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NetBSD Ported To MIPS-Based Cobalt Machines
After our earlier story about this, hubertf writes: "Soren S. Jorvang has done a port of NetBSD to the Cobalt Networks
MIPS-based Qube and RaQ Microservers which is now available.
Originally the Cobalt machines ship with a custom version of Linux,
and now everyone can run his favourite Open Source operating system
on it." More information from the NetBSD/cobalt ports page.
I thought the idea, and the selling point of the cobalt boxes was that they were very easy to configure via the web interface and you didn't need to worry about things like Operating Systems and the like.
I wanted to turn spare 486 boxes into exta heads for our alphas. I recalled having heard of NetBSD four or five years earlier, and went looking.
I stumbled across linux along the way, and thought that that must have been what I was after.
Later I came to realize that what I'd heard about was BSD386, and that I'd apparently combined *that* with nethack, which *was* created on the usenet (like I thought netbsd had worked) from five years further back, along with a bit of what would become GNU which was also flying around (at the ten years back stage when I had usenet access).
Then I stumbled across netbsd when I got my paws on a mac that the department would have disposed of. It was my main
machine for a year or so, and when I went back to linux, I discovered that I much preferred the bsd way than the gnu stuff.
So now it's FreeBSD on my K6 at home, debian on this office box (because it doesn't have the resources to compile for itself), and an older debian on my labptop (it works, so I'm not messing wiht it).
So what is this windows thing, anyway? I know it's something about dos. Is it like the way you made a window on the screen with the Apple II, poking the borders into memory (12-15, was it???).
Or is it more like CCP/M's way of dividing the screen, so that you can flip back and forth between a little screen and a big one? That was useful prior to X, but running multitasking ms-dos programs on an 8086 kind of used a lot of power. Maybe that's why it's only in CCP/M and not ms-dos?
:)
hawk, sure that that next innovation from microsoft is coming any day now . . .
>What's the point of paying the extra $ to get a >Qube instead of a regular IA-32
How about those of us who already have Cobalt hardware and are bored with the software that
comes with it? Sometimes the money isn't a concern at all.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Sure does. That's why Nik put the exact same link in the article. The difference is that the earlier article says that Soren has a port working while this one announces that the port is available. Note the difference.
This news probably isn't very interesting to you (which explains your lack of attention), but it's pretty exciting to someone who inherited a Cobalt Qube and wants to put it to work in a way the original plug-and-go configuration didn't anticipate. That's what the 'net is all about--creating and taking advantage of new options. Not everyone with an unused Qube will want to try this (much less put it in production), but there are a lot of them around, so this release is a good thing.
If you're not interested, just move along...
Why do you like these boxes?
I looked at Cobalt's products. I like the cases, and I like the net appliance idea, but it seemed like the prices were high for what you get. I mean, 2K$ for a headless box with 64MB of RAM and 8Gig IDE? This would also all you to run with binary only software such as Oracle.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
-- Umm...the English language uses the masculine form of third person pronouns to indicate either male or female subject/objects when the distinction is ambiguous or irrelevant. The sexist thing to do would be to specify a particuar gender by using "she/her/those gals."
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Granted it's good to see another port of Net BSD, but what is the practical use of such a port? Don't people buy Cobalts because they're (supposed to be) easy to maintain and require less administration? Custom installing a new OS onto them seems to defeat that purpose - not to mention you might as well get something with better price/performance (PC) if you're gonna end up customising it yourself. If they get those web based administration functionalities ported as well, that'd be great (can't seem to find any info on that particular direction).
Kill'em! Kill'em all!
-jwb
(FYI: In their Linux distro, the writelcd command twiddles the font panel display)
Cobalt has seen a number of fairly serious security problems in the past six months. Since a NetBSD port is now done, an OpenBSD port cannot be far behind.
OpenBSD is my favorite, secure out-of-the box distro for general purpose, outside the firewall use.
Then again, the Cobalt hardware is far from cheap, given what it is. What you're really paying for is the integration and ease of management. Get ride of that, and I'll take a cheap intel clone in a rackmount case any day.
Oh, those delightful 19" x 1" blue boxes. Cobalt Linux would *always* crash under heavy load. During a freeze you had to re-configure them with their tiny LCD screen and 4 directional arrow buttons (that didn't always respond).
Good idea, bad implementation. A stable kernel will now render these once-ghetto boxen useful/efficient for web hosting providers.
Jon L.
It's good to see publicity for this little-known and under-appreciated OS, which, despite it's relative obscurity, was the originator of the other two BSDs.
Right now, about the only thing NetBSD doesn't run on is my HP48, but I hear someone's working on it. That's the truly great thing about NetBSD: it'll run on anything. The moment you get your new Internet-enabled refrigerator, NetBSD will be waiting for you as Linux developers scramble to produce working code. But I think the relationship between NetBSD (and BSD) in general and Linux is a friendly one, with each sharing ideas and (most importantly) applications. Sure, there are some idiotic zealots on both sides, but they're restrained to making fools of themselves on Slashdot, so no real harm is done.
But just keep in mind that that next gizmo you buy may well carry a Daemon inside...
This is good news! The Cobalts (Qubes at least, I haven't worked with a RAQ) use a forked version of a really old kernel, and have some wierd limitations. For example, according to Cobalt tech support, thier version of the kernal can only support 256 open file descriptors. Because of that, Samba is set up to only allow 100 simultanious open files. That's fine if your only using it to serve up Word and Excel files, but their are many programs that need that many files open for even 1 user. (almost any Cobal program, for example, including 3 accounting packages I've tried to install on Qubes).
The Qubes are really cool little devices. I'd love to see Cobalt integrate support for thier hardware into the main stream Linux kernel so that Qube users could more easily upgrade to greater functionality. This NetBSD port at least provides one good option for Qube users who are outgrowing the cute little web-interface and need a little more flexibility that what comes "pre-packaged" in the Qube. I'd rather be able to update them to a newer Linux kernel, or better yet a new version of a fairly stock Linux distro, but this is pretty darn good.