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Axentra Rumba Server - Home Do-It-All Box
JigSaw writes "OSNews has an exclusive article on a new Linux-based server appliance product -- the first in the family -- the Axentra Rumba Server. The product is to be launched soon, but details of it have being leaked out already: The device has a mini ITX mobo, VIA C3 800 MHz CPU, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB hdd, USB 1.1, 2 LAN ports and in 1 WAN port (extra Wi-Fi USB device required). The device is useful as an Internet Gateway (DNS, IP filtering, Port forwarding, NAT firewall), as a network service (web server, file server, WebDAV, IMAP/SMTP, Samba, Content/Spam Filtering, photo album). It has an embedded web server so you can administer it via your web browser. It is compatible with Linux, Macs and Windows."
Is it just me, or does this thing sound exactly like the Cobalt Cube from a few years back? It ran a modified Red Hat, was an "Internet appliance" turn-key box, and did all the fun router/web server/email server/file server stuff with just a simple interface.
What's old is new again, I suppose.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
First of all, the "in" seems extraneous? Secondly, doesn't "WAN" mean "WIDE Area Network", not "WIRELESS Area Network"? I thought the term for 802.x1 type stuff is "WLAN"? (Wireless Local Area Network)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I am curios to see just how popular such a device is. I am not sure who the exact target would be. Anyone highly skilled or professional level could just build and setup their own with more stuff at a cheaper price. Those who don't have much computer skills will never hear of or have any need for this device. I guess if it is cheap enough so that someone would rather buy it then take the time to build one themselves, it could do well. My personal opinion is that it won't be priced low enough. They will sell a few, but not a ton.
Most linux/*bsd buff can build one of these on any given sunday. But it is great to see a consumer oriented device targetted at home (mainly windows) users that offers what was once only available to geeks to the mass market... well I for one hope it takes off anyway.
This seems like a pretty cool little device. Maybe with appliances like these more people will start to get interested in hosting their own website on their DSL/Cable connection, or doing other "server" type stuff. I really dislike how the Internet today is seen as just a place to visit web pages. Maybe with a simple server appliance people will get the idea that they can publish stuff on the web and share stuff with their friends and family that way. They could even have it run things like a jabber server. Wouldn't that be cool? What this company would do if they were smart is automatically give everyone who buys one of these a dynamic DNS account, so your little server could have its own permanent address with no configuration necessary.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
This seems like it could be a good stepping stone for more advanced Windows users to discover Linux. As long as the price isn't too much greater than what it would cost to build you own, I could see this creating it's own little market.
vampirical
I mean we all know that "photo album" is really just "porn collection" in disguise.
But does it run Li.... Oh.
Definitely cheaper, and by my reckoning, better by far. Better in the sense that you could put that wasted hard drive money into RAM. If the thing is to act as a server you don't want it reading off a hard drive anyway. Skip the hard drive and add a Gig of RAM and you could still be less than two hundred bucks with all new parts. If someone bought one of these and then you showed them the right way to do it with a LiveCD, they'd feel like they had been ripped off.
Once you get past ten gigs or so, the real purpose of a hard drive becomes juke box or media management center as opposed to old fashioned computing. This thing is obviously marketed as a server and not as a media device so the 20gig drive is essentially just a way to get rid of old inventory. Sure it's cool because it's GNU/Linux, but let's not get carried away just for that. It's not important to have Best Buy and Circuit City prostletyze Open Source, it really doesn't fit in their scummy bag of sales tricks and they will just make it look like a rip off with misfit products like this. Product placement is life and death in the market, but strictly speaking GNU/Linux isn't in the market since it's available for free as in beer. I believe that is its primary strength.
But speaking of prostletyzing, I digress. Back to the topic of using dated hardware appropriately, I think Murdoch has a better use for those old hard drives which is to use the next generation of video compression to make them look like fat PVRs. At least it's an efficient use of an outdated technology rather than pawning them off as "server" use.
Wel according to the article the machine offers nothing to make configuring the firewall (IP Filtering + NAT) easy or foolproof.
So what do we got? Not much more than cheapo walmart pc and distro.
We got a linux based firewall running on the same machine as the files and photos and everything else.
What the hell is the difference between this and any other linux machine?
It certainly won't make security or sysadmin any easier.
It's a home linux nightmare waiting to happen. Can't wait.
Good old Roomba. Saved me from back pain plenty a times... You did mean the vacuum didn't you?
