Idea's for the business edition.

[Lincee]

This topic is ment solemnly for idea's and information about a Business Edition of Amahi.
There are many loose topics, so i'm gonna try and collect those into one topic, so we have a base to go from.

What are your idea's?
what should definatly be integrated into Amahi, or what should not?

Personally, i think the Business edition (this is not yet an existing product, purely brainstorming)
should have better email functionality, as well as some form of Active Directory.

Both products are allready integrated, as Fedora comes with a mailserver.
all thats missing so far is a descent web interface that could interact with the mailserver.
Amahi (or Fedora, really) Also comes with Samba, which easily integrates as a domain controller,
if memory serves, Samba 3 has Active Directory support, allowing network Admins to easily switch from Windows Server 2003/above to Linux.

What are your own idea's and views on this?


=== Edit 1: ===
thanks to cpg, we now have a wiki page for easy tracking:
http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/SOHO_Features

[moredruid]

good idea, but not sure if this is going to be taken up. Cpg might comment on that.

one thing you state is "all thats missing so far is a descent web interface that could interact with the mailserver."
uhm, not sure what you mean by that. you mean for configuring the back end? or for reading e-mail (front end).
for the back end I really don't see the need since you'll only set it up once and it just works if properly configured...
for front end you can rely on either a mailclient or a webapp (like IlohaMail or Squirrelmail).

however one important (if not the most important) thing in my opinion is that it should run on CentOS.
Since CentOS is basically a binary copy of RedHat Enterprise Linux with some stripped RH artwork this will have 2 advantages:
- long term support (RedHat will support each major version for 7 years), so CentOS will too
- if Amahi is used in SOHO RedHat might be purchased (either ordered with the server or separately) for support reasons.

With regards to the implementation of the things you mention: of course you're free to contribute to the project yourself. That may be with testing stuff, helping out on the boards or IRC or really "digging deep" with development. All efforts help, and you've already shown a contribution by posting this suggestion

[bsk]

good idea, but not sure if this is going to be taken up. Cpg might comment on that.

one thing you state is "all thats missing so far is a descent web interface that could interact with the mailserver."
uhm, not sure what you mean by that. you mean for configuring the back end? or for reading e-mail (front end).
for the back end I really don't see the need since you'll only set it up once and it just works if properly configured...
for front end you can rely on either a mailclient or a webapp (like IlohaMail or Squirrelmail).

however one important (if not the most important) thing in my opinion is that it should run on CentOS.
Since CentOS is basically a binary copy of RedHat Enterprise Linux with some stripped RH artwork this will have 2 advantages:
- long term support (RedHat will support each major version for 7 years), so CentOS will too
- if Amahi is used in SOHO RedHat might be purchased (either ordered with the server or separately) for support reasons.

With regards to the implementation of the things you mention: of course you're free to contribute to the project yourself. That may be with testing stuff, helping out on the boards or IRC or really "digging deep" with development. All efforts help, and you've already shown a contribution by posting this suggestion

I was testing out CentOS last night and there is ALOT that needs to be done with it, surprisingly so, since it is really Fedora 8 right now and also does not have near as many packages in yum as Fedora, you can take a look at some notes I have made in the wiki (http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/CentOS) and see there is a LONG list of deps needed just for hdactl. Could take alot longer than I expected.

Now if you would like to test with me, I would be glad to pursue this further, but as of now, im really the only one interested (other than cpg but he has his hand full).

[Lincee]

good idea, but not sure if this is going to be taken up. Cpg might comment on that.

one thing you state is "all thats missing so far is a descent web interface that could interact with the mailserver."
uhm, not sure what you mean by that. you mean for configuring the back end? or for reading e-mail (front end).
for the back end I really don't see the need since you'll only set it up once and it just works if properly configured...
for front end you can rely on either a mailclient or a webapp (like IlohaMail or Squirrelmail).

however one important (if not the most important) thing in my opinion is that it should run on CentOS.
Since CentOS is basically a binary copy of RedHat Enterprise Linux with some stripped RH artwork this will have 2 advantages:
- long term support (RedHat will support each major version for 7 years), so CentOS will too
- if Amahi is used in SOHO RedHat might be purchased (either ordered with the server or separately) for support reasons.

