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Post Cobalt Alternatives?
"Let's break this question into two parts:
a) What have customers been migrating to? I am really impressed with web://cp, and have also investigated Plesk, cPanel, and a few other commercial ones. Most of them require some specific version of Red Hat, which is slightly irritating. I have also considered stock Apache/qmail/vmailmgr/etc, but I'm looking for something that grants a bit more power and flexibility to my end users.
b) How was the migration? We have hundreds and hundreds of e-mail accounts, aliases, mailing lists, etc on our existing RAQ's, and would like the transition to be as seamless as possible. I am looking to finally get around the info@domain1,info@domain 2 issue. Users don't seem to grasp the concept of making an account without a generic name and aliasing info@ to it, so any experiences on this are more than welcome! Our staff is rather limited (I'm pretty much it tech-wise), so the smoother the better!
I am also open to arguments for keeping the RAQ line. I have read that they are open sourcing sausalito and cme, but it looks like there is no short-term stable release of this. I'm looking at a few weeks to a few months as a migration timeframe."
I can't vouch for the migration abilities of Cpanel as I've never had to use them. I have almost 30 Plesk servers and I will say that as of their 6.0 version, IT SUCKS. Don't waste your money!
Cpanel rocks, I am extremely pleased with it and I have 4 servers running it right now.
FYI I host about 10,000 web sites at my data center, and have around 150 servers at last count. Some of those are dedicated server customers, who I also recommend Cpanel to.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
The best part is you can have twenty of them piled in a box. No need for rack mounting, just throw them all in higglety-pigglety, plugged in of course, and it just works. Power consumption is so low that you can basically run twenty or so reliably and securely using two daisy-chained UPSes.
My own ISP is planning a migration over to this type of technology within the next few months. It's cheap, a maintanence paradise, and a vast improvement upon the usual Wintel/etc "commodity" (ever notice that commody and commode share the same derivation) boxes. I sincerely recommend it.
Have you tried webmin?
It's a browser based control panel and runs on more than just redhat (I'm running it on yellowdog on ppc). It's also free (open source, I think.)
evanchik.net
I have upgraded all our RAQs to the newest debian (woody/stable) distribution. The RAQ can be firmware upgraded to support 2.4 kernels. Add to that a modern distribution and it becomes a pretty good server. As for the ssh patch: apt-get upgrade fixed that within an hour of the anouncement. Debian rules!
I have had a little experience with the early RAQ series from Cobalt, and personally I didn't like the setup very much. The management GUI was very nice, but most of the software and hardware was non-standard.
I have used the SunFire V100, and have been very pleased with the results. I use the Debian distribution, which fully supports the SPARC architecture and for which patches are released promptly. The initial install was a little tricky, but far easier than installing Debian on a RAQ (which I did once too). Webmin can provide a nice interface for clients to configure things, and qmail/vpopmail/popauth/omail works well as an email solution.
You can buy a new SunFire for less than $1000 too, which is a great price for an UltraSPARC in a 1U form factor.
Some other interesting notes:
I run software RAID1 across 2 IDE drives.
I use the Tulip driver, not the Davicom driver.
I used the Debian boot cd to load SILO, from which point I can load the kernel of my choosing.
If anyoen wants, I may be able to dig up my notes on the exact install procedure I used for this machine.
You say you will listen to arguments to keep the RAQ, well why not? Is it broke? Then don't fix it.
The above is a joke. To both of the COBOL programmers reading slashdot, I offer you my sincerest condolences and ask you to not beat me with your wooden leg. Thank you.
I migrated from a Cobalt RaQ setup after many many frustrating moments with the whole net appliance idea in general.
I also needed the migration to be as smooth as possible, including all user auth, mail boxes/folders, lists and aliases.
I decided to go with MySQL based authentication on Postfix, Courier-IMAP, Apache, and ProFTPd, all running on Debian. I Wrote a little web front end using PHP for user administration, and voila, we now have a much more flexible system. All MySQL auth patches and plugins are available in Debian's apt archive.
Check out how-tos on the subject here, here, and here.
It took a little effort to get all of this working, but a little effort went a long way. I was basically able to duplicate the RaQ's functionality on a Debian system that I had full control over as far as software updates, kernel and hardware.
To top it all off, I replicated the config and used Heartbeat to make this into a high availability pair.
Working with a number of ISP's, ie running one myself in the past. I would recommend going with C-panel... The system works well and is updated quite often.
Rolling your own distribution and keeping apache/postfix/frontpage extentions/webmin/etc up to date takes more time than it's worth and eats your profit margin up.
Depending on the space you have available, I would go with some 1u or 2u units. Frankly with 150 domains you can probably run all of them on 1-2 systems with decent hardware.
I strongly recommend against plesk, as they have a number of issues or have had in the past.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Our ISP hosts around 400 domains on about 10 Ultraserve 4.0's. They are pretty powerful, and cheap too.
i've heard these guys are decent -
http://www.guardiandigital.com/
I see...
... blue .. no .. gray...
... metal gray...
...
I see...
