Xandros Server: Pre-Packaged Power, Centralized

By: Bill von Hagen
Monday, June 5, 2006 10:05:04 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/6242/1/

YALS--Yet Another Linux Server?

The software used to configure, maintain, and administer an operating system is an effective measure of both its popularity and its maturity. The system administration tools used by acolytes and devotees are typically very different than mass-market administrative environments designed for by IT personnel for whom the administration and use of a specific operating system may be a job rather than a calling. Similarly, packaged operating system distributions that provide a complete, manageable, and supportable enterprise solution make a statement that an operating system and associated services are quite literally "open for business."

The latest product from Xandros Linux, traditionally known for slick desktop Linux distributions, combines an out-of-the-box, enterprise-caliber Linux server solution with a graphical console for centralized system administration that combines the kinds of bells and whistles desired by cult members with the ease-of-use needed by everybody else.

Xandros' announcement of a server product was greeted with an interesting combination of silence and skepticism by the Linux community, myself included. Companies such as Red Hat and SUSE currently own the Linux server market. Up-and-coming distributions such as Ubuntu offer a server distribution, but even the recent Dapper release still features many desktop-oriented tools in the server product. This can be a convenience but can also be a distraction, requiring a certain amount of overhead for both storage and use, while bringing separate maintenance requirements that are outside the pure server domain. Xandros Server focuses on server software and the graphical environment and associated tools needed to configure, monitor, and manage them.

Xandros Linux is well established on the home and business desktops, providing separate products for each of these markets. Xandros Linux is a descendant of Corel's Debian-based Linux distribution, but has continued to evolve as a stable and well-though-out Linux distribution that is sensitive to the simplicity and usability requirements of home and business desktop users.

Xandros' in enterprise administration requirements first surfaced with their Xandros Deployment Management Server (xDMS) product (previously reviewed on LinuxPlanet), a distributed installation, deployment, and configuration management tool for system administrators. xDMS makes it easy to create standard but site-customized distributions that can easily and repeatably be deployed across all of the systems in a business or academic environment. Xandros' development and championship of an easy-to-use server distribution therefore should not come as that much of a surprise. As we'll see throughout this review, Xandros has created a powerful, easy-to-use server distribution with an impressive selection of servers and am excellent, centralized administrative interface. The rest is up to the marketers.

Requirements and Installation

As with other distributions from Xandros, Xandros Server provides a simple and easy-to-use installer that doesn't need much exploration or explanation here. Installation and system configuration are divided into separate steps--the installer simply installs default or selected packages, while most system configuration tasks are done in a First Run Wizard that, as the name suggests, runs by default the first time that you start your Xandros system.

One thing you should remember when planning a Xandros Server installation is that this distribution is truly oriented towards the SMB or enterprise server environment. Xandros Server is designed to run on modern, beefy machines, with the same higher-end processors and amounts of memory that you would expect to put in a Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X server that you expected to satisfy enterprise-caliber requirements. My review copy was the 32-bit Xandros Server 1.0 release, which retails for US$449.00, which is a single-machine license that includes 90 days of email installation and configuration support. (Xandros also offers a 64-bit Server distribution for USD US$499.00 or 449 €, including VAT.) The 32-bit server requires a Pentium 4, AMD Athlon, or equivalent processor and a minimum of 512 MB of memory (up to 2 GB). Xandros Server is not designed for "turn a doorstop PC into a file and web server" deployments. It is a SMB or Enterprise product.

The Xandros installer is what you'd expect from a modern Linux distribution, so I won't waste bandwidth with screenshots. After answering a few standard questions such as desired disk partitioning, package selection, default root and user accounts, and so on. One oddity during the initial Q&A session is that network interfaces are always unconfigured by default, and you must explicitly enable and configure them. Perhaps this is designed to ensure that you make the right choices between DHCP and static IP addresses, but it struck me as odd.

