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Has Anyone Played With Gateway Micro Server?
alexhmit01 asks: "So my friend's father bought a new set of machines for his office from Gateway, and they included with it this little cube called a Micro Server, which he gave to his son. Naturally, the first thing that we did was crack it open, and saw that it includes a PCI slot (some expandability, currently has a modem that we'll yank), and 10 GB hard drive. We're flipping through the manual, assuming that it is an NT machine when I notice they talk about SMB shares, so I'm assuming SAMBA. I get to the back and see two documents, the BSD license and the GPL. We check out the specs, it runs a 64-bit RISC processor (I'm assuming Arm), and Linux 2.0! So how many IT people have gotten one of these and decided to actually put it to use? Any suggestions? "
"They include some easy-to-use utilities, which is nice as someone else can administer the thing when we're done setting it up.
Now, their firewall support, etc., is lacking (as it is Linux 2.0) compared to the stuff that Linux 2.2 supports, but I don't want to give up the flexibility of their tools.
Has anyone done much work on one of these? We're planning to stick on sshd and hack around with it (after imaging the drive) and I was wondering what others have done with this device. It seems like a great piece of hardware, it's tiny... it's adorable."
It would be nice to get more stats on these. Do they come with a network card? What kind of video do they support? What processor options are there?
I think this is a Gateway product that is actually produced by Cobalt (sp?). Thus why he called it a little cube.
You say Cobalt is raking it in, but really they're just doing what Linux has always needed. They're getting rid of that awful text-mode interface. Who needs confusing configuration files, when you can do it through the web?
Even Microsoft at least provides a utility that offers a nice consistent interface into their configuration (regedit). It's not like Linux where the configuration files are all different and confusing. Linux should just use one big configuration file, and have a tool to edit it. Maybe it could use XML or something.
Win2000 boxes still speak the same SMB protocol, so this box will work as a Samba file server.
The problem is when you are trying to use a Samba box as a domain controller for Win2000 clients. Since Samba PDC/BDC support isn't official for even NT4, it's unlikely anyone is going to want to use it that way.
(Think of a small office with a single file server.)
There's actually a review of the server over at Hack In The Box (http://www.hackinthebox.org), under their Issue #5. Pretty interesting stuff on the server though.
wow. He just gave his son something that was 1300 dollors, and my parents wouldn't even buy me a bike.
300 mHz AMD processor
Three hundred millihertz. Wow, that's fast... one CPU cycle every three seconds. Is SI that tough to understand?
GNUStep provides a series of tools for checking and working on these proplist files, which somewhat resemble configuration for perl scripts IMO. Anyway, it's a good format that seems to be what everyone drooling about XML was after, and it's got a longer history. It's worth looking at if you happen to like the way wmaker's configs are stored.
Don't you mean heterogenous? If it were homogeneous, you'd be running only one type of client.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
To search a database using DBI (this is crude code):
... well, for a long time, before user accounts, back when you actually typed in your own name before each post. I would have never expected something out of them like this back then, but I do now, because they are so big and funded now. Perhaps i'll pickup slashcode this weekend and write the changes in (if easily possible, i have another project that i'm pushing to get a better job).
# we will assume $searchstring is alreayd provided.
$searchstring = '%'.$searchstring.'%';
$dbi->connect("DBI:mysql:dbname=slashdot", "slashdot", "blahpassword);
$query = "select description, id from articles where description LIKE $searchstring;";
$sth->prepare($query) || croak("blah");
$sth->execute || croak("blah");
for($c=0;$row = $sth->fetch_arrayref;$c++) {
# print can be replaced with output to CGI.pm
print "$c: $@row[0] $@row[1]\n"; };
$sth->finish;
That's 8 lines if you count the finish statement. The SQL may not work for all RDBMS's, and I'm not sure what hte DBI module name is for mysql (I work in postgres). Putting simple keywords liek "Gateway Micro server ARM" would have triggered these articles. You could even generate forms from these descriptions that would enable for standardized keywords to be used in teh "description" row of the table. This is first grade database programming.
It would be up to the highly paid writing staff of andover.net to actually read the related search returns and perhaps decide on whether they were related or not.
And if each "section" of slashdot was kept in a different table, you'd just have to add another line to table join them, or write a slightly more complex but easy routine to search each table manually if joining were not easily possible.
I love slashdot, I have been here since
horsepower + money + staff = no excuse. I mean, other places manage with a lot more traffic, why can't they?
-Erik-
DOH
s/$dbi/$dbh/ - typo, sorry. $dbi won't work because it'll clash with the DBI module.
-Erik-
If you took a good look at the links, they were both written in 1999, once in October and the second in December... There are at probably 10 posters to slashdot (whatever happened to sengan? :), it's not like there are 300 of them each writing their own stories, they just pick up links. This only goes to show how little they read their own site. (or make the effort to look before they post, I thought that search feature was there for a reason)
:)
And I'm not done - all this information is kept in a RDBMS, if they don't already have a key for the target urls in the article they damn well should, this would make it 10 times easier to search for things like this, and the database itself could be told not to accept duplicate entries of that type, transparent of the perl code that undoubtedly controls the database.
So IMO, considering the fact that they are corporate backed now, (ie, they have cash and programmers to do BS like this) this should have been on the plate already. I mean, I could understand it when it was just Rob and Hemos and such, but they just wasting their bandwidth and productivity by not implementing these simple, very uncomplex things. And for those who scream backward compatibility, adding this to a universal database takes about 5-10 lines of coding using DBI under perl. Besides, then they could integrate a field into the title bar that actually references JUST the target url so those of us who actually want to read the text know right where to go everytime. That's just good UI design.
That said, yes, I would agree that remembering an article from 1997 is rather absurd, and I would flame something like this if it didn't happen so damned often.
Ahem... Andover need a perl coder?
-Erik-
Hehe, I meant that I WOULDN'T flame something like this if it didn't happen so often. :)
-Erik-
Err.. Research?