I see a new platform in your future... yes
it's coming clearly now
yes
what is that? a circle... no an apple
what? who's there? steve is that you? you're not even dead yet!
yes the spirits are moving me....
I definitely see an Apple Xserve in your future! Yes, look here at your palm (no silly, your hand) and see how long your PowerPC line is? And look here, the money line is strong! (It'll need to be at first, but then your money requirements will be low).
The messages from beyond are rarely wrong my friend!!
With this architecture you can easily get 200-400 of these in a plastic crate, available from Home Depot for $5.99. Add a few power strips and you've got a great low-end ISP setup. Just make sure to skip town before the cellphone charges come due.
You could use Debian, Redhat, Mandrake, whatever. You could even use something like ASP-Linux which is designed for ASPs/ISPs but I haven't used it. We use standard Linux Distros with Webmin which someone else recommended. The are various control panels available off of the Webmin site like Virtualmin and ISP4You.
Then you can use commodity 1U chassis for substantially less than big names. Sticking with reliable components with give you inexpensive machines that will last a long long time. Before someone jumps on me saying you have to use IBM, Dell, insert-your-hardware-flavor, I used to be the CTO of a distributor that specialized in high end OEM desktops and servers so I know what I'm talking about here as well as having previously been the owner of a VAR that specialized in high end OEM gear. Now I own an ISP.
I was hosting at couple domains a work with a RAQ4. While waiting for updates to ssh to become available it got hit with a exploit known as "raq f***". I decided to never run on a box that I couldn't patch to my hearts content again. I switched over to a Sun Nextra X1 running Solaris 9. Everything from Apache to MySQL to Courier IMAP and Postfix is custom compiled and configured by hand. My opinion is that a graphical front end is nice but if you admin more then a couple of domains then you should know how to setup your machine. It takes a while doing it the first time but if you document everything the slowest part in setting up a new box is downloading everthing and compiling and you could even script that if you wanted. I think the RAQ type setups are great for resellers or web designers but if you're an admin then if at all possible try to actually admin the systems you manage.
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
Patched much more frequently.
While this doesn't solve the long-term problem, you can get alot of useful updates from:
... someone could resurrect the RaQs if they wanted to as Sun has open sourced the code for the Qube 3 at:
http://www.pkgmaster.com/
It's run by Taco (but not CmdrTaco) and he used to work for Cobalt (as did I). He releases lots of goodies and things like OpenSSH faster than Sun ever did.
Also
http://open.cobaltqube.org/
While the Qube didn't have the RaQ's virtual hosting, it wouldn't be a massive stretch to extend the Qube software. Better yet, the Qube software is BSD licensed, not GPL licensed, making it alot more feasible for another company to make a commercial product out of it.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Some data about stability:
raqim% uname -rsm
NetBSD 1.5.1 cobalt
raqim% uptime
11:40PM up 25 days, 21:35, 11 users, load averages: 0.46, 0.30, 0.23
- Hubert
I'm not sure of the Raq attraction anymore. I've never owned one. But from what I read they are cheap, but underpowered.
Nowadays you can get cheap _and_ powerful dedicated servers. Linux to boot.
Control panel wise, if you want to go the Open Source route, slap something like Webmin on them with VirtualMin if you are planning on reselling the space and will have third party users needing a control panel.
Otherwise the most popular web hosting control panels are the likes of Ensim, Plesk and cPanel/WHM
If you're just after affordable dedicated server type functionality (e.g. for compiling software, running custom versions of Apache or MySQL or what have you), then you may be pleasantly surprised with what is available with Linux VPS Hosting (my own service). With the VPS you have no hardware worries. And typically the host servers are very powerful and you'll get better performance than a dedicated server a few times the price.
We had about 15 assorted raq, raq2's, and raq3's that were serving email, web, and some ftp sites. Since sun appeared to have no intention of putting out patches for the various vulnerabilities in both ssh and the httpd services on the boxes, we had to look at other options. Getting one of the newer cobalts wasn't appealling since a company that does this once, is just going to do it again, when they decide they don't want to support the newest.
We ended up converting all our mail off onto an Imail setup (though I think we are going to ditch that since we already have to buffer incoming and outgoing mail with frontend postfix boxes; might as well start going all out open source, but we had to do something quickly and Imail was a quick fix for us). Ie, we pretty much went with custom solutions on a mix of beefier open source boxes and M$ based systems. The hard part was doing it without the customers knowing (which pretty much involved a small cluster of stage 1 built gentoo boxes all john the rippering passwords for us).
Now, all that is minorly interesting (maybe using john to help with a smooth transition), but this gem on getting Redhat installed on a cobalt is just *asking* to be tried out on some of the spares I've got laying about.
But, our take on the whole thing was, 'better to upgrade to our own systems and sell the appliances for 100-200 a pop on ebay'.
I decommed several cobalts and replaced them with XServes when i came in. My clients have been nothing but happy with them.
Load webmin for the web interface, use squirrelmail for webmail.
DNS comes preloaded.