Once you finish the configuration Q&A, the installer simply "does the right thing." During the package installation process, the installer provides the standard sorts of splash screen that help pass the time, hype product features, and serve as bit-mapped blinkenlights to let you know what the installation is proceeding. The last step in the initial Q&A session identifies whether the server you're configuring is your primary Xandros Server, or is a peer of an existing Xandros Server. One especially nice feature of Xandros Server is its recognition that enterprise servers benefit from administration as a group rather than in round-robin fashion. The idea of a managed community of related servers, popularized by enterprise authentication solutions such as Kerberos, LDAP, and even Active Directory, is a cornerstone of Xandros Server administration.

After package installation completes, the installer ejects the CD and prompts you to press enter to reboot your system. When you log in for the first time, the First Run Wizard performs the standard types of configuration tasks, including enabling you to configure regional settings, your system's date and time, configure printers, and select a default desktop look and feel. At this point, you're ready to start configuring the servers that you want to run--but only after retrieving an activation code from the Xandros online store and typing it in. This is a pain given that you already have to enter a registration number during the initial part of the installation process, but I suppose that Xandros has to protect its interests somehow. Still, I would think that a default 30-day eval would be better for admins who might not want to have to fire up a web browser and email client just to actually run something they've spent 30 minutes installing.

What's in the Box?

Xandros Server is as up-to-date as you could expect a product that requires significant QA in order to guarantee the stability required by its target market. It features a 2.6.15 kernel and version 6.9 of the X.org X11 Window system. Its desktop environment is based on KDE 3.4.2. On the other hand, the versions of GCC and glibc that it provides are relatively ancient, providing gcc 3.3.5 and glibc 2.3.2. Xandros Server is based on Debian 3.1, which basically explains the aging development environment.

The physical box includes three CDs: the basic Xandros Server Installation CD, a Standard Edition Applications CD, and a CD that contains a special Xandros edition of the Scalix mail server and collaboration system. A default Xandros Server installation only requires the first CD, and provides a copy of the BRU Backup Server, a Certificate Manager, a DHCP Server, the Sendmail and Postfix mail servers, a DNS Server, and iptables-based Firewall, an FTP Server, a Helix streaming media server, a CUPS-based Print Server, Windows and NFS file servers, a Proxy Server, an SSH Server, a Time (NNTP) Server, a UPS Monitor, a VPN Server, and (of course) a Web Server (Apache2). Quite the server smorgasbord!

The Standard Edition Applications CD provides enterprise-level server software that is not installed as part of a default Xandros Server install, such as IBM DB2 v8.2 (Express C Edition), Oracle 10G (Express Edition), MySQL, the popular SugarCRM Customer Relationship Management system, and the JBoss application server. Though DB2 and Oracle are SMB or SOHO versions, they're certainly enough to get you started and sufficient for many businesses.

If you're not familiar with the Scalix mail and collaboration software, it's well worth a look! Scalix rescued--er, licensed--Hewlett-Packard's excellent OpenMail system from software oblivion when HP decided to punt in one the dumbest decisions I can remember. (For God's sake, HP, if you're going to point that thing at your head, at least keep the safety on!)

The fact that five free Scalix licenses are included with Xandros Server is enough to wet your whistle for more licenses for this great, Outlook-compatible mail system that supports shared calendaring, ToDo lists, and public folders--basically, all of the bells and whistles that you need to shut down your Microsoft Exchange Server once and for all (after buying more licenses, unless yours is a really small company). For future reference, Scalix and the Evolution mailer are a great combination.

The final thrill in the Xandros Server package is an impressive manual that not only provides hands-on HOWTO information but also provides an impressive amount of background information on all of the servers that you can manage through the tools discussed in the next section. This is a great document in general and a welcome change from most other vendors' user-hostile PDF approach to documentation. The box also includes a printed Getting Started Guide that walks you through installing and configuring your Xandros Server.

Familiar, Centralized Administration Tools

Centralized administrative tools are not new to Linux. SUSE's YaST2 is an excellent example of a coherent administrative framework that can be used by mere mortals. Knowing which utility to use and where to look for it is over half the battle on traditional Unix and Unix-like systems, and knowing that "it's in there somewhere" is comforting for both daily tasks and the occasional crisis. Xandros Server's Xandros Management Console (xMC) is a welcome addition to this domain. Many Linux devotees view centralized administration as orthogonal to the traditional Unix philosophy of small tools that do one thing and do it well. However, if you view unifying the administrative requirements of disparate software servers as the task and are using something other than a VT100 as your administrative console, then centralized, graphical admin tools aren't so alien after all.