:)
If you know what you're doing with a current linux system you should already KNOW what works and what doesn't. So, the only research should be applied to those things that are alien to you (you'd be surprised how many NC's don't know what RAID is, but put mirroring on their NT servers all the time), or are relatively "cutting-edge" products (that is, they haven't been tested in the market for long). Personally it's better to be paranoid in this area and "go with what you know".
And in my experience I have not had a NC client ever get angry at me for doing 3 hours of research when putting together an expensive system. I charge $75/hr at the place I work now (soon to be leaving), so $225 is nothing when you're putting together a system that gets up to nearly 6 figures on occasion (including clients).
And if you have hired staff or a contracted consultant, THEY are your support. Most consultants fix their self-created mistakes and handle RMA's for free, and of course you don't have to pay extra for in house work. Personally I have had more problems with book-reading nimrods at the help desks for the software apps that I support (in some cases, the clients have paid over $10,000 for such support) than I have had trying to figure out the problem myself.
That said, the whole point of the word "professional" is that they rely on no support for their field of expertise. Unfortunately a lot of people get away with calling themselves "professionals" when they are so far from it it's disturbing.
For instance, 1 ex-employee that I worked with claimed NT, Novell and 98 experience. Worked there over a year, and I went on a call with him one day, simple modem internet connection BS - he used the Internet Setup Wizard that starts up when you first start Internut Exploder to configure the dialup networking. Then he proceeded to ask me what a DNS address and a SMTP server was.
Another ex-employee got a decetly paid job (40k/yr) hinging on his Linux experience - which totaled one client for about 3 weeks. He was convinced that the "non-contiguous" message that accompanies fsck when the filesystem is fragmented comes up when fsck "checks the disk after I power down". I asked him how he powered the machine down, and he said "I just turn it off, Linux's filesystem is so rock solid it'll come right back up". I promptly setup a BIOS password on my machine, as much as I hate to do that. 2 weeks later his machine was sitll at the office with FSCK saying "FSCK FAILED - REBOOT NOW"... Which so many other sysadmins have unfortuantely seen due to power outages.
Sorry for the book, but if you are one of these people, GO BACK AND GET YOUR HIGH SCHOOL DEGREE and POSSIBLY ATTEND COLLEGE IN SOMETHING OTHER THAN ANYTHING THAT RUNS ON ELECTRICITY.
Sorry for the rant, but I've had an interesting day. Anyone seen falling down?
-Erik, AKA D-Fens-
Oh yeah, that and my boss asked me what that "silly serial port thingy on the back of the UPS was", while we were repairing hte filesystem for an NT server for a bank this week.
I have a wonderful job.
-Erik-
pf(ilter) is also the only freely available NAT for Solaris. It's an awesome firewall/NAT combo, and even already supports IPv6 for Solaris 8 (and I believe for the current BSD build).
same for irix. but whose going to put a packet filter on an (irix running) sgi?
You have knowledge at the end. And wisdom. Resources *you* obviously NEED, in huge quantities.
SOME people like to *learn* things!
If you need 'support' for something as basic as a piece of hardware, you are indeed pathetic.
RTFM and you'll be allright! Through the night! [STR; obscure]
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
This is a standard Cobalt Qube, except I believe that it's black (anybody know for sure? the pic on gateway's site shows it as black, but it might just be black & white). Gateway and Cobalt announced a deal all the way back in October of last year, and this machine has been available for quite some time. Not sure if it made /. the first time around.
So what happens when you add a single backtick to the rc.conf in freebsd? Surely pretty much the same sort of thing? AFAIK, it's a shell script that gets source'd by the real /etc/rc or /etc/rc.sysinit or whatever...
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Yep, there's a port to the cobalt cubes, NetBSD/cobalt, and the best part is, it's up to date and clean.
Not to knock linux, but at least the NetBSD guys have some dedication. I can't remember how many Linux ports have gone by the wayside.
If course I'm sure this has a lot to do with NetBSD's clean, portable design.
cheers!
If you put all the boxes into a chipper/shredder, I bet the end result would be pretty homogeneous...
pooptruck
The thing to watch out for here is that, the last time I checked, the FrontPage extensions (to the webserver) available for non-MS operating systems were a major security hole. They have to be run as root, etc.
...when SegFault stopped letting people enter their own choices for polls. SegFault is where most of this Natalie Portman N&P and other nonsense came from.
They'd be hard pressed to get away with embrace and extend in this arena.
These are great for people that don't know much about sysadmining and stuff, but I tend to think they you could slap together a Celeron system with a MUCH bigger hard drive, MUCH more memory for a lot less if you know how to install and admin linux. It's not like the software cost anything.
Seems like a great tool for people that manage to get hired as sysadmins and don't really know what they're doing.
http://overwhelmed.org
Odd. I had no such problems talking to Gateway when I had Linux on my Solo - they even walked me through taking the machine to bits to fix the screen over the phone. And it worked :-)
Trying to use a server machine as a desktop is as efficient as trying to use a truck to run to the corner store. No graphics card, XFS and GIO tuned at the card level, plus high bandwidth/CPU ratio. However, it can be useful as a data-shuffler/mining/analysis backend.
Use the right machine at the right time for the appropriate purpose.
LL
Pretty toy but way too pricey for my tastes.
What I am wondering is whether anyone has done a similar distro for PCs? What would be ideal for a small office is to take a old PC and make it into a headless 'qube-a-like'. All the tools exist, it really should just be matter of glueing a good web interface to the front.
A single CD SOHO soln? Friday dreaming no doubt.
Sounds like a pretty cool network appliance like the NetWinder. How much did this cost? Can you get it from Gateways site?
They are about seven inches square. However there is no display adaptor in the box or PS2 ports or for that matter usb. The only ports on the box are
Duel Ethernet, Serial. (And with the gateway A PCI modem card.)
