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Plug-n-Play Server And Network

Posted by timothy on from the all-in-one dept.

shyster writes: "The IMASS is a server for the technophobes. Built on a Linux OS, it autodetects network segments in less than 5 minutes, and sets up DHCP, DNS, FTP, Email, file sharing, firewall, NAT, internet access, dial-up, etc. almost automagically. Pluses include a solid state drive for the OS, so the hard drive is only used for file storage and backup (seperate 120GB hard drive for backups.) seems to be just what some of my clients need to finally convince them that Linux CAN be easier to use than Windows, and they can, for the most part, manage the network themselves! Check out a review from PCMagazine."

9 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Read at the bottom ... by dago · · Score: 4, Informative
    ... of the page presenting this system :

    Systemax PC's use genuine Microsoft® Windows®

    www.microsoft.com/piracy/howtotell

    --
    #include "coucou.h"
  2. GOOGLE by Alsee · · Score: 4, Informative

    Google search on CAL network Server you get the answer "Client Access License" on the third link. First two links are clearly Cal-State.

    Google is great. It's like a swiss army knife. Not only can you search for web pages, definitions, etc etc etc, you can even use it to correct your spelling :)

    -

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    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  3. Re:Blurb ahoy by iMASS · · Score: 5, Informative
    • Apparently it runs a "Hardened & ruggedized Linux based UNIX kernel"

    That is indeed marketese. What we tried to tell them was we stripped the Linux OS (not the kernel) down to a system that fits (kernel Apache, perl, php, qmail, and all) in 12 megs on a flash disk, and so it's much more reliable and will keep doing basic tasks (like routing) even if the disk dies.

    Naturally, they thought an OS was the same as a kernel, and liked the word "ruggedized", and the rest is history...

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    (Information posted here is not necessarily the opinion of Systemax or any other large corporate entity)
  4. Re:Qmail licensing by iMASS · · Score: 5, Informative
    Not true. We explicitly checked with djb before we packaged qmail like this. It *is* allowed to distribute qmail in unmodified binary form *if* you do it as a tarball that follows his instructions... which we did.

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    (Information posted here is not necessarily the opinion of Systemax or any other large corporate entity)
  5. Re:Just plain hideous... by iMASS · · Score: 3, Informative
    What if the "backup" drive fails with the last six months of critical accounting data on it? Data-recovery services are -not- cheap, and the cost of having to employ one would likely exceed the cost of a good DLT or DAT tape system AND a disaster-recovery plan many times over.
    First of all, if your backup disk dies, you still have the primary, so your data isn't really lost.

    You can swap idb drives using the front drive tray, so you can replace the backup disk, push the backup button on the front panel, and you're set.

    You can also swap the backup disk whenever you want. idb does incremental backups, so you can, say, have a backup done three times a day for a week, then swap the disk and put it in safe storage, then do another week on another disk, then swap them back. The incremental backups are smart, so week 3's backups will automatically be incremental versus week 1, even if week 2's backups were on disk 2. (In this case, week 2's first backup was not incremental, since week 1 isn't on the same disk.)

    idb is _very_ cool stuff, trust me.

    That said, tapes seem a bit more resilient. But you can't beat the speed or capacity (or nowadays, even price) of a disk.

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    (Information posted here is not necessarily the opinion of Systemax or any other large corporate entity)
  6. Re:2.4 kernel by iMASS · · Score: 5, Informative
    Can it automagically upgrade the 2.4 kernel every couple of weeks and set the correct AC patches?
    Yes! Although we tend to only upgrade the kernel when it's useful, not with every single release. Most of our customers don't care whether they're using 2.2 or 2.4 kernels, or apache 1.x or 2.0. I personally don't trust apache 2.0 yet.

    Last time I checked, I think it takes three mouse clicks to upgrade the entire OS, which fits in 12 megs on a 32-meg flash disk (so you can hold two copies, and old "known working" one and a new "test" version). iMASS downloads the new version from our web site, verifies its integrity, and installs it automatically.

    Unfortunately you have to reboot to upgrade the kernel. If it doesn't work for any reason, next time you reboot you get the old, safe version back automatically.

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    (Information posted here is not necessarily the opinion of Systemax or any other large corporate entity)
  7. Re:More details. by iMASS · · Score: 2, Informative
    Anyone have more details on the specifics on the software? Sounds like a modified distro already set up to go with webmin to me.
    We built our own distro from scratch. That's why it fits into 12 megs on a flash disk :)

    --
    (Information posted here is not necessarily the opinion of Systemax or any other large corporate entity)
  8. Cobalt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    What is so special about this machine? Cobalt, now Sun Microsystems sell appliances like these for several years now, and are in great demand by service providers. Cobalts are based on RedHat linux and provides firewall, NAT, printservices, DHCP etc. Expecially the Cobalt cube looks great. Check it out at www.sun.com.

  9. e-smith server - same thing by EdmondDantes · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've been using e-smith server for over a year. Based on RH e-smith does the same things as the iMASS - with one notable exception - it's a free ISO download which can work on almost any Intel box (mine is a P90 w 32MB RAM :)). It works great as an firewall*(if you think proxy/NAT is a firewall)/email/web/print/storage server, it even comes with pppoe, dynamic dhcp client and IMP (webmail). Not that I'm shiling for e-smith, but damn if it ain't easy and frankly - good!