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IBM Operating Systems BSD

IBM InterJet II Uses Embedded FreeBSD 124

Posted by Nik from the NP:-Little-green-bag dept.
stephen.schaubach writes, "The new IBM InterJet II is a small net appliance that looks cool, is small and has some kick-ass features, including: e-mail server, Apache, Firewall, FTP, DNS and DHCP services. Admin it from a Web browser like the cobalt's. But, best of all it runs an embedded operating system based on FreeBSD UNIX. The down side is that it looks as though you kinda of ASP-lease the thing. Anyone told VA yet? heh " The InterJet is a neat piece of kit, and the developers at Whistle have contributed a lot of high-quality code back to the BSD project, both before and after their buyout by IBM.
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IBM InterJet II Uses Embedded FreeBSD More

IBM InterJet II Uses Embedded FreeBSD

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  • What sucks about it.... (Score:3)

    by Electric Eye ( 5518 ) on Tuesday February 29, 2000 @03:06AM (#1238192)
    ...is that IBM won't sell you this neat little thing by itself!!!! You have to subscribe to their Small Business internet service (DSL, FTP, web hosting, etc.) This really sucks. It's a great device, and a lot of IS guys (like myself) would love to pop this on the network. But I can't. I called IBM last week about the InterJet and I couldn't get one w/o the services.

    Guess what IBM? Most of us already HAVE high-speed internet service. Sell the damn thing as a stand-alone product and you'll sell a hell of a lot more. = /
  • Where's the big news in this? We've seen almost identical products [cobalt.com] before.

  • IBM: The Next Generation. (Score:3)

    by MartyJG ( 41978 ) on Tuesday February 29, 2000 @03:09AM (#1238196) Homepage
    It's amazing how IBM are turning around their image. In the beginning they were the big monkey in the sky, until their products were seen as too expensive for what they were.

    Since they've adopted Linux (and made other changes), it seems they've gone from Big White Box makers to trendy gear for the web-generation - the kind of transformation Microsoft would love to have made about three years ago.

    IBM have definitely changed their targets - they started the desktop PC revolution but have turned their backs on that in favour of mid-range servers . Now they're capitalising on the popularity of Linux to sell their stuff - and as long as they bring to it their old reputation of good quality hardware, good luck to them... as long as they don't try to Monopolise!

  • ASP also stands for Application Service Provider -- a popular buzz-phrase meaning remotely hosted, rentable applications.

  • These would seem to work for pushing ISDN/Dial up connections, but I don't really see a market niche for that any more. Small/Medium sized offices are moving to ADSL/Cable/T1 for the most part, and though this box says it can handle ADSL, I seriously doubt it has the IO or processor capabilities to both push a 1.5m connection and provide all of the services they are advertising. Smaller Bay/Cisco routers have problems running a serious routing protocol (BGP, OSPF, anything worth running on a big WAN link) as well as NAT on 1.5m circuits.. I doubt that this thing could push ADSL, run NAT, routing, FTP, Mail and a Firewall. Especially when the processor is an "x86 compatible 233MHz processor" which just reeks of K6 (no FPU anyone..).
    Plus.. this machine represents a single point of failure for your whole network.. when you have seperate components and one of them goes down, it is relatively easy to isolate the problem and then fix or replace it, but with these all-in-one solutions, troubleshooting becomes a major pain and very time-consuming. Better to leave these services separate and buy products that are meant to handle them alone. It might be a little more expensive up front, but the down time you'll save in the future (not to mention the latency this box must incurr) will be more than worth it.

    //Phizzy

  • have the advert flyer right here... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It starts at $99 per month, requires 2 yr subscription. "Software and hardware remain the property of IBM. Activation fee, taxes, telephone line charges and surcharges not included. Prices subject to change (I thought this was a contract). Other terms apply (I bet).

    It's pricey. Course, I would just get a 486 out of the closet and install Suse.

