Im looking to upgrade my current server situation, and looking around, Ive stumbled accross the Cobalt RaQ...

The 550's look pretty nice, but I am curious about the OS that they run. From what I have seen, they run a proprietary SUN os, is that correct? Ive seen some hints at it being linux... I want to know if it is possible to set the RaQ up using Debian? As Debian is my linux distro of choice, and its what I am familiar with. Or is the RaQ OS pretty schnazzy and worth the crossover?

I do webhosting/virtual hosting, with email/dns/etc servers also running on the same box. The system will be co-located, this is why I am thinking the RaQ would be nice. HOWEVER, I have created my own Administration system to manage my server and manage my accounts/sites, and I would like to keep it.

~Amish

i thought it was a red hat distro with the new kernel.

Red Hat? Ish... I heard they have a management system built into the OS that allows you to manage virtual hosts too?

http://www.sun.com/hardware/serverappliances/


http://www.sun.com/hardware/serverappliances/raq550/demo.html

you really need to use the cobalt os and cobalt control panel with a cobalt - i dont think you could get a different os installed and if you dont use the cobalt interface you are really asking for a nightmare...

The 550 runs indeed on RedHat but has the new glib inside. The Raq 3 and 4 run the old glib this is very sh!t indeed. You can install webadmin on port 10000 so you can manage your server with that tool. I run it on my Qube 3 it works fine over here,

For all people out there that uses Qube3, you can install the Raq 4 software on the Qube 3 but you must deactivate ASP becuase it takes all processing power.

The distro is RH. I wouldn't attempt to install any other software on a Cobalt, and my question would be why would you want to do it anyway?

Why spend the extra money for a Cobalt machine if you aren't going to use their software?? If you really want a different OS, you can purchase a much more powerful system for the same price of a Cobalt...

--john
http://www.value-site.com

Cobalt Linux is based on various versions of Red Hat Linux. RaQ 3/4/XTR and Qube 3 are based on RH 6.2. RaQ 550 is based on RH 7.1. All parts are "open" IAW the GPL, and all RPMS and SRPMS are available at the Sun FTP server ftp://ftp.cobalt.sun.com/

If you want to use your own control panel, etc, I'd recommend a generic server instead of an appliance. Things are set up differently enough on the Cobalts that "manual" administration requires some workarounds, etc.