Simple Setup

The Wirex appliance requires some setup. You need to purchase a box and the software from a Wirex reseller. Within the next few months, Wirex plans to sell the software alone. The underlying OS is Immunix 6.2, a standard Red Hat distribution. The source code is recompiled with StackGuard (buffer overflow protection) along with other tools to form a hardened distribution. On top of the OS is Wirex's proprietary Web-based Remote Network Administrator (RNA) engine. RNA allows for easy configuration of the appliance over an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) connection. It is an intuitive, well-put-together engine that's easy to learn and use. The help subsystem has many entries and is aimed at novice users. While RNA takes care of the bulk of configuration settings, you can still access a normal command prompt via a console or with SSH.

Wirex provides an easy installation process. The bootable CD automatically partitions the disk into /, /home and swap, formats the partitions, and then installs about 350 MB of system files and applications. Installation took less than 10 minutes on my test machine. I used a Dell Optiplex GX1 (600 MHz, 512 MB of RAM and a 9G Ultra2 SCSI), representing a typical departmental or small-office server.

Unfortunately, there are no options with respect to the installation procedures. I would have been more comfortable setting up the partitions myself. I also would have liked to specify how much swap space to create. After the software installs, you'll need to give it an IP address, subnet mask and default gateway. That's all the work you should ever need to do with the console. Wirex said the shipping version will support DHCP (our beta did not).

While Wirex touts Immunix as a secure server, I did find one anomaly in something the company considers a feature: You can change the root password on the console in two simple keystrokes, and you don't need to know the original password to do so. Wirex says this lowers the support costs when someone forgets a root password. However, the company also said resellers should determine if this "feature" will be enabled, and you can disable it yourself (edit /etc/inittab). Wirex should provide a way to disable it via RNA, as many new Linux admins won't be able to figure out how to edit the file. Unix administration Lesson No. 1: Don't forget the root password.

User Setup

Creating users and groups is relatively straightforward. An administrator can create, edit, delete and disable users. You also can set an expiration date and account removal date, which is useful for creating temporary accounts. After creating the user, the administrator offers a page that you can print out and give to the user. It shows the user's name, password and instructions for configuring Microsoft Outlook for e-mail. Users also can log into RNA to set up e-mail forwarding, change their passwords and learn how to use the Web-page gadgets (including clock, page counter and date display).

Wirex has put a very nice GUI onto the Apache Web Server configuration setup. Settings and individual options are presented clearly. There is no need to edit any confusing text files here. You can turn on or off support for personal Web pages, Java servlets, CGI (off by default) and other performance options as well. The only catch is that you need to reboot the server for changes to Apache to take effect. This is annoying but understandable, since you're connected in by SSL and the connection would otherwise die--something that might well confuse novices.

There aren't too many options for the mail server. You can choose to allow POP3 and IMAP connections, and set the relay host. Wirex provides information about configuring Outlook, but you should be able to use any mail program that supports POP3 or IMAP. You cannot set up any aliases or mailing lists with RNA.

The print-server aspect is also simple to configure. You can share locally attached printers or a networked printer over TCP/ IP. The OS is robust enough to handle it, but RNA really isn't designed for use as a print server. You can't set up print quotas or manage the print queues. This could cause trouble if someone accidentally printed out, say, the entire collection of these articles 47 times. Until RNA is enhanced, the print server part of this package is weak.

The file-sharing capability lets you mount a user's home and shared directories through Network Neighborhood. You can create multiple shared directories, and specify who can read and write to each share. A shared Webdocs directory takes care of the server's Web pages. Users can copy their personal home pages into a special folder in their home directory. However, there is no support for file quotas that limit the amount of disk space available to users in the RNA. Wirex says it plans to support quotas in the next version, which should be available early next year. There are a few other nice little features in RNA including the ability to view log files online, automated backups by FTP and online checks for upgrades.

Michael J. DeMaria is a systems administrator in Syracuse, N.Y. Send your comments on this article to him at demaria@nand.net.