RE: [cobalt-users] Cobalt End of Life'd, What's next?

[Ryan Verner <xfesty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2003-11-25 at 17:50, Skeeve Stevens wrote:
> Hey mate ;-) Long time no hear Ryan!
>
> I've heard of the project... Sounds interesting.
> 
> But... How does it compare to something like a Raq550?

Initial design has a very Cobalt-like look and feel; and it will
expand.  The current development versions I'm running already have more
features in some areas (i.e. freeradius can tie into a domain, under a
'realm'; I'm using it at an ISP to validate dsl/dialup comindico ports. 
Add a new user under 'dsl.domain.com', and you've not only given them
mail+webspace, but a radius login, which is all accounted for under the
GUI [session limits, logon times, total data/hours, etc].  I've got
plans to write a layer for this that can tie into existing ISP billing
software).

Design policies are /very/ Cobalt-orientated; problem with the other
solutions I've seen is that they're very webmin-ish; that is, it's not
an appliance.  You need to configure daemons, users per service, etc
through the daemon, whereas the Cobalt had everything tied in nicely,
and it was simple to use.

> I presume it is based on the Cubes open source release?

Nope, complete rewrite from scratch (I started on this back in 1999/2000
on a commercial alternative to the Qube, under a completely different
name; things fell through, but I'm re-using some of that code).  There's
some mentalities with the Cobalt that I'm not a huge fan of, and I'd
find myself locked into some things reusing code.

No beta releases yet, as the code's still in a stage where I'm not happy
to release it, but as soon as I sort out some issues I'm having which is
making development difficult (mainly time-related), I'll be releasing a
preliminary 0.5 version as an ISO (and committing dev trees into public
CVS), and encouraging all the development support I can get.

R

> ...Skeeve
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cobalt-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:cobalt-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ryan Verner
> Sent: Tuesday, 25 November 2003 6:04 PM
> To: cobalt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [cobalt-users] Cobalt End of Life'd, What's next?
> 
> 
> On Tue, 2003-11-25 at 17:26, Skeeve Stevens wrote:
> > Ok... So Sun have decided to EOL the Cobalt line... Thanx for that 
> > Sun.
> > 
> > Are they planning on releasing anything to replace it? The upgrade 
> > path says no.
> > 
> > Does anyone else know of anything like a Raq550?
> 
> Howdy Skeeve,
> 
> I've got a project called Qbalt (http://www.sf.net/projects/qbalt) which
> I'll be releasing soon; it's a GPL replacement for Cobalt's; runs on
> both white boxes, and current Cobalt hardware.  It's based on Debian,
> with an entirely new web interface.
> 
> There's various RaQ/Qube clones around the place, but I haven't seen
> anything yet that comes anywhere near to Cobalt's offering.
> 
> I don't think Sun are planning on anything to replace the Cobalt's.
> 
> R

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