Topic: Improved Console Suggestion

[Ralph Dorr]

I saw your new page on future plans (e-smith 5.0) and wanted to give you a picture if possible of what I think the console should be and contain. I really like your product and it is perfectly functional in it's present state and I commend you for your ongoing development and your willingness to listen to the public and create a rock solid product that everyone can be happy with.

I would like the console to run in a minimal XWindows environment similiar to the Redhat 6.2 Graphic Installation screens. On these screen would be a graphic overview of disk usage, status indicators for services running,  The ability to stop and restart services, the ability to make configuration changes, and system health statistics. Perhaps alerts could be signaled if users were using too much disk space, getting too many emails, or browsing the web too much? You can then visually see if there is some parameter that needs attention without having to check the system through the browser.

Another feature which could be relevant to the e-smith-manager would be to have a reporting system for proxy logs, httpd logs, and email logs for review or summaries by user, usage statistics, etc.

Either way, I am still happy with the current console. Perhaps some of these options could be incorporated into the current one. Maybe just flashing the background in yellow or red would be an attention getter.

Anyway, Food for thought.

Sincerely,
Ralph J. Dorr

[Dan Elkins]

I don't thing that console improvements are all that neccessary, but an impoved interface for the e-smith manager would be cool.  At work we have a Cobalt Qube 2 which was purchased before I ever found out about e-smith.  It does have a lot of features that are more advanced then the e-smith server.  For example:

1. It has a "Control Panel" where services can be turned on or off and modified.  Services like, MAIL, FTP, SAMBA, APPLE SHARE, Frontpage server Extensions, SNMP, DNS, and DHCP.

2. A "Active Moniter" which displays current status of system components such as the CPU, Memory, and Disk space also showing the status of the available services.

3. A "Service Status" selection which makes logs available for all of the servies.

These are just a few of the services available to manage the Qube 2 and If e-smith could do something similar with their product, they would have a superior server solution that would be one of the best and most reliable on the market.

Dan