    And on top of it, the web site http://ibm.com/smallbusiness/wc121 requires IE for viewing. Real swift.
  • I'd say it is. Remember those Coke machines that had a finger service running on them? The last time I remember seeing how much Coke there was at some university that I can't remember was in 1989. Still, I wouldn't be surprised to see some of them still running, or even new ones set up. That was just plain cool! An 'Internet Appliance'? Definitely in my opinion. Give a few years and I'm sure you'll see even your microwave oven having some sort of 'LCD screen and a 'net connection'. With all the really cool hacks out there, I'm sure we'll see someone that is running a web server off of their toaster oven. Who would've thought a Coke machine could be fingered?
  • I agree with the LCD comment - and what is with every fucking gadget needing internet access? Internet this and internet that - enough! Its so toaster companies can trade as Info Tech. P.S. Nice work Craig on that first post.
  • Speaking from experience, this box is most likely overpowered for its job. I currently admin a box that servers as a NAT firewall/web/ftp server on a 768k DSL link. It runs FreeBSD (tracking stable), and only goes down when I build world. I was skeptical when I first set it up, it runs one of those AMD 486->586 things (SLOW), and I was unsure of whether it could handle just the NAT aspect of it's job (the link is saturated a fair amount of the time, both directions).

    What shocked me was that NAT uses almost no cpu, I've run tests by utterly saturating the link (not the easiest thing to do, but conxion came in handy), and the combonation of natd & snort never got the cpu usage above 3%.

    This box also hosts about 8 domains, web, mail, and ftp. I also run many development tasks on it, and most of the sites are all dynamic content (java, python, and perl). The only thing that puts a load on the machine is mod_jserv, with the java process using a constant 6%.

    Considering IBM's server doesn't do CGI, the only thing I could see it sweating from is a ton of samba connections (and that would depend mainly on memory on the machine and the speed of the internal connection).

  • Err,
    That is not the only thing to suck (TM). If you haven't noticed the proxy is CyberPatrolled by default. As the romans said "O tempora, o mores". Slashdot advertising an appliance with network censorship reconfigured...
  • I don't recon IBM has made any REAL investments into Linux technology... On the other hand what they HAVE done is invested into Java - and heavily...

    IBM's server division has been leading the way for who knows how long... Or do you really think the PS/2 or Aptiva-series are killer-products? Their Netfinity-series, RS/6k & larger products are quite well-known and make lots of $$$ for their "Global Services"-division.

    I don't see that IBM has changed their targets at all... What I wonder is why do they try to get a share in the small-business world... there's no room there for IBM's pricing structure and huge margins...

  • Smaller Bay/Cisco routers have problems running a serious routing protocol (BGP, OSPF, anything worth running on a big WAN link) as well as NAT on 1.5m circuits

    I would skip Bay as something I dunno, but err, do you have an idea of what Cisco puts as CPU in any of their boxen. If you had you would not have wondered why they have some "problems" NATing a T1.

    On the contrary even a whimpy pentium with BSD or Linux can NAT at 10MB.

  • This is the result of IBM's purchase of Whistle. It is a bundled device-connection-service level and is geared @ small businesses as evident the pricing. There are many netpliance devices out there like this one which you can purchase by themselves: Cobalt, Rebel, etc.
  • This thing looks nice and everything, has all the services I think I'd want (except print sharing). Love the ability to administer it from the web page.

    But, one thing comes to mind. What happens when your web service goes wacko some day, and you can't access the web pages? What do you do, what DO you do? I didn't see any alternative way to get in (unless maybe it's got a serial port you can hook a terminal into and administer).

    All in all, though, looks like a sweet looking machine (could beef up the hard drive to about 13-20 GB though, instead of 6). I think I'd like to get one for home sometime.
  • This is nothing new. Back before IBM bought Whistle, the Whistle Interjet ran FreeBSD and tried to convince you that it was an easy to set up server solution with turnkey operation.

    For the non-computer-user, that's about right. It's really easy to configure (I researched it once because a family member's business was considering marketing a Linux-based competitor), but if you have the slightest hint of what you are doing, buy your own box ;)

    Furthermore, I've seen it mentioned on /. before, usually as a quickie or in threads. What short memories everyone has...
  • I see a major merger coming our way -- IBM is starting to integrate their product names with the Hewlett Packard product naming conventions!
    Or maybe they hope people will take it for the newest HP printer and buy it right away.