Rob
Just as an FYI. The Admin password, that you can set via the web interface doubles as the root password. Also it is a simple matter to set the back LCD panel to "Maintance" mode and be able to telnet in and setup SSH.
Rob
Malda doesn't approve too many stories any more but the ones he does are fairly reasonable. Robin is reasonable and can only really be critisized for his opinion. Beyond that it is really hit an miss. You need to have a decent editorial team if you want to have a good site.
I'm sure if this story had been mentioned to anyone else there they would have confirmed that it was really mis-informed. Perhaps this is why Kuro5hin.org is often brought up in posts like this.
News for UW students
It seems SI IS that tough to understand ..
300 milli is 300 x 10e-3, or 0.300.
You'd also think that Cliff might search for this stuff before he posts it. Maybe we can get a better Ask Slashdot question then.
Yeah, well my new box runs at 1 uHz on the new Pentium .0004 (TM).
See you, space cowboy...
How possible is it to compromise the appliance? Sorry, I'm just terribly curious, since I'm trying to build an appliance for kicks( and for use in my company).
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
-jpowers
-jpowers
-jpowers
-jpowers
Yes. And they are really a kick ass machine. Very easy to use and they do make great office servers.
---
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Thanks for the pointer. I hadn't realized that, because in the test environment we were using, we had no password for the admin account (several people were messing with it). The root password only matches the admin if the admin is non-null. I should have figured out the maitenance mode, but I was too busy being angry at gateway to worry about that :)
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
We had a meeting with the local Gateway rep the other day and he brought one of these. It looked OK. It is running a RISC CPU, Quantum I think he said, with a 10GB drive. It supports sharing over Samba and offers web and mail servers. It also has some sort of document management and tracking system on it. Administration is handled via a web interface.
If you're a small shop with 5 to 10 people and no real IT person I'd recommend it, but no other way. It's just too limiting. It's definately cute but I think the Cobalt boxes are nicer looking.
FYI, right now Gateway has a deal. If you buy 10 workstations/notebooks you get this little mini-server for free.
Or don't.. please..
Jeez, people. What's wrong with revisiting a subject every now and then? I didn't remember this thing from October, and I'm willing to bet that there are some others who didn't remember either. Not to mention that Slashdot might have gotten some new readers since that story got rotated off the index page...
It's not such a bad thing. If nothing else, all the people who saw it the first time get to swap stories about what they've done with the thing.
Quit looking for stuff to gripe about.
--LordEq
A big piece of learning curve for me, was figuring out hat config files did what. So an intro may be useful :) Another thing, is that dists dont seem to clean up old conf files very well, so you end up with useless old conf files clouding your view, so to speak.
Ok, your system doesn't boot. Big deal as long as someone is around who can boot off a floppy or CD, this can be fixed in 10 minutes assuming you know where you fsck'd up.
"The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive." ~ Spock
If the Qubes are designed anything like the RaQs, then look elsewhere.
The RaQ is an underpowered piece of CRAP. Put a few medium to high load CGI scripts on the server, hit it with a few dozen requests and watch it fall over in no time at all. The CPU and disk system just can't take the load. (This is from first and second hand experience doing tech support for those scripts...)
The RaQ3 is better (it uses an AMD K6, among other improvements), but not by much.
The Qube probably uses the same platform as the older RaQ series, and would certainly be something to avoid unless you don't actually intend to use the box for anything.
I think that it is completely relevant to ALL topics that abuses are happening constantly int hemoderation system. What the hell is someone wasting points on my comments for that they could be giving to people like Matty or to people who might question the dogma drivel that /. is quickly becoming. WAKE UP and stop wasting points on stupid shit!
Add to that the fact that the video card and the sound card never worked properly, and I think that you have a good argument for never using them. There tech support at the time was horrible which wouldn't have been so bad if the hardware worked, but... it didn't, and they wouldn't just send out replacements.
So instead they just lost a few customers (he, and I, and everyone else I speak to).
-- Braeus Sabaco
Member of the Roman Legion
Customer/worker at Phenomenal Internet Solutions
This is SO educational! -- Kintaro Oe
I think it does a great disservice to the 2.0 series kernel to say that the 2.2 series kernel has "better firewall features." This isn't a holy war or an attack on the kernel developers, but it's been my experience that the last of the 2.0 series kernels performs awe-inspiringly fast on lower-end machines and handles packets like a ninja should.
Basically, I'm happy the little Gateway box is running 2.0. It's leaner, meaner, and far more tested (ie: they don't have to upgrade it every month).
--
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
HOW, tell me, HOW did this get moderated up?
What is WRONG with you people. I switch to minimum 2 and I see crap like this!
Cobalt's don't even HAVE soundcards, and I guarantee you if you throw in any card to that pci slot it won't work without SERIOUS horking.
--
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it sounds like they're charging $1300 for $650 worth of hardware, if I purchased the PC equivalent. If preinstalling Linux justifies a 100% markup, than I'm in the wrong line of work!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Actually the best part about Cobalt is that they will enter into agreements with one's company to do a lot of the software packaging and installation from images at their own factory, saving lots of time. They'll also contract out to expand their GUI to cover your applications. Not with single-unit purchases, but with a company-wide commitment they'll really work hard at making your life easy. That's been my experience, at least.
Yea, slow boot is not something to base a comparison on, try booting an S80 sometime, they can take 3 hours to boot at work at times, esp when they have a ton of SCSI disks to start up and check. During stress testing a load average of 3 isnt uncommon, i've seen a load average of 67 on an RS/6k before, and my telnet session had no noticable performance difference than when the load average was 0.
Got a chance to look these things over recently, and for a datacenter where you lease dedicated machines to customers or just need a high-density server farm, they look pretty cool, though the amount of heat they put out may be a problem (the larger has 16 CPU blades in a 9U case, each with a P2-400 or so, check the page for better details)
http://www.ziatech.com/ketris/main.htm
Runs a variant of RedHat called HardHat, has specific package components designed for small embedded systems.
