Topic: New to SME

[jscott]

Sorry to sound like a newbie, but I am to SME. After reading about it, I like many of the features it toted so I downloaded the proxy from this site. The features in it really sound great. Problem is I don't know how to get to use them. I can get to the Server Manager, but there's no links to get to any of the features mentioned in the description. Do you have to pay for Service Links to have the other features activated? Another thing is obviously it's passing through the Squid cache, but when accessing sites with email, I get a "Zero Sized Reply" on the webpage. I can't even find the Squid panel to administrate the web proxy. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Michael Soulier]

jscott wrote:
>
> Sorry to sound like a newbie, but I am to SME. After reading
> about it, I like many of the features it toted so I
> downloaded the proxy from this site. The features in it
> really sound great. Problem is I don't know how to get to use
> them. I can get to the Server Manager, but there's no links
> to get to any of the features mentioned in the description.
> Do you have to pay for Service Links to have the other
> features activated?

No. Can I assume you installed from a 5.6 iso image? What proxy do you refer to? SME 5.6 comes with squid, but describing it solely as a proxy would be inaccurate.

Would it be accurate to say that you have done a fresh 5.6 install, attempted to reach the server-manager, and are not seeing the menu down the left-hand frame? Please provide more information.

> Another thing is obviously it's passing
> through the Squid cache, but when accessing sites with email,
> I get a "Zero Sized Reply" on the webpage. I can't even find
> the Squid panel to administrate the web proxy. Any help would
> be appreciated. Thanks.

I don't understand you. What do you mean by "accessing sites with email"? Are you referring to a webmail client of some kind?

Mike

[jscott]

After I posted this, I remember that I forgot to mention that I'm doing a fresh install of SME 5.6.
 As to the proxy server SME has within it, it based on Squid proxy. I've tried Squid before with Mandrakes MNF, there version of firewall. It's nice, but I was getting the same error when accessing any web based email sites such as hotmail, or yahoo, etc. When I would bypass the cache, the sites would not be affected, but that defeats the purpose. With SME, I don't see a link to set the cache amounts (although this has little effect on the error message), administrate blocked sites, content or URL's. Also where is the Samba interface to admin that as well as the firewall interface to set up NAT?
Yes I can see the links on the left running down the column from Security to Misc, but there's no links to administrate any of the features I've mentioned above. I've read the Users Guide, and it seems be saying, but not directly that you have to pay for these extra features to be available?

[Dan Brown]

There is no direct Samba administration, there is no direct Squid administration, and there is no direct firewall administration (where "direct" = through the SME server manager).  You have Samba, Squid, and the firewall, but no simple way of customizing their configuration.  There may be some third-party contribs available, or the service link blades might include some of this functionality.

[jscott]

Thanks Dan I'm beginning to get the picture. The Service Links are only available through purchase right? When I read the manuals, there seem to be an interface for many of these things, but only available after you activate the service links which I believe is an expense. Any help on any sites that I could download some of the more common addons would be of great appreciation.

[James Pybus]

http://contribs.org
http://www.tech-geeks.org
http://www.acenet-tech.org/cdj/cdj.html
http://www.swerts-knudsen.dk
http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/
http://www.dungog.net/sme/files/
http://www.sme-server.nl/index.php
http://www.aplawrence.com/SME/forwarding.html
http://www.tech-geeks.org/index.php
http://www.lordsfam.net/downloads/
http://www.pagefault.org/code/e-smith.shtml#securemail
http://myezserver.com/mitel/contrib

[jscott]

I would like to thank everyone for your help. It's greatly appreciated. I guess I'll go meddle with this SME now...lol. Have a great day!!!

[Michael Soulier]

jscott wrote:
>
> Thanks Dan I'm beginning to get the picture. The Service
> Links are only available through purchase right? When I read
> the manuals, there seem to be an interface for many of these
> things, but only available after you activate the service
> links which I believe is an expense. Any help on any sites
> that I could download some of the more common addons would be
> of great appreciation.

I believe you misunderstand. ServiceLink is a set of additional commercial services that we offer on top of the GPL'd base. It is not a set of service configuration wizards. The entire point of the interface is to not burden the user with having to configure such services. It simply happens behind the scenes, which is what most users want.

