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KEYWORDS=apache, fasttrack, officemail, progress, database, mfgpro, DAVROM CONSULTING Newsletter - Issue # 21 - Dated: Thu Nov 13 15:09:57 EST 2003




From the desk of David Clark

Don't be alarmed, the newsletter lives. Like I have said, I just don't
want to send out a newsletter for the sake of it - I want it to be
informative for you.

Support trenches in the last two months: Upgrades of SCO servers to
5.0.6 and 5.0.7; setting up e-mail systems at various sites on SCO and
Linux; Samba on UNIX/Linux replacing MS servers; some RAID systems have
decided to have a drive or two die; install SCO 5.0.5 on newer hardware
(drivers are fun)... and the beat goes on.

I would like to thank the reader for their time in reading this newsletter.

David.M.Clark


UNIX Quote

UNIX/Linux e-mail - It's virus free.


SCO Unixware Office Mail Server

We recently ran up a server in-house to check out SCO Office Mail Server
2.0 which runs on SCO Unixware 7.1.3. As you may recall from previous
newsletters we have talked about this fully integrated e-mail server
solution that allows a wide range of e-mail clients to connect to it such
as Netscape Messenger, Kmail, MS Outlook Express and MS Outlook. SCO Office
Mail Server also allows you to install and run MS Outlook connector clients
which provide full calendar, contacts, journal, notes and task sharing
as you would find with a MS Exchange server.

The product box ships with a single user version of SCO Unixware 7.1.3,
the Unixware Linux Kernel Personality, SCO Office Mail Server, 10
mailboxes and 10 MS Outlook connector licences.

Installation is pretty simple and for those familiar with
Unixware/OpenServer installation, it really is so easy. The next and
perhaps the most impressive part for me was the Linux Kernel
Personality. This is the mechanism that allows Linux apps to run on
Unixware as if they were on a native Linux server. To invoke the Linux
Kernel Personality you type "linux" at the command line and then
you complete the installation of the SCO Office Mail Server part within
this environment.

Setting up users and e-mail domains is a snap as this is all done
through a web browser interface - simply point your browser at the
server and you can configure away - you are up in minutes after the
installation is complete.

Users can also browse the e-mail server and login via the web interface
to set their holiday/away messages or modify their details - of course
you can restrict this.

SCO Office Mail Server also comes bundled with the IMP web based
e-mail reader which allows users to read their e-mail on the server via
their web browser. This is useful for reading e-mail from remote
locations outside the office via the Internet or PPP dialin.

Some more tech based info:

- SCO Office Mail Server uses PostFix as its MTA (Mail Transfer Agent).

- The users are not actually setup as UNIX or Linux login accounts, they
are setup under the Mail system and have individual directories under
the /var/spool/imap/user directory.

- The mail folders themselves are in the form of subdirectories for
example my personal folder is actually a directory called:
/var/spool/imap/user/david/personal. Inside this directory are the
individual e-mail message files as it uses cyrus format for message file
storing.

All in all an impressive product which is guaranteed to give rival
e-mail servers a run for their money with the 10-user base pack (as above)
retailing at around $1846 AUD.

For more information on this product go to:

www.sco.com/products/SCOoffice/mail/


DAVROM connecting you to the Internet

Previously DAVROM has only been able to offer the technical skills
and the devices to connect customers to the Internet (SnapGear,
ePipe, ADSL modems).

DAVROM has recently entered into an a agreement with Pacific Internet
as an official Pacific Internet Partner and can now offer customers a
complete range of Internet connectivity options for ADSL and other types
of connections.

How it works? You simply select the type of connection you require
(ADSL, ISDN, modem dialup), we then sell you the associated products to
facilitate the connection and we will handle the sign up and connection
for you. This way we take the leg work out of getting you connected the
the ISP.

For more information on connecting to the Internet, please contact us.

For more information about Pacific Internet, please visit:

www.pacific.net.au


Good News for Progress running on SCO OpenServer

While I know of one customer who is running Progress on SCO OpenServer
5.0.7 there has been some reservations with Progress developing their
product any further than Progress 9.1 on SCO OpenServer 5.0.6. This has
meant that customers wanting features on later releases of Progress have
had to either switch to SCO Unixware 7.1.x or go to Linux platforms.

The issue has been the requirement of Progress 10 to have multithreading
support in the OS and the next release of SCO OpenServer (code named
"legend") will address this. With "Legend" addressing the
multithreading issue it is hopeful that Progress 10 will be
supported/endorsed on SCO OpenServer in the first half of 2004.

I will keep you updated in the upcoming newsletters of the developments
of Progress being support again on SCO OpenServer.

Progress V9.1D Current commercial release:
- UnixWare 7.1.1
- OpenServer 5.0.6
- OpenUnix 8.0.0

Progress V9.1D certification roadmap Q4 2003:
- UnixWare 7.1.3
- OpenServer 5.0.7

Progress V10:
- UnixWare 7.1.3 Q1 2004


Tech Tip


Using your internal UNIX system for HTML information and default/home web
pages.

A lot of customers have UNIX and Linux systems in their office which are
already activated to serve the local LAN, and even the Internet, as Web
servers.

An easy way to see if your server has Apache or Fasttrack enabled is to
browse it, normally using its internal IP address, for example:

http://192.168.1.1

This should show you the default "index.html" file in the server's
"htdocs/html" directory. To add pages to test and use internal web
servers further, you simply copy the html files into the "htdocs/html"
directory and browse them. For example, say you created a HTML document
and called it "contacts.html"; once copied to the HTML (htdocs/html)
directory on the server you would access it with:

http://192.168.1.1/contacts.html

We use internal pages here on our servers for a variety of tasks but one
main thing is to offer all users on the LAN a default "index.html" home
page that they go to to get internal information and Hyper Links to
Internet resources such as Google, Telstra White Pages, BOM and so on.

Some common directories where the default htdocs (or html) directories
can be found are:

/usr/local/lib/apache/htdocs
/var/www/html
/usr/internet/ns_httpd/httpd-80/htdocs
/home/www

Don't let you UNIX/Linux system just sit there, make it a HTML resource.


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