It's my belief this was announced on Slashdot a few months ago. The deal was certainly announced on "The Register". Of course I think the "Cube" is cute but really I have no use for it's price neither the price of the "Netwinder". A cost study I did proved the network PC case a PC CHIPS all in one Super Socket 7 motherboard with onboard Ethernet, Modem and Video (winmodem btw). The lowest cost AMD P6-3 and a Hard Drive could be built for $300 CDN and naturally will mount any Linux Distribution some will run with experimental winmodem drivers.
Vista, the single biggest argument for Desktop Linux! It doesn't "Just Work"(TM).
Plenty of linux docs available aside from that, and the mobo, disk manuals, etc, what elese do you need? a book explaining how to turn it on? I agree on the warranty part tho. Can save you lots of headaches.
*** SIGNATURE WANTED. BIG REWARD. It's name is "Bubba"
~
~
:wq
Hmm...
:-)
From this page
Clicking the "More Info Button" under the Operating system (Linux 2.0) takes you to This Page
Where is the info on this OS?
--Alex
This is a signature virus...
I use e-smith Server and Gateway. They are just about to bring out V4.0, which has lots of functionality over the V3.1 that I am using (and, may I say, am extremely happy with). When you order it you get a floppy and a CD. Stick them both in a pentium with 2 NICs and it will rewrite the hard drive with Red Hat, configure Apache, Qmail, Squid, SMB/Appletalk for use either as a full-blown web server or intranet server, then let you change config with a web interface while still letting you telnet in as root to add other stuff (most RPMs).
When I first bought this, I was a complete Linux newbie, and I had it running inside 30 minutes.
If the software is the same, and it sounds like it is, then you simply go into their web browser based administration setup, and turn on telnet access. You can seperately choose to enable or disable root access. Once you turn it on, it stays on.
I'm not familiar with the feature you describe that temporarily enabled telnet access. But then, I never mess with the little buttons and LCD on the back of the box.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Don't you mean heterogenous? If it were homogeneous, you'd be running only one type of client.
Uh - read what I mean on that one, not what I say ;-) Yep - that's what I meant, was just a little tired when I did it! :-/
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
This would be the "Desert Storm debacle" in question.
Admittedly they were _only_ 5 and 8 months ago, but neither story mentions a Micro Server running ARM. I'd like to see your 5-10 lines of code that's capable of inferring that an incorrectly specced, incorrectly titled Gateway Microserver, is a relabeled Cobalt Qube, from the stories discussing the alliance of Gateway and Cobalt, and the release of the Microserver.
Also, given that this was an Ask Slashdot!, not a release article, I think that this is an entirely reasonable mistake. If somebody needs correcting, it's alexhmit01- a little research as opposed to running to Slashdot would have been in order. I note he does a lot of assuming.
As for me, I assume Sengan was quietly retired after the Desert Storm debacle. And at last count, there are 25 authors, including Sengan, listed in search, plus "editor" and "The Slashdot Authors". (now there's a name for a band.)
Save the flames for articles such as the Redhat double post.
The upshot is, you get a small but complete pc motherboard. You generally have to add a riser card to get pci expansion but thats okay, its still smaller than an Oreiley book. You'll need to find a vendor that will give you a chassis with space for pci or isa risers.
Also some of these vendors sell "point of sale" form factors, which were the basis of the I-opener and WebSurfer "little pc" boxes that caused so much hoopla recently.
So what's the point of this story? It's not like it's some $99 net appliance that is secretly a PC inside. It's openly a PC inside and openly runs Linux.
And if you follow the link under "Operating System - Linux 2.0" you'll see that Linux isn't even listed.
So it must be, umm, special.
Diggs
If guns are so evil, how come Sarah Brady can hold one and not turn into a raving lunatic?? Oh yeah, she is one already.
Yes, their support team is totally clueless. I've gone through _three_ failed IDE hard disks on my Celeron 466 minitower from them. Every time, they totally misdiagnosed the problem, even when I held their hand and did all the troubleshooting for them.
Then, instead of replacing defective equipment in a timely fashion, they'd ship new drives UPS Ground! Ground, ferchrissakes! Some of us depend on our computers pretty heavily...for something other than downloading porn or hanging out in chat rooms. Screw Gateway for screwing the customer after they were suckers enough to buy hardware from them.
Don't kid yourselves, it is exactly like any other Linux system except that you will cringe every time you make a change. You'll quickly outgrow their Web configuration and you will scratch your head trying to replace things like sendmail and firewall rules without breaking things.
./configure; make) with source packages than I've ever had to on any Linux system. And now it is just sooo old and I don't think they will ever get to a 2.2.x kernel.
While the MIPS is nifty, it is really really annoying in that I've had to spend more time mucking (i.e. more than just
Trust me, as crappy as it sounds you will want to get an x86 system just so you can load regular distros on it. I'm not saying the Qube2 is a bad machine, in fact mine just ran for 250+ days before freezing last time. I was mucking with the diald at the time; which incidentally has a squirrely bug in a MIPS built version that makes it keep crapping out after a few days. I don't need those kind of problems.
WTF are you talking about! You've been reading too much ZDnet. It's supposed to be for ISPs. The Qube and RAQ series have basically the same software.
And the interface is 99% for administrators with maybe a 1% luser section for home pages. It is like a poor man's webmin but unfortunately it is too heavy handed and wants to rewrite your scripts too often.
SMB (Session Management Block) is the Microsoft protocol for file and print sharing. Samba is just an implementation of that protocol for Unix machines. Just because you see 'SMB', it doesn't necessarily mean Samba - it could just as well be a Win3.11 box.
Jeff
stty erase ^H
Can you tell me the basic steps that are needed to get Linux installed on it?
No, it ain't that hard. But as someone else already pointed out: it is fun to experiment. Besides, Irix just looks really ugly compared to my WindowMaker desktop.
got a url maybe?