For those who wish full control over every configuration file, that is easy to achieve, especially if you have system administration knowledge already.

http://www.e-smith.org/custom/

Why offer to configure samba when most of our customers don't know what samba is, nor do they care?

Cheers,
Mike

[jscott]

I was referred to this page by another forum. A question was being asked, and e-smith was recommended. At that time I was seeking an alternative to Mandrakes firewall because of zero size reply errors I was getting with it's Squid cache when accessing certain sites. It has a user interface for all it's features including Squid which made setting up much easier to achieve. I was under the impression that since SME had a simular interface, install and configuration that administration was also possible from SME's interface. I guess I assumed too much. As to the question why someone would want to configure Simba? SME and all of it's features are for administrators isn't it? It's not a product for the homeuser so why wouldn't an interested party know what Samba is or does? If you present Samba as part of your product, why wouldn't I expect a way to configure it from an interface when that's my first introduction to SME's configuration? I'm not new to linux, but just to the SME flavor of it. I intend to use this or a product like it as an alternative means to expensive routers, firewalls & proxies which we know can be quite an expense.

[Terry]

As a note, SME is designed for Small to Medium Enterprises, 10-100 type people as an example.  Most busineses of this size do not have an IT staff, they have someone that "knows about computers".  This distro allows a reseller to install into that base, train the person that "knows about computers" how to add users, check logs and various basic things within the server manager.  If said SME has a trouble of major proportions or need something done, they call their reseller, who will try to customize it themselves.  Not too many end users actually puruse these forums looking for answers.
Service Link allows the end user/reseller to have a purchase/updated, supported anti virus solution, point and click IPSec VPN setup (by the reseller, not the end user) and a few other things.  Most things offered with Service Link can be done for free as an add-on, it just won't always work, is harder to configure and is not supported by Mitel's Product Support team.
In mention of not being able to configure squid and firewall rules; it's not offered in the web manager because the guy that "knows about computers" will have no clue as to what squid, nat or a proxy even is, he's a Windows guy don't ya know!  It's the resellers responisiblity of making configuration changes (if needed) and doing it properly (via the templates).  Yes, there are some people on here who use this as a company server and support it themselves, but they are not the normal profile as much as we'd like to believe.
The default settings in a default install work quite fine for Squid and NAT, it routes just fine, with add-ons like SquidGuard and an open source mail scanner it's secure and safe.
If samba/squid/nat'ing doesn't work for you out of the box, you've done something wrong or don't have supported hardware.  As for your problem of getting to Hotmail, Yahoo or whatever other mail websites, I've never had or seen this trouble and I maintain 4 of these boxes, 3 are dev releases (5.5) and 1 is a Service Link enabled copy (also 5.5).
Hope this clears up some of your questions/problems.

Terry

[jscott]

Thanks Terry for the info. I am currently using XP to access the net through the SME box. All hardware specs are up to par. (Using 400 MHz, 384MB RAM, 6 gig drive with only one XP workstation attached for testing purposes). I am aware that it's for small to medium businesses as that is exactly what I'm looking to use it for. I found some really good documentation on SME 5.6 that goes far beyond the docs found on this sight. I'm in the process of reviewing now. It's a pretty simple solution for a small business of about 50 PC's who wants an alternative. I work with Cisco PIX and WebSense on my job, which I'd recommend but they don't want to spend for it. I think SME would be a good solution to their dilemma. As for the error message, upon doing some research, I find that Squid's "Zero Sized Reply" message is a common one with many different reasons and solutions. I just have to try and narrow it down to mine. Again thanks for the info. It's been most helpful in my research. Feel free anyone to make any suggestions you might deem helpful.

[Amiller]

I have a remote location using a Toshiba SG20 (the image came from the yahoo SG20 groups FTP links v5.6) and the user is having the same squid problems.

99% of the sites work except for a few that won't even load when there is a logon window pop-up (IIS NT Challenge-Reponse), it just throws an access denied error, no pop-up logon.  But it works fine when the SG20 is not being used.

There is another issue where there is large file uploading thru a Wed page. The 'Multi-Form Part' breaks on the upload with the SME inplace but works fine with file uploading when the SME is not the proxy

Is this a Squid issue?