  • Business will grab any buzz word and run it dry. I hate the fact that "they say" everything (appliances, etc..) in the future will be on the Internet. There's enough people crowding the Internet as is, with their singles chat, email, and virtual flowers/panda/card/whatever. I'm tired of sharing the Internet with "joe email" users. I agree, enough with trying to connect everthing to the net. I just can't imagine why you would need your toaster or oven on the net. (Well unless MS makes it, you'll need some bug fixes)You don't need a PIII 500 to use email you dolt!

    I'm the great, cynic, I'm the indifferent gaze
  • Cisco uses their own CPU for their higher end stuff (RSP7000, RSP2) but I beleive they use powerPC chips for the lower-end access routers. The key part of what I was saying depends on whether this thing is really a router or not.. whether is can do a full (or even partial) BGP table or if it just handles static routing.. Sure, a wimpy pentium can run NAT on a large link if it's just doing static routing, but that makes this more of a bridge than a router, and they should advertise it as such.

    //Phizzy
  • Although it's really neat, it's nothing new. For what I know the InterJet I has always been running FreeBSD. I guess this is just a new version.
  • Er, what does lack of FPU (by which I assume you mean "not as good an FPU as Intel ships) have to do with anything? Or is sendmail really doing millions of floating point calculations? It's not like you're going to play Quake on the thing....

    Small offices are "moving to ADSL/Cable/T1"? Only in the same sense that glaciers "move".
  • Great thats all I need...

    "Hello Is that Flazzbang Support? Yes, my fridge's firewall has crashed. I got script kiddiez ordering Sunny Delight by the bucketload. And since they cracked my microwave I can only cook on alternative thursdays"..

    Just cause you can doesn't mean you should....
  • Does this mean that they'll have to repaint the garage blue?
  • You won't hear a lot of complaints about violation of the freebsd license because this is not a violation of the license. This in no way keeps you from using Linux on your PC or me from using FreeBSD on my PC. FreeBSD development is dominated by - well the FreeBSD developers (big surprise). I'm holding my breath for that Athalon port. :) Actually a PowerPC port would be neat though. I think the point that you are confusing is that this project uses the FreeBSD code - it doesn't take it over. If IBM had used Linux for this project would your post read about how you're abandoning Linux kernel for the Hurd project?

  • Whistle Interjet I is also running FreeBSD (Score:4)

    by geirt ( 55254 ) on Tuesday February 29, 2000 @04:26AM (#1238231)
    We have a InterJet I running in our server room, and are pleased with it. It saves us from the problems with NT (our computer dep. refuses to install anything other than MS products, but they accepted the InterJet, since "you can configure it from MS Internet Explorer"). Whistle was bought by IBM some time ago, and they released the InterJet II afterwards. Our Whistle InterJet I is also running FreeBSD, this is the boot log:

    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel: Copyright (c) 1992-1998 FreeBSD Inc.
    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel: Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel: The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel:
    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel: FreeBSD 2.2.7-STABLE #0: Mon Jan 3 23:45:11 PST 2000
    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel: dianeh@built1.whistle.com:/usr/prod/ia/freebsd/sys /src/compile/IA
    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel: CPU: Cyrix 486DX4 (486-class CPU)
    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel: Origin = "CyrixInstead" DIR=0x361f Stepping=3 Revision=6
    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel: real memory = 16777216 (16384K bytes)
    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel: avail memory = 14962688 (14612K bytes)
    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel: Copyright (c) 1995-1998 Whistle Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel: Detected version 1 InterJet motherboard
    jan 19 12:17 Critical: /kernel: Probing for devices on the ISA bus:
    ...
    ...

  • Re:This is why I won't use GPL (Score:5)

    by HalJohnson ( 86701 ) on Tuesday February 29, 2000 @04:37AM (#1238233) Homepage
    Normally I wouldn't even bother replying to what is seemingly a troll. But considering that you put some time and thought into your post, I figured that I should give my opinion.

    Once again, a Large Corporation takes control of what was previously a fre project, slaps a few worthless features on it, and sells it back to us, the Open Source community for big bucks.

    First of all, I doubt anyone with enough of a clue to know the difference between OSS and regular software would even consider purchasing this particular piece of equipment. I mean realistically, a server that's adminstered via http, most likely without telnet/ssh? This is aimed squarely at people who need a workgroup server/firewall and don't have the time/ability to administer it themselves, nor the money to hire someone to administer it. A lot better than a Windows95 box with wingate, don't you think?

