Koozali.org: home of the SME Server

Webmin on e-smith?

Peter

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #15 on: October 15, 2003, 03:22:58 AM »
What and absolutely splendid ambassador you make for your country, an inspiration to the rest of us mere mortals. Jolly good show! Yes! Jolly good show.

Andy MacDonald

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #16 on: October 15, 2003, 07:05:00 AM »
Dear Mr Morrel,

Out of a total of 1288 words so far in this thread, 359 of them are dedicated to expounding your achievements. Just on 27.9 percent.
351 are dedicated to pointing out the downfalls of e-smith.  Just on 27.2 percent.
That is approximately 55.1 percent of your total contribution to the e-smith forums.
The rest is your defence of yourself and other sentences unable to be broadly categorised
Having read these forum posts reasonably regularly for the last three years, you are the first person I have found who needs to tell us what he has done previously and promote your ability, extoll how bad e-smith is and how much better it could be, yet, I fail to find ANY contributions to e-smith  in any form from you.  No .rpms or how-tos.
Not one contributor has ever done this to my knowledge.
The only references about you on the e-smith.org forums are not exactly complementary.

Why is it that you find the need to promote yourself and your accomplishments?
Previous experience with others having a similar nature have shown them to feel unappreciated. They try to make up for something missing.
This of course doesn't mean you have similar motivation.
The people that I respect in this forum contribute, or answer questions.

I have been informed of your general reputation long before this time. Trolling, maybe, but I just had to find out if you would rise to the bait.
Does anyone think that it has happened?

Are you really like I've been told?  Apparently so. My peers tell me that so far, you've not actually threatened to sue me, or physically attack me, so I'm not doing so well.
I've got time to see what happens though.

I find your references to my abuse, crass punctuation, language and utter BS references rather ironic, coming from someone who makes up words like "non sensical" and can't use question marks or commas correctly. I'll save you further embarrassment on that front by not looking any deeper.

All I have done is to report back to you largely what has been told to me by other people.  Your replies suggest a lack of comprehension of my post. I haven't attacked you at all.
I have associates who don't like Smoothwall because of your association with the project. I myself do not use it. I'm quite happy with my e-smith server being PIXed off from the majority of the Internet.

As for me "hiding behind a hotmail address", I fail to see how it protects me from anything except spam. Hotmail is a throwaway address. I use it for filter practice.
I'll make a special filter for mail from you if you'd care to send me anything to that address.

As for having balls, because you're in another country I'll not extend to you my normal practice in these matters. When I next go to England, I will knock on your door, identify myself, remind you of this conversation and offer you the opportunity of a beer or alternatives. The choice of which will be up to you.

Regards,
Andy MacDonald

Andy MacDonald

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #17 on: October 15, 2003, 12:27:08 PM »
P.S
Spelt your name wrong.
Sorry about that.

Peter

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #18 on: October 15, 2003, 01:20:36 PM »
Right then Girls, can we get back to the subject now please?



ta,

Peter.

Dick Morrell

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #19 on: October 15, 2003, 02:13:39 PM »
Troll lol.

So were you going to answer my question about the practicalities of a better cgi based management system or maybe why you think Webmin (ver 1.110) running in a modified form on a ESmith 6.0beta system identified for install purposes as RH7.1 is dangerous or unrequited ?

I thought that was the topic.

Or carry on trolling you schmuck.

Looney Tunes

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #20 on: October 15, 2003, 03:59:58 PM »
Simply amazing. If only all this energy had be expended into programming.

Dick Morrell

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #21 on: October 15, 2003, 04:08:34 PM »
My thoughts exactly. I've spent last 4 hrs looking at how best to use new Samba libraries and some cool perl tools to increase the domain management and roaming profiles in a modified interface I can release as a mod. Better spent time than Mr Macdonald has just shown. Hidden agenda and boy what a dickhead.

s lord

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #22 on: October 15, 2003, 07:57:10 PM »
Eeeek!
I really hate to drag this thread to life, but its only my 2nd post I I wouldn't want anyone to think I wasn't searching first!!!

So:  
Regardless of many other 'technical' aspects disussed so far!  
Has ANYONE got the necassary scripts 4 Webmin!

Personally I use UNIX/Linux because of the standards.  This makes the custom-script thing a bit of a pain and unfriendly.  (IMHO)

However, I see the point of how the scripts work.  
I also find lots of missing things from the web interface and no easy way to fix it remotely.  

E-Smith does a lot of what I want.  It can be modified to achive a bit more but I also have to admin lots of other things!  All of these which run on linux/linux/freebsd/...  can be used with common interfaces.  This means the time I invest on configuring something under something like WebMin is time well invested.  In that WebMin has become a defacto standard for me.  

If Debian want to move some of the /etc files into one directory and RH another I don't care because the distto specific WebMin will take care.  

I particularly don't like using distro specific tools because when they go wrong you are in a bit of a black hole.  I'd quote an example from Mandrake and shorewall but I fear that may dig up some negative aspects from the thread so I'll leave it at that :D

However, for me it would be a great bonus to have webmin on my SME server.  It would be even better if it told you which files were being modified and services restarted :D

Michiel

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #23 on: October 15, 2003, 09:27:58 PM »
Webmin and SME are mutually exclusive. Webmin will modify the various config files directly, which in turn will be overwritten by the SME templating system.

Webmin is a great tool if you want to customize your server and you know what you're doing. The large number of options can be confusing and you still need to configure all services (smaba, apache, etc)  from the ground up.