On the set of The Screensavers is one of those Cobalt cubes. It's used as a file server for their network.
Any other experiences with Gateway tech support?
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
In the same vein, has anyone played with Rebel.com's netwinder? These little machines have some serious limitations (can't upgrade HDD, for example) but they're cheaper than the MicroServer, smaller, and Rebel.com is more involved with Linux - thuse they (theoretically) offer Kernel updates.
Anybody actually play with one of these?
e-mail me at josh@agliodbs.com; I might miss your replies.
Has anyone ever gotten PHP to run on either the cobalt or gateway models? What does this require? Since these boxes do not have MySql is would XML work for the data storage?
Thanks
With a 2.0 Linux and standard Samba implementation, there is no support for ACLs, and consequently no support for the more complicated, NT-style file permission tweaks that you need. So what kind of applications can you roll out on this? A giant "public" directory? I've got a stack of old 486s just waiting to become "storage servers" once they'll do what I need.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
actually wouldn't that be .003 cycles a second? Which would be on cycle every 333 seconds. of course I could be completely wrong .......
ipf(ilter) is also the only freely available NAT for Solaris. It's an awesome firewall/NAT combo, and even already supports IPv6 for Solaris 8 (and I believe for the current BSD build).
How big (dimensions)is it? I might be just the thing for a POS terminal server!
regards, Benjamin Carlson
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. " - Revolution Books, NY
Uh.. I don't get it.. How can you not have root on a box that you own? Is this like a service agreement where you pay them to admin your box? ..are they going to throw you in jail for hacking into your own box under the DMCA?
Hm.. do you have to pay extra for root access to your own box.. "Thats 'proprietary' technology.. You're going to have to buy an additional licence to get full access to your box."
-
air and light and time and space
I have a Solo 2500, which will no longer turn on after upgrading the BIOS to 10.12, or rather it turns on for about 5 seconds and shuts itself off without booting.
Gateway will not support me because I have Red Hat and Open BSD partitions, and until I reinstall Windows, they can do nothing they say, including telling me which jumper resets the BIOS.
How they expect me to install Windows on a machine that doesn't turn on is beyond my technical expertise, but as far as they're concerned, it's obviously an OS problem.
-Tommy
 Ex-Gateway customer
------
"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
I use it for a home server, with the SMB, NFS, etc. Mine is actually running as a Cobalt RaQ - the 1U high model that does multiple virtual site hosting, etc.
With a bit of a kernel mod, and access to the distros, you can make your Qube be any Qube. Mine thinks it's a RaQ
I've compiled up MySQL, and I run a database on it as well. ProgresSQL is also available.
It's a very capable box. Not as advanced out-of- the-box as the Whistle Interjet, but a million times more configurable. The Interjet locks you out. This one lets you telnet in and do anything you damn well please.
There are two vendors (last time I checked) for these in Australia. I reccomend you avoid like the plague the one called Unixpac.
I installed a bunch of them in various small companies to be used as web servers, etc. They work very well that that job. Even did one with a VPN between two Qubes joining two remote offices together via the 'net.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Yeah sharethenet is OK, but commercial. I have used FreeSCO and its pretty damned good. http://www.freesco.org/ Web-based configure and everything!
The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
It's not news.
Jesus christ.
The box is a Cobalt Qube with a MIPS CPU running Linux. The main difference with a Qube is the colour. It also has some slightly different software installed.
All redundant but so is the bloody article.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Um, have you *looked* at the interface? It is *not* designed for administrators.
I mean DOH!
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
Ever done _any_ performance tuning?
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
Go sell papers on a street corner.
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
Just wittering, no brain engaged between your eyes and your hands eh?
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
It's a MIPS R5000.
e s=cpu&qid=129&language=1
Check your facts and stop spouting garbage.
http://www.cobalt.com/support/kb/search.php3?qu
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
I remember reading that Gateway origionally contracted with cobalt to build an internet appliance for small businesses, they chose cobalt because of the smaller box and when cobalt failed to deliver they dropped them and had a smaller company ?eSoft? pick them up....they elected to ditch the hardware in favor of something x86 based...I think (for compiler reasons)
Netmax produces similar software solutions, based on your choice of linux, or freeBSD. Im using there file server product on our house server. Works great, web based interface and install.Also comes in Firewall and web server flavors. 30 dollars at compuhell. http://www.netmax.com
Considering that Samba is the easiest thing to crack..I did just to a frind of mine a week ago on his home server..we works for Motorola... Its probably not a good ide to use samba..although Linux is nice..there are more secure products that you can use to access windows file sharing that are actually hard to crack instead of easy.. I would suggest you look into them before powering up the server..
IP Filter
Further, the registry is the single largest cause of problems in Windows, in my experience. What happens when you screw up your registry? Well, unless you really know your Windows (and most people don't) or were fortunate to have a backup copy of the registry just lying around, it's reinstall time. Hell, half the NT admins I know encourage a reinstall even in the above cases.
Please, read Linux-Kernel, there was a thread about this a few months ago IIRC, and why it's such a bad idea. I like my many config files. Now what would be GOOD is a common configuration grammar. Until then, I'll keep making money as a UNIX admin.
will these be rendered useless with the windows 2000 kerbos discussion that was posted a few weeks ago?
Perhaps Gateway can legally impliment the MS additions to the samba protocol to let 2000 boxes access it properly.
their usefulness on windos networks will be short lived if they can't.
As numerous other posters have mentioned, the little cube is a Qube, by Cobalt Networks. It turns out there's a little coincidence with the topic of the previous story on the Voodoo5.
The Chairman of the Board at Cobalt -- Gordon Campbell -- was also the Chairman of the Board at 3dfx. He's not too popular with investors right now. TDFX has been gradually sliding down from its all time high of around 35 to 8 or so, with Campbell busy selling shares all the way down. Since it's IPO, COBT stock has also plunged, from a post-IPO high of 172 down to 28.