    Do I hear cries of outrage over IBM's abuse of the BSD and apache licenses? No. Even the BSD users, notorious for their unfounded zealotry (such as implying that FreeBSD is somehow superior to Linux), are silent. Do you enjoy being ravaged by the forces of violent captialism?

    Ok, this is the main thing I must disagree with. The ability for IBM to take the code and use is the whole purpose of this type of license. I develop software for a living. I don't have a boss, I get paid for what I can sell. Whether it's a software package, or an integrated system. I release code under the BSD license for the same reason I try to only use software under a BSD license. This is the spirit of OSS, whether some huge company comes along and decides to take and not give back is irrelevant. In every project I've implemented, I've always given full source, and I don't think theres been a single instance where my work would not have been 100% compliant with the GPL. But I still wouldn't use it. I see the GPL as a restriction, it restricts people from using my code in situations where they might really need it. And where they might not be in a position to use the GPL (it happens). It's simply the golden rule, I don't want to someday be involved in a commerical venture and have to worry about the GPL. Not every OSS developer develops as a hobby. This is why other licenses continue to exist. The GPL simply doesn't make sense sometimes.

    This isn't to say your opinion doesn't matter. It does, follow your own principles, but understand that some of us do indeed make a living via software. And just because you pay for something doesn't always make it any less free (glances at stack of FreeBSD cds that have never been used).

  • Re:have the advert flyer right here... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Of course, that 486 running SuSe would not be nearly as easy to set-up, nearly as fast, or nearly as versatile. If you know about NETGRAPH, you know I'm not in any way talking FUD about Linux.
  • Aww come on. Any company with enough resources (cash) and people can throw products into the 'small business' world and eventually get lucky ya know. And they can outprice or at the very least compete with existing products. Granted their PC's sucked ( my opinon ). They did not have to.... Again pricing is in the eye of the beholder and they got name recognition :-)

  • errr, (Score:1)

    by Tony-A ( 29931 )
    What make you think it is being sold back to the open source community? Anyone with a clue would set up their own BSD box and control and admin it themselves.
    IBM does not control BSD and is even less likely to control BSD than to control Linux.
    IBM among others supports Apache. IBM does not control Apache.
    As to BSD's technical superiority, the aproach and philosophy are different. Saying BSD is technically superior is not quite the same as saying Linux is technically inferior. Anything much better in one will soon show up in the other anyway. Open source is much stronger with BOTH!
    Why do I get the impression that I am responding to a MS troll ;-)
  • Your Constitutional rights only protect you from the government. They do not do a damn thing about protecting you from your employer.
  • Hmm.. It looks like IBM bought Whistle, the original makers of the "Whistle InterJet."

    The original InterJet ran FreeBSD, so I don't think it's a design decision on IBM's part, but an inheritance.

    One of my favorite things that would happen to these every so often, is when they would crash. The power-off command on the InterJet was soft, so it would trigger a shutdown script to be run. Well if it crashed, that wouldn't work.

    One cute thing about the InterJet is that it had a built in UPS. So when it would crash, you couldn't just unplug it. You'd have to (short of ripping the thing open and disconnecting the battery) wait for the battery to drain before you could restart after a crash.. No hard off switch anywhere on the box either.

    Apart from that small problem though, it was a cute little box that did its job.

  • This is why I WILL use BSD (Score:3)

    by not Bruce Perens ( 152525 ) on Tuesday February 29, 2000 @05:16AM (#1238251)
    So what do these announcements entail?

    BSD: Companies can use it, but you don't get any money or credit. Realistically, though, this isn't much of a loss -- if the BSDies I've run into are any indication, IBM would never consider hiring you anyway. End result: "Big corporations are taking over. They're doing exactly what the license intended them to do, but that still doesn't make me happy. Bitch bitch moan moan."

    Linux: Companies that want to make extensive modifications don't want the GPL to show their secrets to the world. So they use the hated BSD or the even more irrationally hated closed source solution. End result: "Big corporations don't care about Linux. They don't understand how superior we are. Bitch bitch moan moan."