Xandros xMC should feel quite familiar to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), and provides the same sort of consistent interface for centralized administering a wide variety of servers and services. When you first start xMC, it displays a tree view of available servers and a status dialog summarizing which are running, for how long, and so on, as shown in Figure 1.

The xMC tool comes pre-loaded with configuration plugins for all of the servers that are installed as part of a default Xandros Server install. Some general-purpose tools, such as its Event Viewer, shown in Figure 2, provide a convenient way of reviewing, sorting, and filtering log messages from both servers and system services.

The Event Viewer comes with a number of preconfigured reports to display events of different types, and also makes it easy for you to create your own custom reports. Unfortunately, xMC doesn't provide any way of printing these reports. To print them, you must save them to a text file and then use a tool such as the KATE text editor to print them. Something for the next release, I guess.

If you need speedier feedback on significant events than generating and browsing reports, xMC's System Monitor plugin enables you define events that you want to watch for and associated an action (such as sending you mail) when they occur. Figure 3 shows the drop-down list of events that you can let the server watch for when defining a custom event.

Defining system events and associated trigger actions is a great feature, but could use a bit more granularity in the types of events you can watch for. For example, you can define a Network Connection event and associated action, but you can't specify things like ports to watch, the types of network events to watch for, and so on. It would be nice to be able to have some of the flexibility of open source tools like Snort and PortSentry here. Next release, please?

Helpful Wizards and Server Startup Configuration

Many of the servers in xMC provide wizards to simplify initial setup. For example, configuring a DNS server in xMC provides helpful wizards for creating forward and reverse lookup zones, handy dialogs for populating those zones, and so on. Figure 4 shows the first dialog in the wizard for creating a Forward zone.

After you've modified any server, clicking the main entry for that server in the left pane displays a dialog that enables you to start, stop, or restart that server manually. A convenient selector also lets you change each server from being started manually to starting automatically at boot time. As you'd expect, this creates the right symlinks in the /etc/rc2.d directory (the default run level for most Debian-based distributions).

Though I understand that Xandros has partnered with Scalix to give users a powerful collaborative environment required by most businesses, I was surprised to note that xMC doesn't provide a default tool for configuring Sendmail, their default Mail Transfer Agent. Other than that, xMC provides a complete and usable solution for server, setup, configuration, and general system monitoring.

Updates, Maintenance, and Support

As a Debian-based distribution, Xandros has continued to add its own special sauce to the already simple and powerful upgrade mechanisms provided by Debian's apt-get, developing and refining its Xandros Networks tool to simplify updates and the installation of additional software. Figure 5 shows the Xandros Networks tool after searching for available updates.

Unlike desktop and business products, the extra software that you can install on Xandros Server isn't a variety of desktop productivity software. The pane at left in Figure 4 shows the additional software choices available for Xandros Server, which includes server-level packages such as Oracle, JBoss, SugarCRM, DB2, and so on, as discussed earlier.

Wrapping Up

All-in-all, Xandros Server 1.0 is the first release of what promises to be a popular and eminently usable Linux Server. xMC is a great server administration tool, and its central admin model and familiar Management Console-like interface will be a tremendous help for companies whose system administrators may be new to Linux. There will certainly be updates--for example, the remote desktop software crashed a few times for me while testing, which is certainly a package that many sysadmins will want to use rather than hiking to the machine room all the time. In general, Xandros Server provides a quite complete selection of servers and a reasonable set of desktop tools to get your work done. For some unknown reason, it was missing emacs, which I had to build with Xandros' rusty old version of gcc, but as a well-designed, well-supported, and affordable server solution, Xandros Server is well worth a look.

Bill von Hagen is the author of numerous books and articles on Linux and Mac OS X. For more information about Bill, see http://www.vonhagen.org.