Give me a break. There are far more interesting subjects to do an Ask Slashdot subject on. Let alone something they covered TWICE already. This is the third time they did this story. I don't mind repackaging content. But when the point is to give an opinion about a product and the whole thing has been covered twice already in the same place it's redundent. In general I don't care if /. reposts things. Just don't do it 3 times. And don't make it repetitve... at least have some new information.
We've been looking at a way to fly low cost Linux boxes under the radar screens of some IT shops in some of our clients. The idea is that a non-traditional form factor will not set off the allergy to nonMS operating systems that their IT mandarins tend to have.
I've looked a variety of prebuilt boxes in non-traditional form factors; I'm testing a 1U rackmount "RedRak" server from Netmachines right now.
The value proposition of these appliance boxes always seems the same. Looked at as systems, they give very good value compared to Windows boxen; looked at as collections of discrete parts they are rather pricey.
The other thing appliances tend to have is web based administration. The RedRak box I'm testing has a pretty comprehensive set of services you can configure from the web admin tool: apache, samba, appletalk, nntp, dns, sendmail/pop/imap, ldap etc. However if you are not in a benign environment (unconnected to Internet or behind well managed firewall), you still need to be able to comb through logs and figure out what's going on, and to be able to install updates.
I will say that I had the RedRak box out of the box and serving SMB on our network in less than five minutes -- not too shabby. The RedRak box also has a quick swap (not hot swap) drive tray. This would be great for quick repurposing of a box, say in an ISP server farm. However, it lacks a floppy or CD drive; the inclusion of a recovery CD is somewhat a mystery to me here.
In any case I'd be very interested in experiences people have had with inexpensive x86 Linux or BSD boxes in non-traditional form factors.
-Matt Leo
matt@acrcorp.com
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I highly doubt that Cobalt will move to 2.2 on the MIPS devices (Qube, Raq2).
Their latest and greatest Raq3 uses an AMD K6 and 2.2 is, of course, supported.
I have a Qube 2 under my desk at work, which I have abandoned due to the lack of 2.2.
If you need a small server like this and want Linux 2.2 on it, get a Netwinder. It's an ultra cool box, I recommend plugging in a monitor and keyboard. It's useable as a desktop machine. There's even a desktop version specifically for that which has NTSC I/O.
That circle thing on the side is a speaker, btw. A voice sounds "Welcome to Netwinder" when the system is properly up.
There are rackmount versions, too. You can fit two of them in a single 1u space.
Of course, the coolest thing is the hackability. Check out www.netwinder.org to find all kinds of great docs, software, and ideas. There's a pic there somewhere of a stack of netwinder guts set up as a Beowulf. The OS is a modified recent RedHat. You'll find it easier to get software compiled on it than the Qube.
Needless to say, one of these babies occupy a space on *top* of my desk.
it is a MIPS not an ARMS, a MIPS R4000.
To see what a dmesg output looks like, checkout the port of it on the netbsd homepage. You might also find more technical info about it the archive of their mailing list.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
I knew I'd seen this before =) http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/08/1 36255.shtml Should be interesting to see new comments, now that they have been out for a while.
We have one at work... they are a neat toy, but just that, a toy. In a production environment, its practically worthless. No capability to upgrade or implement security patches. The Admin account is denied access to half the system, and Gateway doesn't bother to tell you the root password. In an uber small business, it would be handy as a quick and dirty firewall/router/dhcp server for 40 or 50 light users, maybe 10 heavy ones. Out of the box it'd be cake to say, share a DSL line or cable modem. The web based interface is admittedly slick... I have seen people who've never touched linux breeze thru the setup of this thing like cake. Things that bothered me included the lack of low level root access (I wanted to change init scripts... no dice.) and the seemingly idiotic out of the box setup to run mgetty on the serial port, instead of an agetty which would be mildly useful, considering the pile of VTx20's we have in the lab. One of these days I'm gonna yank the drive, boot it as a slave, and edit the passwd file so i can use the root account and at least make the thing somewhat useful.
Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
ARMs are 32 bit only.
I think you'll find its a Cobalt cube which uses a MIPS.
I was told the other day they were rather paranoid about not letting you get root on boxes you buy from them so as to make it easy for them to maintain.
... that they dropped the Cobalt design.
It used a MIPS and Linux. The design was wide open, the power miniscule. (Something like 7 watts running flat out, as I recall. Same as an incandescent nightlight.) The fan was just so people would trust it. It dissipated so little power that a fan wasn't necessary unless you were running it in an oven - at which point it was counterproductive. B-) )
I used one of those in a previous job. We were developing for embedded MIPS and needed a compiler. Gnu wasn't supporting cross-platform and we didn't know about Cygnus' patches to fix that. (Over a K of lines when they got fed up and forked the code base.) So we bought a Qube as an utterly cheap way ($1K) to get a MIPS/GNU development platform.
My main gripe with the Cobalt Qube was that the 12V for the disk drive didn't go through the switching regulator. If they'd regulated it so it would be reliable with a raw supply from about 11.25 to 13.75 it would have been IDEAL to babysit a cabin powered off a solar/lead-acid system.
(Or almost ideal. The single PCI expansion slot - intended for a particular 100Mbps ethernet card (to supliment the built-in 10-base-t) - was only fed the +5 supply, which limited flexibility a bit.)
Loading a new kernel was interesting. You had to name it this particular name that looked like a game in a directory owned by one of Cobalt's developers. (Don't recall it at the moment.) It was the only other file the ROM bootloader would boot.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
http://www.syrinex.com
syrinex sells linux boxes that are designed to be headless servers, firewalls, ftp,web,email, etc like a cobalt cube BUT in a more conventional and expandable form. check them out...we may be buying soon for our 'network edge'.
I'm a little bit surprised that it's a cobalt and it's running a 2.0 kernel. I had thought that the Cobalt stuff had all migrated to 2.2 at this point (I know that they stuck with 2.0 for quite a while, but it's been quite a while). We have a raq3i here running the 2.2(.5, it looks like) kernel. Maybe the qubes are still at 2.0, though.
