If you were to make the move from Windows to Linux/open source.....

[Disease]

Thanks Webman, will definately look at that.

[linuxgirlie]

Yeah the system isn't "locked down" if you go onto the server you can access everything as a normal ubuntu server, so you can install other packages etc etc if you wish.

[webman]

Is Karoshi all web-based now or is there still a GUI? Is it based on the LTS version(s) of Ubuntu?

[Number6]

Yeah the system isn't "locked down" if you go onto the server you can access everything as a normal ubuntu server, so you can install other packages etc etc if you wish.

 

Thanks again. Does it have an inbuilt email server?

[Number6]

@Number6 The open-source edition doesn't cost anything apart from your own hardware and time; and this is probably fine for the majority of organisations. If you want push or other enterprisey features (compare here) then you pay for it. What you save on MS licensing will probably be more than enough to cover it (again, depending on requirements, YMMV...)

 

Having looked at the website it does look a pretty good package.

 

And the open source free version is adequate compared to Exchange?

[glennda]

What would you start with first clients or servers?

 

Servers as already mentioned, i run my DHCP and a few file servers from samba plus also my whole backbone uses linux as I am using KVM for Virtulisation.

 

What would you do about all services you offer through windows i.e AD, ISA, Backup Exec, Email and print management?

 

As already mentioned probly use zimbra for email. have a test server currently setup and debating the pros and cons of moving away from exchange.

Ad I would leave on windows as its just easier in my opinion.

Don't use ISA already have 2 squid proxies for load balancing.

 

What about running all the windows programs you have at the moment, SIMS CS4 etc?

i am currently experimenting with runnings sims using wine but so far i really havn't had a chance to look.

 

I was posed the question by a teacher, have we considered moving to a complete linux setup, somethingI have not until now considered, but wit buget constraints etc it migt be worth looking at so any feedback would be useful.

 

This is only going to work if you are good at linux otherwise problems could arise

[Irazmus]

Having looked at the website it does look a pretty good package.

 

And the open source free version is adequate compared to Exchange?

 

We've been running the open source version of Zimbra for ~3 years, and the only things we've found lacking are: online backups, which can be emulated using LVM [ Open Source Edition Backup Procedure - Zimbra :: Wiki ]; individual mailbox backup/restore, which can't, but is of little overall importance to us since our policies dictate that we don't delete e-Mail until it's six months old; PGP/GPG encryption/validation, which the paid network version doesn't have either; and the ability to vote on Zimbra's development direction, which network customers get.

[webman]

As an aside to what Irazmus mentions about mailbox backups on Zimbra, it is possible to do it in the open-source edition via the command-line tool zmmailbox, so can be scripted.

 

zmmailbox -z -m [email protected] getRestURL .//?fmt=tgz > /backups/[email protected]

 

 

We do mailbox backups every weekday night using the above method, and filesystem structure via Rsync at weekends.

[Irazmus]

As an aside to what Irazmus mentions about mailbox backups on Zimbra, it is possible to do it in the open-source edition via the command-line tool zmmailbox, so can be scripted.

 

zmmailbox -z -m [email protected] getRestURL .//?fmt=tgz > /backups/[email protected]

 

 

We do mailbox backups every weekday night using the above method, and filesystem structure via Rsync at weekends.

 

I stand corrected.

[linuxgirlie]

Is Karoshi all web-based now or is there still a GUI? Is it based on the LTS version(s) of Ubuntu?

 

Yes its web-based only and yes its based on the LTS.

 

With regard to email, at the moment you have a choice between Squirrelmail and Egroupware for frontends that a built into the disk, but as it is a proper mail server you can choose whatever frontend you like, even outlook.

[Batman]

i am currently experimenting with runnings sims using wine but so far i really havn't had a chance to look.

 

How far did you get?

[Number6]

Karoshi on the servers, which is Ubuntu Based and Ubuntu on the Clients.

 

Can you point me to a comprehensive admin guide for Karoshi please? I can't make head or tail out of parts of it. In particular it won't let me on the internet because it can't find a DNS server (or so it says) but it itself is a DNS server?

[SYNACK]

What else does Exchange offer?

 

Unified Messaging, clustering of databases and access roles, Outlook Anywhere RPC over https, SMS syncing and device wipeing for up to date implementations of ActiveSync and the most feature complete webmail interface I have encountered.

[glennda]

How far did you get?

 

I didn't really have a chance to look into it further. But i need to mount a local folder e.g /sims to the server so that wine can mount it as an S: drive becuase as far as i can see wine will not connect the drive to a server directly.

[Batman]

I didn't really have a chance to look into it further. But i need to mount a local folder e.g /sims to the server so that wine can mount it as an S: drive becuase as far as i can see wine will not connect the drive to a server directly.

 

Ok... I got a bit further than that (not much though). I set up the S:\ drive and was able to start the installer but it fell over looking for connect.ini. I was able to browse to the file but it wouldn't recognise it.

 

But I've just remembered that when I was installing sims on a windows 7 machine once it got a bit funny about connect.ini so I just copied it to c:\windows - maybe that will work with wine? I'm going to have to try it after half term

Edited May 28, 2010 by Batman

[glennda]

Ok... I got a bit further than that (not much though). I set up the S:\ drive and was able to start the installer but it fell over looking for connect.ini. I was able to browse to the file but it wouldn't recognise it.

 

how did you mange that? i am in tomorrow and have nothing else todo might have a play!!

[Batman]

how did you mange that? i am in tomorrow and have nothing else todo might have a play!!

 

Pretty much as you described... I mounted the s:\ drive in linux to a location like /media/sims or something and then configured wine to present this directory as the s:\ drive.

 

You should then be able to access the s:\ drive using /home//.wine/dosdevices/s: I think.

 

Before you run the installer you probably need to install .net framework. I'm pretty sure I managed it but I don't remember how.

[glennda]

Pretty much as you described... I mounted the s:\ drive in linux to a location like /media/sims or something and then configured wine to present this directory as the s:\ drive.

 

You should then be able to access the s:\ drive using /home//.wine/dosdevices/s: I think.

 

thats the bit i cant seem to get to work how ever i try. I can open up the address by typing in "smb://domain.internal;[email protected]/sims/" but it will not mount to a folder. I might just be doing it wrong!

[Batman]

thats the bit i cant seem to get to work how ever i try. I can open up the address by typing in "smb://domain.internal;[email protected]/sims/" but it will not mount to a folder. I might just be doing it wrong!

 

If you're able to browse to it then you should be able to mount it. It's got to be either a syntax or credentials issue when you use the mount command.

 

I'm at home right now so I can't tell you exactly what I did but it's along the lines of "sudo mount -t smbfs -o credentials=//.credentials /// /media/sims" (I use a .credentials file but you can use -u= and it will then prompt for a password. Apparently cifs is supposed to be better but smbfs worked so I stuck with that.

[glennda]

If you're able to browse to it then you should be able to mount it. It's got to be either a syntax or credentials issue when you use the mount command.

 

I'm at home right now so I can't tell you exactly what I did but it's along the lines of "sudo mount -t smbfs -o credentials=//.credentials /// /media/sims" (I use a .credentials file but you can use -u= and it will then prompt for a password. Apparently cifs is supposed to be better but smbfs worked so I stuck with that.

 

ahh ill give that a go tomorrow