[geeks] Sun Fire V120 Server -vs- Apple Xserve

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Friday, June 21, 2002 at 18:15:41 (-0400), alex j avriette wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] Sun Fire V120 Server -vs- Apple Xserve
>
> darwin ne osx. first and foremost. i will agree that darwin is good at 
> smp.

despite all the bloody dynamic linking from hell!  ;-)

> the reason it is not useful as a server platform is its extreme 
> lack of any remote control abilities.

What are you talking about?  It's effectively a unix box at the command line!

(well there's netinfo, which is new, but it's just a direct follow-on to
NIS, done by the very same designer, and finally much better it seems....)

> want to add a user at the command 
> line? try this:
> 
> http://www.afp548.com/Questions/20020306.html

Hmmm.... that's about an opposite problem -- using the GUI gets
extraneous stuff created for things like the anon-FTP user.....

Netinfo has commands for adding users at the command-line.....


> how about add a machine to your hostfile? or changing your nameserver? 
> or what about configuring mountpoints and sharepoints? osx is just 
> pathetic in these endeavours. it expects tool to be sitting there 
> clicking away at its (purdy) crufty little interface. that, man, just 
> makes my ass twitch in a not so good way. that having been said, if you 
> have a paid monkey in your datacenter to "click the lock to make 
> changes," i'm sure its a fine server os.

I don't know what documentation you've been reading, but whatever it is
has mislead you.  Everything we've needed to do has been trivial at the
command-line from SSH.  I've never used any GUI for doing sys-admin
stuff on OS X.


> i could be snide and say things like "well you clearly arent doing 
> anything serious or critical with it," but the irony of two accused 
> trolls trolling eachother kind of makes me think it would be a bad idea.

and it would be hillarious considering what we are doing is happily
serving many gigabytes of web stuff out per day.....  :-)


> > However we really don't like their "flavour" of apache -- but use it
> > anyway because in a couple of instances the ready-integrated features
> > make things simpler (and of course upgrades are simpler that way too).
> 
> my beef isnt with their version of apache (the current version anyways, 
> the first version they distributed literally had GET removed from the 
> source, which sucked ass), but rather their configs. the configs are 
> okay until you attempt to use multiple features in which case they are 
> mutually incompatible.

Yup, that could be a real problem -- we just haven't tripped too hard
over it yet....


> i dislike that they have not produced a "security 
> update" for the OS based on the apache DOS hole recently spotted (and in 
> fact remote www exploit in some OS's).

Oh, come on now!  It's only been a few days....  :-)


-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
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