    The point: The point of open source software is to improve the world, not to turn everyone into little soldiers for your personal OS/license jihad. You should be celebrating the fact that IBM, with its army of programmers and massive code base, has been impressed with open source software.
  • I imagine you could just telnet/ssh in via ethernet, and get a command-line that way.
  • Stories such as this are notable to those with an interest in BSD. If you would rather not see stories related to BSD, you can specify as much in your preferences.
  • Errrm, FreeBSD runs on Athlons. What do you think ftp.freesoftware.com (the new ftp.FreeBSD.org machine) is?

  • Re:have the advert flyer right here... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    yeah, and Whistle the people who made the box and got bought by IBM made the netgraph code and checked it in to the FreeBSD code base.
  • One day I dream of having the bandwidth to administer and play with my own server, and I've done a lot of wishful price checking/planning. I don't know about InterJet, but Cobalt's similar box runs about $1500. Last I checked you can get an entry level Sun Solaris machine for that. I'd think the latter would be a little more robust and versatile. Maybe I'm missing the point of "turnkey" setup. I noticed that the IBM box does not allow "custom cgi's"...well IMHO that seriously limits what it can be used with. Anyone played with these? What happens if you want to say upgrade Perl or Python etc? Of course with minimal skills, even I can do it, someone can setup a simple pc with linux and apache to do more than these will, and with easier installers and tools like RH 6.1, Mandrake, etc I think that it would be a little better. If someone wanted to emulate these products it doesn't look to be that hard...most of the web interface is just some shell scripting in your choice of scripting languages. Just thought I'd add my 2 cents to the discussion. Live long and prosper....

  • Re:have the advert flyer right here... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That's a good thing for everyone involved (^_^)
  • >BSD: Companies can use it, but you don't get any money or
    >credit. Realistically, though, this isn't much of a loss -- if the
    >BSDies I've run into are any indication, IBM would never consider
    >hiring you anyway. End result: "Big corporations are taking
    >over. They're doing exactly what the license intended them to do, but
    >that still doesn't make me happy. Bitch bitch moan moan."

    FWIW, IBM hired (through acquisition of Whistle) whole boatload of BSDies. And you won't find a lot of BSDies complaining, because Whistle has contributed a lot back to the community, and IBM (through Whistle) is, in fact, doing exactly the types of things the BSDL is supposed to allow. If BSDies actually wanted a restrictive license like the GPL, they'd use it.
  • Not trying to be pedantic, but the K6 has got an FPU (worse than the PentiumII but roughly on par with the Pentium and certainly better than the Cyrix/IBM model of similar clock-frequencies). What it doesn't have is MMX/3DNow/SSE stuff, which is useless on almost any kind of server anyway.
  • If someone wanted to emulate these products it doesn't look to be that hard...most of the web interface is just some shell scripting in your choice of scripting languages.

    So if this is so easy, has anybody done it? I've been looking for an open-source administrative tool like Cobalt's for a while now, with no success.

    Any ideas? Or is this about to become my new project, to learn all about web scripting?

    [Change the temperature to hot in my email address...]

  • While working at UUNet (yeah, i know...) i had training in these things, before IBM bought Whistle. They are NEAT little boxes for people you wouldn't want to have messing around with servers...

    The best thing about them, from the ISP perspective, is that they can be configured through a dial-up; ie, a UUNet customer with an InterJet dials into a pop, puts a code in the box, and it downloads its new configuration. Pretty sweet.

    From a consumer perspective, someone with a whistle is more likely to get help from isp tech support when they have a problem, than if they're running some homebrew.

    I found that they are especially handy with reseller customers, who have a contractor come in to set them up and leave them running. A small office underbudgeting it's IT needs can get this product, complete with web hosting and mail, without hiring a fulltime guru (NT), or hunting down an intermittant Linux guy, for a comparable price to routers usually available from ISPs.

