NFB Net goes linux!

[Darrell Shandrow]

Hi Buddy,

At the corporate headquarters of the company for which I am employed, we
have 4 of these Cobalt boxes.  The boxes we have do run Linux.  They do come
preconfigured to meet the needs of the vast majority of anyone who would
ever want to operate them, either as admins or as customers.  We use them to
provide domain e-mail and web hosting services.

Though the admin is not locked out of any aspect of administering these
boxes, it is definitely discouraged by their manufacturer, who indicates
that use of the root user/password might permit alterations which could void
any warranty.

Some of my co-workers don't really like these boxes very much; they're the
geeks who like to be able to tinker with all aspects of a computer's
operation.  I like to think I tend to take a more middle-of-the-road
approach.  For our customers, who just want reliable and user-friendly
e-mail and web hosting, they're just fine.

Thanks.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Buddy Brannan" <davros at ycardz.com>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Friday, September 20, 2002 7:39 PM
Subject: Re: NFB Net goes linux!


> On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 08:12:00PM -0400, Ann Parsons wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Naw, Alex, they can RTFM.
>
> It may be as simple as that, or maybe not. I know something about a
> Cobalt box was mentioned. From what I understand, these are machines
> made by a division of Sun (or something) as plug-and-play sort of web
> server machines...which is to say...who knows how configurable they
> are out of the box without some real know-how? I had an account on an
> ISP who used one of these...and the Web control panel had some
> gratuitous Javascript to handle account maintenance. The admins said
> they couldn't change the interface as it came that way from the
> factory pre-installed. I know nothing about these machines...but it
> could be that all of the stuff is set up in such a way as to make
> admin of the machine easy for those who don't know a lot about the
> underlying OS...but hard to modify and get into the innards.
>
> On the other hand, it could be that Dave doesn't feel like reading the
> manual after all.
> --
> Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV/3   | "And if the ground yawned,
> Phone: (814) 455-7333     | I'd step to the side and say,
> Email: davros at ycardz.com  | "Hey ground! I'm nobody's lunch!"
> http://www.ycardz.com/    | --Eddie From Ohio
>
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