They are really excellent little boxes for people who don't know what they're doing (they're underpowered and kindof annoying for people who do, but that's a separate story). We use them for schools and small offices that don't have an on-site network administrator but want to get local mail and drive sharing. The fact that they do smb, nfs *and* appletalk is the big selling point for some places.
The big gripe: why the hell don't they do print spooling? It's not hard to do (basically you get the lpd srpm from redhat, you rebuild (because most of the boxes are MIPS, you install and you configure. not rocket science). This is something that lots of offices need and they just don't do at all, as far as I know. annoying.
I for one looked at this article (love a geeky mystery and all) and probably scrolled right by the Cobalt/Gateway deal article.
This is also something the mainstream press does all the time -- revisits or repackages old info in a way that makes it more relevant or interesting.
And finally, Ask Slashdot is really Ask Slashdot's Readers, so Slashdot is just being true to its approach by letting US tell the poster it's a relabelled Cobalt Qube.
Next time I get mod points, I'll think seriously about giving a -1 Troll to gratuitous Slash-bashing like this.
(Damn, now I've got to wonder if I just fed a Troll!)
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Wow- you mean the slashdot guys don't maintain a photographic memory recall of every story they have posted since 1997? Just destroy my childish illusions, why don't you.
I would like to take on of the cubes and use it as a car mp3 player. I'm sure hardware pornographers somewhere have it well documented.
If you were to settle for an uglier case.. you could probably get the same functionality for a lot cheaper.. I know of one package (sharethenet)which is aiming for the some similar functionality.. Has anyone used this.. or has anyone used any other products/distros that are basically made to be set up on an old "headless" machine and simply administered through a browser?..
-
air and light and time and space
Wow.. That looks like a cool little box.. more info here
I guess the main selling point would be simple set up and config tools.. You could probably build something with more power for cheaper, but simplicity can count for a lot in this market..
-
air and light and time and space
So, the processor would appear to be SGI MIPS-based. StrongArm is 32-bit (and what Netwinders use)
Seconded. When I had a solo, with a bad battery, they refused to swap the battery for a few months, because I was running Unix, and they were sure it was a Unix problem. Finally, I got them to swap the entire fucking *CHASSIS* (including the LCD display and 32MB ram) twice, and that didn't work, so I called and said "okay, now, how about we just *try* my crazy theory that the battery itself is dodgy".
:)
Not very helpful. When I called a while later to ask about a non-Windows laptop, the sales guy *laughed at me*. Not "hah-hah, that's funny", but "what the fuck are you smoking, not using Windows".
Let's just say I'm no longer a Gateway customer, huh?
(Oh, and of course, they spam.)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
They did a story on this back in October... You'd think that people would search for stuff before they'd submit it...
I have one of these little toys, got it last weekend.
www.zblackbox.com
Telnet is only turned on when you toggle a couple of buttons on the back of the machine. It only allows signons for one hour then turns the service off. However currently connected sessions stay on.
It's using a MIPS processor from Quantum Effect Devices (www.qedinc.com). Note that despite their name they have nothing to do with quantum computing.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
This is, of course, highly ironic, considering that gateway disowned me when they found out I had installed linux on my Solo. They wouldn't even tell me what was included in a BIOS update.
see www.cobalt.com
http://www.gatewayatwork. com/prod/sb_apsrv_features.shtml
Web site publishing,with integrated support for CGI, Perl scripts, and FrontPage server extensions
Local E-mail hosting (individual mail, groups, auto reply/forward, scheduled delivery, multi-drop, SMTP/POP3/IMAP4)
Cross-platform file sharing (Windows 95/98/NT, Macintosh)
Message board
FTP services
Full PPP router, DNS and DHCP server Packet Filtering Firewall security, access control, and Network Address Translation
Linux 2.0 with Web server pre-installed Document indexing and searching, archival and retrieval More specs:
http://www.gatewayatwork. com/prod/sb_ms100_prodinfo.shtml
Found this on Gateway's website, looks like the beast we're talking about here.
Gateway Micro Server 100
The ARM arch doesn't have a 64-bit variant, so whatever chip is in there, it ain't ARM-based. 64-bit embedded RISC processor probably means MIPS, but not necessarily...
Once again, Slashdot doesn't read Slashdot.
How about:
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/ 10/13/132216.shtml
or even
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/ 12/08/136255.shtml
Where Hemos acknowledges that slashdot doesn't read slashdot on this very topic.
As for this story:
It's MIPS, not ARM, yes, it is Samba, and yes, it's self-hosting.
Oh, and it is Apache, and Cobalt did a pretty nice job with the web management.
They work great for their intended purpose, but get a little wonky if you try to do things that the web-gui can't do.
But you can always give up and put NetBSD on it.
-Zandr
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
People probably ignore the secondary costs of operating a largish data-centre. Afterall, when buying a car, is all you look at only the peak RPM of the 'Motor Inside (TM)'. I would be interested to see whether anyone could post some rough figures for cost per square metre for hosting a bunch of racks. You've got uninterruptable power supplies (min 300-500K upfront capital costs), air-conditioning (we're talking heavy duty water coolers), Occupational Health and Safety issues (imagine 2000 fans going at once), physical security, etc. The question I suppose is does the savings in form factor (low heat dissipation, with resuling savings in fan) give a better value-for money for your targetted system load? If you've got only a few big dynamic databases and lotsa static pages you can probably get away with a combination of several CacheRaqs and say an Origin 200 for fast parallel RAID I/O. The mix of machines might give better overall mean time between failures at accetpable cost. Also keep in mind that your techies won't be too happy at getting up at 4am in the morning to fix problems. A reasonable degree of redundancy is useful.
... the sunk cost is in the infrastructure but the value is in the services.