Of course, if it hurts your pocketbook, you could always go with a Dual G5 for the same price. That of course means you'd use a wire rack instead of a rackmount telecom rack, but it depends on your space constraints. I have both available to me.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
I've never used the RaQs, but I run my ISP using ISPMan. It's a pretty good system that uses the components I like: Postfix, Cyrus, Apache, Pure-FTPD and LDAP.
Wil
wiki
I wouldn't really recommend using web://cp.. unless it has changed much in the last few months.
For a start, the webcp daemon seems to die ALL the time for no apparent reason. We've had to do a lot of work changing poorly-written code.. it's quite a hassle to get it all up and running properly. It's not too bad once you get it going however.
Though I imagine other web control panel software are still better than webcp.
We use cPanel on all of our shared Webhosting machines - and a large percentage of our dedicated server and colocation customers choose to use it too.
:)
cPanel runs on RH7.3-RH9, FreeBSD, Mandrake, and SuSE. You're not limited to a single RH version there.
Personally, I like CPANEL. I've used it across three different hosting providers and now I offer it on my own as an e-commerce focused webhosting provider (not the URL in my SIG).
It works well, only breaks occasionally (this is all still bleeding edge and this comes with the territory -- if your clients aren't doing advanced stuff, you can afford to update CPANEL less often -- your choice), and that usually gets updated pretty quickly. Customers like it because it's very easy to use, and there are a number of themes available for your aesthetic pleasure.
150 domains is plenty to cause a headache, and by consolidating it onto CPANEL now you'll buy yourself some headroom. I also personally think it'll alleviate some support issues, as it is easy to offload some account management to your hosting clients.. it's that easy.
Good luck.
According to my Periodic Table, after Cobalt comes Nickel.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Cobalt RaQs make good honeypots. I know because I have one. Mirror a few websites from the net, set them up in their virtual servers, apply some fake logs and some email/ftp activity, and it looks just like a badly managed virtual web server at a small ISP.
I have used other honeypots, honeyd, vmware with varying results. Most hackers are aware of honeypots nowadays and the first thing they do when they get in is to check to see if it is a honeypot. According to their actions, they are getting paranoid. Honeyd and VMWare are easy to detect. A hand carved honeypot takes a lot of effort to get it right.
But a cobalt Raq with some fake sites on it. It's like candy for the hackers.
I used to work at Cobalt -- we basically saw the writing on the wall two years ago when Sun decided to let go of pretty much everyone working in their "Server Appliance Business Unit".
We currently have 12 Cobalt RaQ servers. We haven't bought any new ones recently; we leased out the ones we had and moved on to cPanel, Ensim, and DirectAdmin.
Of the three control panels we've used, I'd recommend Ensim. They have a RaQ migration script that lets you migrate as many domains as you want painlessly. The script costs around $150 one-time, but it's worth it if you have more than 10 domains or so on your RaQ. Ensim also has virtual users, so two users can have the same name.
I wouldn't recommend cPanel at all. DirectAdmin is a nice control panel, but you'll have to do the RaQ migration by hand, which could be painful.
Build out a nice 1U box with a P4 processor in it. Stick Ensim on it, run the RaQ migration script, and fix any issues you have. You should be fine from here on out, and Ensim is a large enough control panel that they are unlikely to bite the dust any time soon.
Good luck with your transition! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me through our website at www.simpli.biz.
Thanks!
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I wouldn't recommend cPanel unless you want to pay for all those lovely spelling errors like "automagicly" and "editted". Seriously, the cPanel developers are worse than the Slashdot admins, and that's saying a lot. I can't believe they expect you to pay so much for their software ($42.50/month/per server for a minimum of 10 licenses?)
While we run cPanel on a few of our servers, I can't say I would recommend use of their system. The hideous spelling errors, plus the fact that updates come out almost daily and we've had some updates that completely broke the system -- no thanks.
I would recommend either Ensim or DirectAdmin for a control panel solution.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
All I can say is avoid CPanel like the plague. I previously admined Raq's from RaQ 3's to RaQ XTR's, all I can say is I love them, for their relative simplicity, you don't give end users 10 ways to do the same thing, it only end up confusing them more. Raq's were simplistic, and most everyone could figure the GUI out. CPanel suffers from creeping featuritus, and the desire to add more features rather than fix bugs and produce a stable release. And have you ever actually looked at some of the CPanel code?!?!?! If your looking to scare/laugh yourself silly, I suggest that you do. Unfortunately most of the really juicy stuff is perl binaries, so you can't really get at it, but a much of it is plain jane perl scripts. CPanel's biggest issue though is *testing*, it seems like it's left up to the end users to test the cpanel updates.
c panel/
Other control panels that I've used are webmin, plesk (6), and ensim. I must say that plesk, and ensim are the lesser evils, but they have their pro's and con's also. My favorite GUI control panel is by far the RaQ's. However as I like to say...
"My control panel is vi."
PS here's a few humorous parodies of cpanel.....
http://www.giotechnology.com/images/
So where can I buy a cheap Cobalt Qube 3? None to be found on Ebay lately.
here
We substituted the coffee Slashdot normally drinks with "Sandoz Crystals", Lets see if they notice the difference