[PLUG] Need help setting up home network, willing to pay

Cory Bertsch cory at trilocal.com
Thu Aug 21 12:18:02 UTC 2003


> You're right; they are rather opaque in their marketing speak. From my
> reading of the website, I would have thought e-smith's software had
> nothing to do with firewalls. To me, it looks like a system for
> automating the configuration of several servers so that the network
> administrator can be confident of a consistent configuration across the
> enterprise. That's MY clueless reading, but I had to click through three
> different pages to gather these facts.

Their marketing speak is pretty crappy. I've tried to read it a few
times and just give up. I really couldn't make any sense of it either.

> If I'm completely off-base (and I admit that I could be), I'd appreciate
> some correction.

Sure thing. Here is what E-smith really is/does:

1. You are correct that it's primary function isn't a firewall. It can
be used as a firewall though.

2. E-smith is an easy to setup Linux distro based on RedHat (version 8
now I think).

3. E-smith has a really slick web based interface for managing it. You
can manage almost everything from the web based interface.

4. E-smith has what are called i-Bays. These are separate storage areas
on your server that you can setup. These 'ibays' allow you to share
files through samba or netatalk. You can also set them up to allow you
to FTP to them or put web pages up in them. You can define who has
access to the ibays and if they are accessible from the web, local
network and if they require a password for access or not. There are a
fair amount of configurations you can set for each ibay.

5. E-smith is also setup by default (well it's an easy to select option)
to be a network Gateway.

6. E-smith is setup out of the box to handle network printing. You can
hook your printer up through your E-smith box and then share it over the
network.

7. E-smith also handles email & other things that other any Linux server
would.

The main things that I like about E-smith is that it is VERY easy to
setup and maintain. Their web based interface works really well if you
use it as a file/print/gateway server. There are also a bunch of 3rd
party modules that people have built for E-smith. Overall it's a good
server for some circumstances...

Hope this clarifies some of the confusion. I'll put up some screen shots
when I get a chance. Let me know if you have any questions.

-Cory

> -djp
> 
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