What I see happening is that we are getting past the analogous stage where electricity generators are a novelty and we are shifting into decent web-engineering, much as the early layout of the electric grid standardised (or commodidised) transformers, generators, motors etc. You will probably see similar moves in the computer industry as the infrastructure goes invisible. You won't be buying a computer but a URL with guarenteed x Gigabytes storage accessible anywhere in the world at a predetermined level of service/performance. Slide-in storage modules (like for portables) for CD/DVD/HD/etc will become the norm and if the hardware vendors stop squabbling among themselves for specification control of the bus and I/O plugs, something similar for processors. Take a look at Sony's iLink (aka Apple Firewire). The reason why consumer electronics is the key is that the mass scales of economies will swamp anything a dedicated system will produce except in niche areas. People forget that it's the software/services that people are willing to pay for. Stability and service becomes a more important factor once a certain level of features is in place. If the Cobalt team can offer a decent price-competitive solution below the kink in the cost curve (the point where the plant pays for itself and thus competes with other paid-off fabs) where the marginal costs are so much smaller, then good luck to them.
Repeat after me
LL
 All I can say is that Cobalt must be raking it in hand-over-fist. Their "newest" design is the Raq III, which ran on a 300 mHz AMD processor last time I checked. Of course, they're targetting non-processor-intensive jobs, so it can swing, but, without the cute boxes and web interface, these would be $400 machines.
Oh well, I hear they're quite cute and functional, so enjoy the toy!
--JRZ
They cost Aust $2999 Performance was fairly low, topping out at 260,000 bytes per second of throughput.
here is part of the article..
The Gateway server is easily the cutest of the servers. A little black box not much bigger than a tissue box, it sits and grins at you with its single huge green LED across the front.
As far as specifications go, the Gateway was very different to the other servers tested in that it had a dedicated RISC processor, and no option of a keyboard/mouse/monitor for installation. To set the machine up, you plug it in, program the network details (IP Address, Subnet Mask, Gateway Etc from a small 6 button control panel with a 2 line segmented LCD mounted on the back of the unit. From here, all the setup can be done via a nice friendly web interface or CD Setup Wizard.
One of the things we noted was the slow boot time of this machine. If the machine is not shut down properly, it takes an inordinate amount of time to check the disk on restart.
Transfer of data to the server can be done using FTP, SMB (Windows file sharing) and Appletalk. Finding the root of the web server involved a little poking around though the web interface, but once found, we were able to FTP the files with little trouble. The FTP transfer was a little slower than the other machines, which led us to believe that the gateway was not in the same league as its competitors in the raw speed stakes.
In the static tests, we confirmed that the lack of RAM and slower hard disk of the Gateway made it struggle as far as performance is concerned. In fact, during the test, I received the following e-mail from the unit:
There are several other monitoring features built in including a user disk space monitor that tells you when disk space is running short for a particular user.
The Gateway has a backup facility built in, though we did not test it. There is no redundancy of disk drives or power supplies so the server will need to be removed from service to have these parts replaced or upgraded. There is very little about the Gateway that can be upgraded, you could upgrade to more disk space and add more RAM but the CPU is a RISC chip, and is not in a socket. There are 2 10/100 Ethernet ports and a modem, allowing you to set this server up as a small office router with dialup Internet Access.
A 5 port DSS-5+ Dlink Fast Ethernet Switch is included in the package. The micro server will run as a small departmental File Server with quotas, a DHCP Server, and an e-mail server.
Other features of note are:
Packet Filtering (Firewall), Web & DNS Caching, Private discussion Groups, Web based HTML creation and FrontPage Extensions.
A simple to use Setup Card and CD Setup Wizard (Win 32 only) was included, although not tested. Mark
Mark RMIT IT Test Lab Engineer http://www.geekzone.com.au/~msnell
I've got a Gateway MicroServer 100 at the office - and to date, I still can't tell you if it's a mistake or not.
For inital setup, it's pretty friggin' non-technical. There's a 2 line LCD screen on the back - put in the IP, and go. It's now online, and ready to be administered via a web browser. Set up your users, and your groups, and you are ready to go.
But, there's some downsides. Horsepower on it seems pretty good - the network at the office is a homogenous environment of Win9x, NT, 2000, and Linux clients and boxen. For a quick setup for a nontechnical person, it's perfect. However, if you want to get under the hood - that a bit uglier. For those who don't know, this is a "server appliance" so there's no local logins - no keyboard or screen for that, just a two line LCD screen that shows it's status at boot time.
Apache comes pre-configured, along with SAMBA, and a couple other goodies (email, etc.) However, nothing advanced like MySQL, etc. Telnet is disabled (not nessisarily a bad thing), and the box has a maintance mode that enables telnet for an hour. Otherwise, the only way to play with it is the web-based administration - which happens to be quite inadequate for my tastes. Setting up users is easy, but, it's not very robust, and sometimes the server gets paranoid for no reason - SAMBA will drop them, and won't let them back in with out tricking it.
It's got it's own system for getting updates from GW2k, but, I've yet to see a package of updates.
If you want a real server, this isn't it. If you want a quick to install system for small-time file sharing, with very little setup, this is it. It's great for sending out to a site with non-tech people in it. For me - well, I'm not so fond of it in many ways. Lack of power for administration, somewhat slow SAMBA responsiveness at times, sometimes it has user rights issues (oh, and SERIOUS problems with the user / group quota idea - it doesn't seem to take me seriously quite often), and it's designed to be a 'hands off' type of toy. All of those things together make it not so hot of a toy.
And as much as it will sound like flame bait - I still prefer my old diehard, no-reboots except hardware failure, dual PPro NT 4.0 server to this thing. Of course, I'd prefer a REALLY well configured Linux boxen to my NT server - and the Cobalt Qube2... er... Gateway MicroServer 100 doen't count at all.
(And for the record - the fact that the box is there is my own stinkin' fault. I wanted something that would be dead simple for someone else to admin while I was away on trips... I'm not sure what I SHOULD have choosen instead.)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org