Davrom Consulting Pty Ltd Established Since 2001 PO Box 1644, Sunnybank Hills, Qld, 4109 ABN: 81 096 990 804 Site Time: 19 April 2024 - 00:13

Wow! Many thanks to all those who sent best wishes and encouragement in response to the previous (first) newsletter. It is excellent to see so many people in the industry commited to the future of UNIX.

Our 'go-live' day looms closer, the 16th of July, even though DAVROM CONSULTING has been running since the 1st June. (If you need help now and can wait till after hours, normal daytime rates apply until July 16th.)

As always, after being pumped up at the latest Caldera/SCO seminar, I have included here a few key points that may be of interest to some.

Caldera offer five main products that were highlighted at the seminar - each having a specific role in a LAN or WAN. Caldera offer a completely tested and static release of Linux utilities putting an end to needing to surf the web for assistance with software modules and it removes the need to being familiar with software compiling to get software to run - both of these issues are a common problem with the free versions of Linux out there. Caldera mean business and offer a commited support avenue for customers.

The first main product is OpenLinux Server which fits into the Internet/intranet web (Apache) and network space delivering features such as a fully "ready out of the box" 'secure' web server, file and print server for Microsoft LANs (Samba) and e-mail server (Sendmail). Designed with feature rich utilities such as Webmin, Caldera's product offers a complete business based server that is easy to configure and administer.

The second product is OpenLinux Workstation which is ideal for software developers, web developers or Linux desktop users offering fully functioning software such as gcc, g++, Java (JSP & EJB), PHP, Perl, Gimp, Quanta and many more.

Built on the Linux 2.4 kernel it offers the developer or MS Windows alternative user applications such as Netscape 4.77, Kmail and all KDE utilities, Java JDK 1.3, Realplayer 8.0, Adobe Acrobat Reader and heaps more.

Caldera OpenServer is what we currently know as SCO OpenServer and is continuing a life time on the 32bit hardware platform - which means it will be around for a while yet. This was especially great to see this continued support for what would be the most widely installed Intel commercial UNIX throughout the world - sounds biased don't I. Go OpenServer....

Caldera Open UNIX 8 is what we previously know as SCO Unixware7 and continues to offer the mid to high end install base a robust UNIX for mission critical business requirements - continuing down the path of Unixware7, this is the 64bit capable platform that competes directly with the RISC based UNIX platforms. One exceptional feature is its ability to run Linux binaries directly owing to its new LKP (Linux Kernel Personality) design - this is nothing like 'lxrun' for OpenServer, it does not require you to run in any type of 'emulation' mode.

Caldera Volution is a great administrator tool that allows web based administration of Linux (all Linux versions), OpenServer and Open UNIX 8 servers. Administrators can view server performance, remotely administer Linux software (RPM) and keeps hardware/software configuration information of each server. It operates as a Secure Web-based management tool and therefore can access servers internally and on the Internet.

I have basically covered most of the product offerings but one that caught my attention was a revitalised product, ReliantHA, has now been re-introduced to offer customers the maximum uptime with complete system failover solutions. NCS is not something that will be continued and ReliantHA is the favoured solution in the redundant server arena.

If you have any questions concerning the seminar information please feel free to contact me to discuss your UNIX options.

I missed my Korn Shell under Linux and even downloaded a GNU version to give me the env I love - but I have found 'bash' can behave, at least at the command line, just like my beloved Korn Shell.