    While running a porn site off one isn't a good bet, running internet/intranet and mail for a modest office (upto ~100 wkstns) and a modest connection (upto T1) is going to suit most business needs without a huge outlay of cash and time. (remember, these people are supposed to be working, which doesn't always include hours surfing the net)

    --mandi

    __________
    my $.02 presents no capitol gains tax risk

  • What IBM does _best_, is kill a good idea :0).
  • Then buy a OneGate [freegate.com] box from FreeGate (well, now Tut, but the web site still says FreeGate). It, too, uses FreeBSD, comes in a sleek black 1u package and plugs into the usual suspects of WAN connections. I've used them as corporate web boxes, firewalls, routers, sra & b2b vpn's, mail relays and DNS hosts. The 150 makes a great drop-in home office system. I describe them as putting average sys admins out of work (or at least on to more interesting projects). <disclaimer>I am a former employee and a current stockholder.</disclaimer>
  • The big deal is that the Interjet has been around for *SO* long, and was a really established product before IBM bought Whistle. That thing has been around since 1996 or so, can't say the same thing for the Cobalt boxes.
  • hence the smile. The original poster said something about a 'port' to Athalon I think
  • Thanks! I am going to look into it today. This may be good for our first office.
  • whistle interjets have used freebsd for as long as i can remember. it just so happens that they have since been bought by IBM. then the question becomes: why mess with something that works?

  • IBM is filling a gap in the industry. Let's face it 99% of small businesses don't have tech savvy people working for them like the readership of /.

    It does for $99 a month what it would cost a small business $5000 to hire one of us to set this up and manage the Linux install. Just think of it this way. More and more small companies that put one of these on their winblows network we get more %'s in the overall bucket of apache on the web on FreeBSD. So when allot of small business install these, big business will notice that apache and FreeBSD are gaining in the metrics, then FreeBSD MIGHT start to be looked at by these large companies as a relative option to other OS's based in Redmond.

  • The original Whistle devices had the major drawback that you could not add additional software to the system. Does anyone know if this changed?
  • You can set the IP address using the buttons and LCD panel on the front of the Whistle. This means that you can take a laptop, give it a nonroutable IP (e.g. 192.168.1.2), assign the Whistle an IP of 192.168.1.1, then fire up your laptop's browser and administer away! (Just be sure you use a crossover if you're connecting the laptop directly to the Whistle.)
  • To quote from their page [32.97.242.17]:
    Client computers: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT or Macintosh OS 7.0 or later

    I guess they're happy to make money off the opensource community's back, but not to support us. :-/ (And yes, I relize one can probably access this box using Samba/smbfs. It's just the principal of the thing.)

  • Tread VERY carefully with this thing! (Score:3)

    by Oddball ( 72298 ) on Tuesday February 29, 2000 @09:45AM (#1238288) Homepage
    I was using an Interjet I for almost two years. It was nothing but headaches.
    If you only use ISDN or periodic dialup, it's fine. If you need nothing but the most rudimentary web serving and mail hosting (I never tested it for relaying. If it is a relay, there's no way to fix it), it' great. If you actually /use/ these services, it's a peice of junk!
    There is NO access to anything on the device besides it's web interface. If you're thinking "Well, LinuxConf makes it work..." just stop. This is nowhere near that nice. Instead, it's pretty, but gives you next to no functionality. We had issues about wanting to modify the firewall's activity (opening certain ports, special routing, etc). It was an absolute no-go. Only recently did they add the ability to modify the NAT (static translations and such).
    And the it's so-called fast serial interface. God, don't remind me. We used an external CSU/DSU (of course, only a fast-serial port on this thing) hooked up to a full-burst T1. Once we hit about 1.2 mb/s, it would just turn off the serial port, and completly forget about it. We had to power-cycle the CSU/DSU atleast once a day to fix it. It had worse uptime than any of the NT (or 95...) boxes in the building. No, there was no problem with the line. We finally got a Cisco in December, and it hasn't had any trouble at all. We even had to show Whistle how we set up our network. They didn't even know that what we did was possible (nothing special. an NT acting as a bridge on the InterJet's "internal interface" routing all the office traffic to it, since our network was 100baseTX only, and the interjet is only 10baseT).

    So, if you're just starting, and you just need something that works (sorta..), NOW, it's fine. So if you're a windows-minded shop (it works, mostly, and don't need to over-customize), it's just right. Once you try to use it to it's claims, it fails miserably.