MoFscker
I'd much rather take an older computer and throw ClarkConnect on it. Comparing the feature list above with CC's features:
Security
* Stateful Firewall * Intrusion detection with Snort * Secure shell via SSH * IPsec VPN (Office Edition only) * PPTP VPN (Office Edition only)
Web Server
* Apache web server * Support for CGI and PHP * Secure/SSL support
File Services
* Journalled file system with ext3 * FTP server * Windows file server * AppleShare file server
E-mail
* POP and IMAP servers * SMTP server
Filtering
* Banner ad blocking * Web proxy * Content filtering (Office Edition only)
Printing
* Print server support * Printer sharing for Samba/Windows networks
Easy Configuration
* Web-based configuration* Optional Webmin package
Network Support
* DSL (including PPPoE) * Cable Modem * 802.11b Wireless (Office Edition only) * Internal DHCP server * Caching nameserver
There's a few not listed on the quick info page, such as Gallery and SpamAssassin, but you get the picture. Not to say that you couldn't add on to the software on the Rumba, after all it is Linux based, but who says they'll make it easy for you to do so. I have no problems adding new goodies to my ClarkConnect box, such as a NWN and TeamSpeak server for my gaming friends or SliMP3 server for around the house music, and I wouldn't give that up.
To give fair time to two other Linux firewall distros I've used in the past and like almost as much as ClarkConnect, check out Smoothwall and IPCop.
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
But very few build whole computers from scratch. They don't view it as worth their effort. They would rather buy an off-the-shelf system, and maybe add a little memory. A year down the road put in a bigger hard drive...
My point, the vast majority of technically literate people DON'T build their own from scratch.
I think TigerDirect already let this one out of the bag. The website says that they will announce it (and it's price) soon. This week's TigerDirect catalog already has it..
/w any standard usb->wireless adapter. WiFi is NOT standard.
TigerDirect print ad
The ad specifically mentions that it supports WiFi wireless networking
I work with a bunch of embedded applications developers, and I know of only one other guy who builds his own machine. First off, they view their time as valuable. Every minute they can spend with their families is worth it, and building a machine can be time consuming. Pricing out parts, and getting up to date knowledge can take a lot of research. Second, as people get older, it seems they just don't want to mess with it. This is synonymous to old cars. Young people will tend to buy cars and restore them, while many older people will prefer to buy the car already restored. It costs more money, but they don't have to mess with it. Finally, with computers, when you buy legal software, I don't think you save any money when building your own, and most people want the warranties and one source of support that come with someone like Dell.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
I heard it sucks.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Mod parent up (I have no points right now).
I set up a Xandros box and (stupidly) left it exposed to the outside world without shutting down all of the default services. It being Debian based, and hence having apt, I kept the software up to date with all the patches from security.debian.org. Not good enough. About a week later someone came in through a service (which was not part of the standard Debian distro) meant for system administration that had the port open to * (as opposed to 127.0.0.1).
The lesson is that easy to use distros with lots of things to make it easy on the end user (like WebDAV) are all well and good behind a firewall, or as a sacrificial box in the DMZ, but should not themselves be the firewall. It would be possible to create a firewall in a box that would keep itself up to date, but with all the bells and whistles on this thing, it's going to be as dangerous as Windows.
Microsoft would have a fair point if they said this, "if you want a lot of open ports and friendly services for easy system interop, and you don't know how or don't want to invest the time to secure your machine, and you don't keep the software up to date, it will be compromised." The same is true of Linux.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
If the idea behind this thing becomes popular, it's a matter of time before someone starts knocking out something similar on the cheap. All-in-one mobos are cheap as chips, and drivers don't seem to be as much of a problem as they used to be anymore. Stick one in a case, add a hard drive and maybe a DVD-ROM and pop your favourite distro on it. If it has TV-out, supply a SCART to phono and 3.5mm stereo lead {you may have to solder this yourself} and it'll run into any modern enough telly. A TV receiver / video capture card would make it into a tapeless VCR.
It might need a console-based configuration utility for setting its IP address. Once that's done, and the machine is on a network, everything else can be done through a web browser with a bit of p(hp|erl|ython) scripting.
It could firewall off your vulnerable Windows boxes from your ADSL connection, and provide a proxy to block ad.doubleclick.net and other objectionable sites. No ADSL? Then it can do on-demand dialling. It could collect your e-mail from several different servers and distribute it amongst several desktop machines - you can use POP3 to collect it and thus obviate the need for a static IP address. With the video and audio outputs, it could be a telejuke.
And, because it's programmable, some loon will almost certainly find a use for it none of us have thought of yet.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!