SME is a pre-configured server that does 80% of everything a small company will ever need. It offers rapid deployment, simple management, but also limited functionality. Webmin is exactly the oposite and it really depends on what your needs are.

Scott Smith

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #24 on: October 15, 2003, 09:35:30 PM »
> Webmin and SME are mutually exclusive. Webmin will modify the various
> config files directly, which in turn will be overwritten by the SME templating
> system.

This is only partially true and is misleading. Webmin and SME are only mutually exclusive for managing those things where the config files are common. For example, SME manages the Samba smb.conf file, so you should not use Webmin to manage Samba. You CAN, however, use Webmin (or any other tool for that matter) to manage anything that is not under the control of SME, and in the Unix/Linux realm that is a great number of things.

Michiel

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #25 on: October 15, 2003, 10:35:10 PM »
> This is only partially true and is misleading. Webmin and SME
> are only mutually exclusive for managing those things where
> the config files are common.

Indeed. You should NOT use webmin on SME for:
- samba
- adding/deleting users
- apache
- imap
- qmail
- ftp
- ssh
- named
- dhcp
- quota
- fetchmail
- ldap
- mysql
- iptables
- pptp
- ipsec
- squid
and some more. So although you're correct in stating that there are a few applications you can safely manage with webmin, for all practical purposes webmin is mutually exclusive with SME.

Dick Morrell

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #26 on: October 15, 2003, 11:28:02 PM »
So that begs the question when does SME going to add better functionality in its UI for:

DHCP
Samba
Apache
Log management and rotation
LDAP management
MySQL basic table and permission mgt
QMail (e.g add in better queue visibility, banned addresses etc)
IPSec (adding in x509 functionality and basic CA creation status)
More control over SSH1/2 management and certificate creation
Easier template management (e.g MOTD and banner management)

All of this stuff is IN basic SME so what about Mitel releasing a CHARGEABLE module for SME that does all this cool stuff with security updates. Bugger me its not like no-one would buy it. It would dramatically be a winner and Mitel would clean up. As its a service you can charge for it and if its a sensible price (sub $100 a year per box) Mitel would really really have some cool income.

Right now people put Webmin on ESmith because a lot of users have no experience of drowning at the command line in a bash shell. If people want something and there is a revenue opportunity and you don't deliver then thats an easy revenue opp missed.

Or people will go and use something like: http://www.smeworkplace.co.uk - SMEWorkplace server (written by monkeys and the update and install pricing is stupid), or ClarkConnect server which I also use here in place of some SME servers on site because it handles: SpamAssassin, Apache hosting, better mail queue and multiple domain management as well as better security features and awareness than SME.

All this stuff is so easy its just lack of direction and focus that lets it down - badly.

Scott Smith

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #27 on: October 16, 2003, 12:05:49 AM »
Can't speak for Mitel, but I suspect the answer is never or at least not soon. Unless I miss my guess, the revenue stream from SME Server is not significant and Mitel's interest in the product is very much for internal reasons.

Interpretation: Those who would like to see an improved SME need to do one of two things. Either fork the project and do what you think needs to be done, or create an add-on package that is a monolithic install to create the Super SME Server. Personally, I'd prefer the former method, simply because the upgrade path from one version of SME to the next has proven difficult.

Scott Smith

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #28 on: October 16, 2003, 12:10:02 AM »
I probably should clarify that it is the upgrade path for contribs from one version to the next has been difficult. Upgrading a stock SME is fairly simple. Upgrading with a plethora of contribs and local mods in place is not so simple. So, creating a Super SME add-on would likely be a super headache if/when the next SME release shows up.

Dick Morrell

Re: Webmin on e-smith?
« Reply #29 on: October 16, 2003, 12:57:50 AM »
A fork is pointless. As are third party patches, third party patches break the whole upgrade system. The blade system in 5.x was functional except flawed and potentially insecure to boot but I hope whatever replaces it in 6.0 is better.

If Mitel don't realise that there is revenue attached to adding BASIC web cgi functionality to such easy stuff as qmail options, samba options, opening shells to non root users, logging, printer options and the easy and simple addition of syslogging, squid black/white list upgrades, etc then its pure simply bloodymindedness and to be frank laziness.

It is all IN there already - its just the chocolate wrapper holding the goodies that needs a mod, however any third party mod would / could break patching and would render an operational server insecure or worse still dead.

I stopped people doing 3rd party updates for SW by getting DanG to write in checksum systems to only allow our own updates, this followed into Corp and IPCop which still use it. However the fact that you can't do basic functionality with ESmith is its achilles heel and its death nail. However if someone engaged brain and spent two afternoons doing this stuff they'd have a killer server and we wouldn't have just wasted two days having discussions about it.

Again I repeat the question: If it took 2 yrs to add the port forwarding function to the menu and the menu'ing system is still as basic and outdated as it was with 5.x why do Mitel employ Charlie and Dan ? Seems money for old rope. I wouldn't employ developers who move slower than the Titanic. What do I know I only delivered 41 products in the time its taken Mitel to do 2 releases and make a fraction of the revenue. OpenSource can be powerful but... not like this.

If Mitel don't do it - I'll do it. I'd rather they did as I was working on an Exchange replacement, if it doesn't happen and someone can prove demand to me I'll fund a replacement. I made the same threat to Watchguard in the US pre delivering SmoothWall. Now millions of people didnt buy Watchguard.

What is so hard ???? This is childs play.

Dick