    Sorry about the high rant value, but this thing gave me nightmares for months. Honestly, if you plan on really using the features that this thing claims to have, save yourself alot of time and just get a linux box (mail/web) and a good router. Might cost you an extra 2k, maybe, but will save you hours and hours of maintenance time.
  • I have no experience with cobalt machines, so I don't know what all the features are that you need. But have you taken a look at LinuxConf? (Freshmeat it) I use it to maintain a mailserver (I'm not in the office, so I had to use a friendly interface for people to add new users/accounts and such), and it does the job quite nicely. It can administer an entire machine. So unless you're doing something very odd, it should work fine. My only problem is that I had to rehack their sendmail creation scripts, but it was a fairly odd network setup, anyway.
  • is a CHEAP routing box that will hook up to a DSL or cable and have work without me messing with it. I really don't enjoy treaking my Linux box by edinig ASCII conf files and then have to reboot all the Windows machines to change the network settings. Oh yeah, if I pay for something I intend to own it, not pay to borrow it from IBM.
  • Basically, you're screwed. There's no access to the box other than the web interface. No CLI, no X, nothing. Whistle updates the boot images from time to time, but that's usually just bug fixes. I don't know if the thing even supports CGI's. If it does, it definately would not by Python. Perl, maybe.
    This thing is made for static pages. Last I remember (granted, I stayed away from the web hosting nonsense on the thing as much as possible), there wasn't even a way to set any sort of decent permissions on a directory, or any sort of real administration at all.
  • Working that hard on a setup like that just isn't right.

    Trekking to it? I've administered a linux box and a router for 6 months without seeing them. That includes software updates, major configuration changes, and reboots. There's telnet, ya know. Sure, the stock windows client sucks, but there are hundreds of better ones availible for free out there.
    Cheap? I could setup a linux router for $300 or so.
    If editing a text file is painfull for you, then you shouldn't be using linux at all... If you really want things to run well, you have to do it yourself. It's that way everywhere. Atleast, it used to be that way /everywhere/ (including the non-electronic world here). In computers, atleast, a person can almost always do a better job than a utility (I'm talking about administration. I know a compiler can make better machine code than I can. =)
    Reboot windows clients? Dude. DHCP. run dhcpd on the linux box. If you need to change settings (should never happen, really. set it up how it needs to be and leave it), SIGHUP the dhcpd process, open up "winipcfg" on all the clients, and click "release" then "renew". viola. Everything fixed.

    I'm sorry, but you're not using your tools to their full capability.
  • You have obviously never read the Constitution.
  • I used one of these at a small office before I knew a single word of UNIX. It was very easy to install and configure. We did have some connectivity problems that were solved 2 years ago with a patch.

    As far as single point of failure, for a small non-tech office we had good tech support from the ISP who were a partner with whistle. Although there were connectivity probs mentioned above we never had email problems with it. We didn't have any tech resources or UNIX savvy people to troubleshot multiple firewalls, proxies, mailservers etc. The dollars lost in minor connectivity problems were more than outweighed by the savings over multiple boxen and a $50k+ sysadmin salary ;)

    Before the II came out I did usability testing for interjet and thought that it was even better. I was disappointed by IBMs decision to bundle it with services since we already have DSL. Before we went with DSL I upgraded the SW for VPN and had been playing with PPTP and such....

    This is not the same as having a Linux or BSD box that is fully accessible, but it can be administered by non-techs and certainly beats NT ProxyServer and Exchange! Because we couldn't upgrade the Interjet 1 when we got DSL, it now serves as DNS/mail and internal docs and web. We love it!! too bad we can't put an extra NIC into it for internal firewall.
  • According to the login message:

    Welcome to ftp.freesoftware.com - home FTP site for Walnut Creek CDROM.
    There are currently 203 users out of 5000 possible.

    Most of the files in this area are also available on CDROM. You can send
    email to info@wccdrom.com for more information or to order, or visit our Web
    site at http://www.wccdrom.com. For tech support about our products, please
    email support@wccdrom.com. You may also call our toll-free number:
    1-800-786-9907 or +1-925-674-0783. Please keep in mind that we only offer
    technical support for our CDROM products and not for the files on our
    FTP server.

    This server is a Xeon/550 with 4GB of memory & 400GB of RAID 5 storage.
    The operating system is FreeBSD. Should you wish to get your own copy of
    FreeBSD, see the pub/FreeBSD directory or visit http://www.freebsd.org
    for more information. FreeBSD on CDROM can be ordered using the WEB at
    http://www.wccdrom.com/titles/freebsd/freebsd.ph tml or by sending email
    to orders@wccdrom.com.

