 PM
Subject: RE: [cobalt-users] Why I'll Never do business with Sun Cobalt
AGAIN!


| You know, this kind of crap worries me. I am a brand new user trying to
| start using this Cobalt RaQ3 as a dedicated machine after using a FreeBSD
| virtual server for a long while. The RaQ3 has crashed a couple of times
| since I brought it online a week ago, but I believe the crashes to be my
| error. I am planning to have this Cobalt run DNS, e-mail and web servers.
| Some friends told me the Cobalt was great, but they never owned one. I
plan
| to install web-based e-mail and run popular programs like PHP, MySQL, etc.
I
| don't want to get 100 customers on it and deal with crashes, I plan
install
| everything and get it running smooth to start and then transfer all the
| customers over. Then minimal system changes after that.
|
| Can someone be honest with me and tell me the RaQ is a good machine that
| should be able to do these things well? If I make reliable backups using
the
| *.raq backup to another server, can it be put back relatively easy? I
mean,
| how much can you trust the restore for server config files? After the last
| crash, I just did a sysreset and restored data. I didn't restore config
| files because the machine was new and didn't have any configuration that
| couldn't be put back in quickly. But when I get 100 customers on there,
how
| well does this work if the server crashes. Has anyone had that experience?
| I'm sure:(
|
| Thanks for the heads up :)
| --
| Robert Fitzpatrick
| WebTent Networking, Inc.
| PO Box 10785
| Tampa, FL  33679-0785
| US
| Tel: (813) 281-2253