[cobalt-users] Re: Future of Cobalt

[Barbara <thebizworkers@xxxxxxxxx>]

>So, instead of debating Sun's policy/motivatio/vision
>we need to begin planning what we'll do when the
>products now longer have any support....

I agree... I've owned and operated two RaQ3 (cough
RaQ4) systems since '00.. That's a LOT of patches and
a few reloads over the years..  I'm working on
installing Exim 4 on one of them as I type.. But I
decided a little over a year ago that I needed to look
for an alternative -and I decided it also needed to be
a bit more secure.. I soon realized that what I really
needed to do was start accepting the basic
responsibilities of being an administrator and
de-toxic from the GUI which I had become all to
dependant upon..  I had more problems with those darn
GUI's (and users goofing around with things they had
no business goofing around with) than they were
worth.. I finally firewalled off the GUI on the
remaining two RaQ's and started handing the basic
admin'ing functions myself and things improved.. I
built two other systems based on the OpenNA
(http://www.openna.com) OS and have -nothing- but high
praise for the OS in regards to security, stability
and speed.. (they're building an optional admin GUI
for the OS now -which should be out by Sept)

> and I see now reason to purchase them - they cost
>the same a Cobalt did, but without the GUI?!?!

You have to ask yourself, just what does a GUI do
anyway that you can't do yourself (better).. The
Cobalt GUI allowed my users to perform 3 maybe 4
things on their own - that honestly in the end, I
really didn't want them doing/playing with in the
first place.. It allowed them to setup userid's,
passwords, email addresses, forwards and 3 dozen
Majordomo lists that I had no control over as the
administrator of the system.. When I started migrating
my users off the Cobalt's and onto the new OpenNA
systems I assumed the reasonability of setting up and
enforcing a -real- system security policy -which my
customers gleefully followed and didn't complain nor
miss their little GUI toys.. I can't tell you how many
user accounts on the Cobalt systems I discovered that
were setup with userid's like "joe" (or something
similar) with passwords like "dog", or "mommy" -it was
truly frightening!  I literally had one
account/domain/user that had setup about 14 Majordomo
lists and was using them -even though the account
offered only 4 lists with my stated configuration.. As
the admin, unless you're bouncing around to each
domain's settings (daily/weekly) and checking on your
children, how can/could you stop them -you can't, at
least not on the RaQ's..

Now I setup all user accounts (userid's), they're all
7-12 characters in length, contain both alpha and
numeric characters, passwords are assigned (with the
same policy) -I also handle the setup/maintenance of
their email addresses, mail forwards and can sleep
better at night because of it.. Too boot, I have
almost 400 domains under my belt and I honestly don't
have to perform these tasks more than 2-3 times (if
that) for a user/domain -per week..  It's -honesty-
not that much work..

Honestly, how often does one need to setup/tweak/play
with these things on a server..???  Once maybe twice,
three times tops...?? Anymore and the user is just
playing around with the pretty buttons in the GUI (and
they end up mucking-up something up on the server in
the process or burning through your CPU cycles like
there's no tomorrow) or the user is using their
account for reasons most of us have TOS/AUP against
(i.e., spamming)..  I had one user on the Cobalt
systems that had one domain on each Cobalt server, she
setup mail forwards on each domain that forwarded her
mail from RaQ#1 over to RaQ#2 then back to RaQ#1 then
back to RaQ#2 -you get the picture.. With an hour of
study, truly life can be easier (and 200% safer)
without a GUI on a system and it doesn't have to mean
hours of work and maintenance to boot..  

My 2 cents..

Barbara


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