    Looks to me as if this isn't a "new" machine, but rather a new name...
  • When I entered that URL in my Netscape (4.72) broswer, it resolved to this mess:
    http://32.97.169.81/@^@l$C5g$3C$C4Go{m$80$BA$_$F B$0C34770000000000056622315/wc121
    But the page came up, along with an ever-lovin' popup banner too!
    Win98se, Netscape, 312k SDSL, uh, whatever else...

  • You mean like embedded NT?

    Hell, even Windows CE (Based on NT) has a webserver :P and better browser than Linux has.
  • Whoops, that should have read:

    You mean like embedded NT [microsoft.com]?
  • Cisco has used a lot of different CPUs in their boxes. The older ones are not exactly blindingly fast.

    7[67]x series - i386@25MHz
    100x series - 68360@? (embedded Moto w/68020 core)
    160x series - 68360@33MHz
    25xx series - 68030@20MHz

    A Cisco 1601 is in other words not exactly what you want if you require IPSec and NAT over a T1.

    The newer low-end routers are better, though:

    80x series - MPC850@33MHz (embedded PPC)
    17xx series - MPC860@?
    26xx series - MPC860@40/50MHz

    A "wimpy pentium" does not really have anything to be ashamed of compared to what is inside lower-end access routers.
  • Try Freesco [freesco.org]. This will give you a single floppy linux with a web gui, telnet, passive DNS (v4), and DHCP capabilities. None of these are very flexible, especially the routing side - get LRP [linuxrouter.org] if you want flexibility.

    Mine is running on a 486, no probs. Our LRPs at work run P100 full 100mbps, so I assume a freesco on a P100 will be similar.

    Scott

  • First, I doubt the framers were thinking much about the constitution 274 years ago, as they'd be toddlers, if yet born. >>Instead of treating the Constitution as a fundemental set of rights, we should start to look at it more like a "wish list" or "position statement" - not to be followed to the letter, but judged more on a case-by-case basis as is done in British common law. And with that statement, I must repectfully disagree. I don't think for a minute the framers wished that to be the case. I feel the intent was a standard to be equally applied to all with equal weight irregardless of any case basis. They wisely left the constitution the ability to change, yet not so easily to be done on a whim. While the legal system is widely based on British common law, I don't feel for a minute they wished constitutional questions to be resolved using that system. Had they done so, they would have simply followed the British and not written the thing in the first place.
  • just wondering... sometimes things like this leave out the things we take for granted, like telnet, for the sake of "added security"
    1. The Cobalt Qube2 starts at an MSRP of $995 and can be found for well under $900 [buy.com]
    2. The Qube2 will allow you to do alot more development than the Interjet ...
    3. Sure, the Sun server is probably more reliable and faster, but show me where you can find a sun server for that $1500 that includes all the necessary services and the web-GUI
    4. don't need the GUI? Able to make your own? Don't buy a Qube2 or an Interjet ... you're not their intended market
    5. Sorry to sound gritchy ... been a long day and have a hangover :)
  • I don't know exactly what features you're looking for, but have you checked out www.dubbele.com [dubbele.com]?
  • The article seems to mention FreeBSD rather than Linux....
  • Hrm, just curios, I don't know much about the Newton (except that it was supposed to be really good "ahead of it's time" and that apple made it and then disolved it).

    Did newton have sound, ODBC (or any kind of advanced data access), infrared, 16bit sound, 16bit colour, 32MB memory, Macromedia Flash support, full Java 1.1 support (not that silly picoJava stuff)?
    Windows CE has a heck of a lot stuff more than the newton - but then it depends on what you want out of a handheld i guess. I like toys :)~~, if i wanted something to write notes on, i'd get a (paper) notebook.
  • No, <em>you</em> just got <em>yourself</em> fired.
    Nothing personal, but:

    1. You were reading slashdot at work (which is not
    inherently wrong, but it was entirely your choice
    to do so at work).

    2. There is no guarantee anywhere on slashdot
    that any of the links posted by readers are of an
    "appropriate" nature by any definition.

    That said, since you say in one of your responses
    that you are glad to be out of this job, then
    congratulations. But get off unemployment!
    That's for people who really can't get work (I
    assume you are an overpayed tech industry worker
    like the rest of us and can find work rather
    easily; apologies if I am wrong). Best of luck
    to you.

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