With regards to the implementation of the things you mention: of course you're free to contribute to the project yourself. That may be with testing stuff, helping out on the boards or IRC or really "digging deep" with development. All efforts help, and you've already shown a contribution by posting this suggestion

Hello you,
i thought i might run into you in this thread

what i ment was the backend.
you say you only need to configure it once?
how about adding/editting/deleting users?
im not sure how things work in other country's, but in holland we have quite a few company's (SOHO, so you wish)
that have employees on a per project basis.
i for one prefer to regulairy "clean out" the database of users.
(does this make any sense?)
also, if targetted at small company's, what about if they grow?
servers may need to be placed elsewhere, configurations may change.
yes, there are tools like webmin that could do that, but why add a complex configuration tool, if simple does the trick?
in the wiki i allready added an example (xmail in this case, its lightweight and easy to configure)
i welcome your light on the matter ofcourse

[marcel]

Why a sepperate business edition? I think Amahi must be modular (Clarkconnect a SBS server uses the same technique). If you want a function install it.
I also want most functions a business server has. Why not host your own E-mail server? Why not host your own website? The server is 24/7 on.
What I like about Clarkconnect is the gateway mode. So you can control your network from Clarkconnect. What I don't know how safe it is, but Ebox also has a gateway mode. By the way Clarkconnect has upgrade to centOS 5. What I like about Amahi is the web-apps that must remain. Maybe it's a idea to build a community edition of Amahi and a enterprise edition for businesses. The enterprise edition offers support and maybe some extra modules that can be activated. I certainly want to pay for a enterprise edition if the price is right (not what microsoft ask for their server licence ).

[moredruid]

I thought as much as well

good thing you put a topic here where it belongs.

about the user adding etc:
the way this currently works in linux (by default at least, this is configurable) is that you create a normal user account and that that account automagically gets an e-mail address (username@yourdomain.tld). So adding,editing and deleting users can already be done through the usermanagement interface of Amahi. Perhaps we can add a line in there for the /etc/aliases file so you can have a proper e-mail adress like your.name@domain.tld instead of username@domain.tld. That shouldn't be too hard.

About Holland: yeah I know, I'm from Holland myself and my girlfriend has a Home Office
This is why I chose Amahi: it has the SOHO options I really needed and some (currently a lot more thanks to massive progress) options I wanted or just liked.

I don't want to run my mail on that server as well, since it exposes your precious server to the outside world (even if only a few ports) which is something that I consider to be too insecure. I might be a bit paranoid about that, but hey... better safe than sorry, I just can't afford to have our files exposed or lost (yes I do offsite backup as well for redundancy).

With regards to BrandonK's remark: which version of CentOS are you using? I'm hoping to test a little bit since I already want to fiddle around with Xen and I should be able to combine this with some Amahi testing on CentOS 5.3

[bsk]

With regards to BrandonK's remark: which version of CentOS are you using? I'm hoping to test a little bit since I already want to fiddle around with Xen and I should be able to combine this with some Amahi testing on CentOS 5.3

I was working with CentOS 5.3, im now working on Fedora11 with another person, but when that is resolved I plan to hop back to CentOS and give it a shot. need to get f11 going first though.

[rampage537]

janjacobs has the same idea that i do about being modular. Have a business, multimedia, security, home automation modules etc.. that are separate add-ons of the core platform.

[Lincee]

janjacobs has the same idea that i do about being modular. Have a business, multimedia, security, home automation modules etc.. that are separate add-ons of the core platform.

as i have said on multi ocasions in the channel, the biggest advantage amahi has over any home OR soho server is its flexibility in adding apps without too much hassle,
that said, the reason i would want a business edition is quite simple.

as a company, i dont wanna run multimedia software, and i definatly dont want my users to tinker arround with the server settings.
as of current, amahi works well within homes, the dashboard can be protected with a quick fix if needed.
but thats not what i want for my office users
i want stability, well tested apps, and i want security layers that are not needed in a usual home configuration.
hence, i opted the idea for a business edition, since many feel that amahi should not be made any more difficult then it allready is!
whilst i agree with that, i definatly dont wanna miss amahi in my office either!

[Lincee]

This idea is not dead yet!
just so you all know