11/1 Anyone setup and use one of those Cobalt raq and cache boxes?
My company is planning to get some but of course I am going to
have to support it. What to look out for? Should I en/discourage them?
What about security? I assume it has to go on our own network.
\_ Cobalt boxes are pretty easy to setup and use via the web
gui. If you want to do everything via the command line, its
mostly like a Red Hat box with some debian stuff here and
there.
On the newer x86 based boxes (RaQ3, RaQ4 and Qube3) you can
install most commerical products that run on Red Hat and you
can build most open source applications. The kernel is the
notable exception; you may have problems running a generic
kernel since there are some Cobalt hardware specific changes
that are required to the kernel source in order for it to
run correctly (a Cobalt box is not a generic PC MB in a 1U
case).
The boxes are reasonably secure, but don't expect something
like an OpenBSD box with no remote exploits in 3 years.
You will need to keep up with security patches.
BTW, I work at Cobalt, so my reporting may be a little
biased.
Feel free to mail me with any questions. ----ranga
\_ note that OpenBSD's claim is based on a box which ships
with no external services enabled. If you actually try to
*do* something with an OpenBSD box, it becomes mostly
equivalent to every other box on the net. -tom
\_ The phrase was "default install". My default install
was running apache, inetd, and some other crap. But,
in general, I agree with you. If you install a shitty
service like wu-ftpd on an openbsd box, you're just as
fucked as someone installing wu-ftpd on any other OS.
\_ I installed OpenBSD on a box about 2 months ago
and it had most of the "small servers" (in cisco
parlance) turned on for both ipv4 and ipv6, along
with ftpd, httpd, sendmail and sshd. I did the non
X install, which is (as far as I can tell) is the
configuration that the claim is based on. In this
configuration I could a decent amount of work.
I ultimately turned off most of that stuff since
that box became my home firewall. ----ranga |
http://csua.com/feed/