Topic: Blades server - explanation please

[Lars]

Hi!

I have tried to follow the development of the PHP problem, and a few days ago an update was launched on the blades server. I understand from the many messages in this forum that almost no one has been able to use the blades server yet. Surprisingly I find that most SME users seem to accept the blades server abscense as something final, and instead lots of messages deal with manual installation of RPM´s.

I love my SME, but I don´t know much about Linux, so my option is to use the blades. Is there any officially mentioned reason for the blades server not working? I don´t find any in the e-smith.org bulletins.

Should we just wait and see if the blades server comes to life again - or is it dead and in the process of being buried?

Regards
Lars

[Patrick Hickey]

lars - you bring up a interesting point. I wish to speculate a bit...

I am new to this  specific software so others can shed historical persective. But I "sense* that this is not a terribly huge company, in terms of personnel. Supporting something as aggressive as an "all in one server" solution is not trivial. So with the assumption of limited resources, they must focus upon paying customers.

When they have settled that down, I'm sure they will come around to resolving our issues - that is, those of us who beg cannot choose.

Or, they will have had enough of the notion of "free" software and go the way of WireX, and others, who have paid-for service models ONLY and there is no free lunch.

Just follow Luis' explaination/directions in the "general" Forum. It is really easy to manually apply the patches/blades. If you are simply unable or unwilling to use the command line approach maybe you should consider the option of paying them for support? I'm not trying to be pedantic, but they are simply never going to be able to take care of us, the freebies, in real time..

regards,

patrick

[Lars]

No offence meant, despite of the slight sarcasm. I´m sorry if I offended some people. I am well aware of the frustrations of supporting begging parasites like myself, and I really do understand the priority of the paying customers. Nevertheless, a little note of explanation of this priority on e-smith.org could be published in a minute, rather than leaving people wondering if their SME´s can´t contact the blades server because of some malfunction. It would calm people like myself who rely on their SME´s for their work. I´m concerned, as I am using my LAN through VPN for the moment as I am abroad, and I rely on webmail for my communication. I could start installing RPM´s on my SME over SSH, but if I make some mistake shutting my SME down I´ll loose the possibility to reach my LAN, so that kind of remote experiment does not appeal to me.

I know it´s fragile to rely so much on the server from a long distance. But than again, why do you think I chose the SME in the first place...

Regards
Lars

[Charlie Brady]

Patrick Hickey wrote:

> I am new to this  specific software so others can shed
> historical persective. But I "sense* that this is not a
> terribly huge company, in terms of personnel. Supporting
> something as aggressive as an "all in one server" solution is
> not trivial. So with the assumption of limited resources,
> they must focus upon paying customers.
>
> When they have settled that down, I'm sure they will come
> around to resolving our issues - that is, those of us who beg
> cannot choose.

Excellent deduction, Patrick! To quote from email which was sent today to our developers mailing list, by Dan York:

 Last Friday, in response to queries from our partners, we throttled back
 network access to blades for unsupported servers to provide faster access
 to our partners for their supported servers. The result is that servers
 without support will experience delays and may not be able to download
 the update blade.

 Note that all of the RPMs for this update are available on our ftp site
 as well as our mirrors and can be installed directly from the command line.

 Regards,
 Dan

 --
 Dan York, Product Line Manager, SME Server and ServiceLink
 Mitel Networks Corporation                 dan_york@mitel.com


Limited public access to the blades server will be restored some time soon.

Regards (and thanks for being understanding)

Charlie

[Patrick Hickey]

You make a /very/ valid point Lars, about how useful a short message would have been on the developer web page.

Although I am not in a mission critical situation, nor am I offshore like you, etc....I think a short note indicating what Charlie states below would haved staved off multiple queries about the whole issue.

regards,

patrick

[Kees Blokland]

Hi,

Just my 1 (eurocent) worth:

I've upgraded my boxes the simple ftp way, no sweat, but just out of curiosity I tried the 'blades' way too..

I noticed that everytime I try to connect I get the following error about lame servers..

Mar 12 08:15:15 bigbox named[1782]: Lame server on 'service.e-smith.com' (in 'e-smith.com'?): [206.191.0.210].53 'MAG1.MAGMACOM.com'

The server pings alright, so it this a clue as to why so many people report not being able to connect ??
(ping service.e-smith.com:
Reply from 66.37.211.36: bytes=32 time=120ms TTL=242)

kees

[koolmoose]

Kees Blokland wrote:

> I noticed that everytime I try to connect I get the following
> error about lame servers..
>
> Mar 12 08:15:15 bigbox named[1782]: Lame server on
> 'service.e-smith.com' (in 'e-smith.com'?): [206.191.0.210].53
> 'MAG1.MAGMACOM.com'

I got same error when I tried to update using 56k dialup.

To monitor upgrade progress I tried this:

tail -f /var/log/messages

The third attempt at upgrade was successful.

Paul

[koolmoose]

Kees Blokland wrote:

> I noticed that everytime I try to connect I get the following
> error about lame servers..
>
> Mar 12 08:15:15 bigbox named[1782]: Lame server on
> 'service.e-smith.com' (in 'e-smith.com'?): [206.191.0.210].53
> 'MAG1.MAGMACOM.com'

I got same error when I tried to update using 56k dialup.

To monitor upgrade progress I tried this:

tail -f /var/log/messages

The third attempt at upgrade was successful.

Paul