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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."

3 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. 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...

    --
    (Information posted here is not necessarily the opinion of Systemax or any other large corporate entity)
  2. 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.

    --
    (Information posted here is not necessarily the opinion of Systemax or any other large corporate entity)
  3. 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.

    --
    (Information posted here is not necessarily the opinion of Systemax or any other large corporate entity)