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#1 Thu, 09/29/2005 - 13:38
JackMartin

Mandrake

I have built an ISP, and am building a server for webhosting and mail. I have Mandrake 10.1, and am planning on using Q-Mail (toaster) for my mail. I have been using webmin for configuration. I admit I am still an idiot in the Linux world. DNS and Apache are kicking me around. I downloaded Virtualmin (GPL) and have been amazed at how well it works (even though I still can't get my website to work). I am wondering when the Mandriva package will be available? I have been so pleased with your other packages, I would like to purchase Pro. Will it work with QMail Toaster? What about Mandrake 10.1 - do I need to upgrade to 10.2?

Fri, 09/30/2005 - 00:22
JackMartin

Virtualmin GPL helped me get my website operational. Once I found that by default Webmin was set to put the Virtual Servers in httpd.conf, and Apache was preconfigured to look in Vhosts.conf. I corrected that and all is good. I am anxious to see VirtualMin Pro for Mandrake. Not sure if I really need it, but Webmin and Virtualmin have been so good to me that I have to!!!

Sat, 10/01/2005 - 20:43
Joe
Joe's picture

Hey Jack,

We will definitely be supporting the latest Mandrake release in the EA2 release (Early Adopter 2), which will be available this weekend (a few days late, as is becoming the norm for me). I suspect we will be able to support 10.1 as well as 10.2.

Virtualmin Professional currently assumes a fresh OS install--though there are ways around this, they aren't immediately obvious nor are they particularly supported at the moment. During installation we setup Postfix, Dovecot and Procmail for SMTP, retrieval, and delivery. Also configured are ClamAV and SpamAssassin for use on a per-domain basis. We recommend this configuration for Virtualmin Professional. That said, if you strongly prefer another set of mail components Virtualmin Professional does not lose the ability deal with QMail or Sendmail. We do recommend our selected components, and they will be the "Golden Path" to an easy to maintain mail system. It will be the best tested, most understood, and will probably have the most features.

Hope this helps with your plans.

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Tue, 10/04/2005 - 19:55
JackMartin

Kinda curious that since you guys support Q-Mail in the GPL version, why aren't you supporting it in the pro version. To be honest I haven't looked at the other pkgs much, I have researched QMail, and liked it. That being said - I don't have it installed yet. If you are going to support Mandrake 10.1, I can remove the one domain on the system, and re-install Mandrake to use Virtualmin Pro. Will I be able to install a Radius server to co-exist?

Thu, 10/06/2005 - 02:32 (Reply to #4)
Joe
Joe's picture

Hey Jack,

QMail support isn't going away. We just had to choose a set of "official" packages that we install automatically and configure, and QMail wasn't the winner in that selection process (we chose Postfix, Dovecot, Procmail, SpamAssassin, and ClamAV for the mail chain, and Maildir for the spool type). There's just no way we could deal with every possible variable--and no one (except maybe Gentoo users!) would enjoy an installer that asks 30 questions to figure out what kind of system you want at the other end. Documentation would be a nightmare, as would support.

In short, there will soon be an option in the installer to install just the minimum stuff, and users can then choose all of their own components and other stuff, just like Virtualmin GPL (only a little bit fancier, since it will setup automatic updates for all of our modules among other things). This will never be the "Golden Path" to a system that Just Works, but it will be a good choice for folks who need to use QMail or strongly prefer some component that we don't support in our automatic installation. We are well aware that flexibility is a huge reason that many people choose Virtualmin (and Webmin and Usermin) over any other tool. There just is no other system with this kind of flexibility in every regard, and we'd be foolish to remove that flexibility for folks who need it.

We will be supporting the two most recent versions of Mandrake (just like every other OS that we support).

Virtualmin Professional is very friendly to other software being installed on the system, but I can't say for sure that a Radius server is among the things that it will work with--are you planning to use the Radius server for mail users, or for something unrelated to Virtualmin? I have never maintained a Radius server, so I'm unsure of what problems it might cause.

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Thu, 10/13/2005 - 11:27
JackMartin

Since I have utterly blew up my qmail toaster install. It looks like I need a format anyway. When will the program be ready for Mandrake 10.2?

Thu, 10/13/2005 - 11:41
JackMartin

I do need to know if this will co-exist with other programs. I plan on adding a Radius server in the near future, and would like for it to reside there. I know that you are unsure about Radius at this time, we can work on that one later, maybe a Webmin module for FreeRadius :-) I do need to run APCUPSD on the machine. I have a second server that will act as a backup using heartbeat, if I can ever get it ghosted over to it. I read that the license will be possible for that. Keep up the great work. Just tell me when I can buy it - I am ready to format and start over. The golden path is what I am looking for. I really don't care for your choices in software, but the path is what I need. I work a full time job, am running a fledgling Wireless ISP, and for some stupid reason decided to host my own web and mail servers....

Fri, 10/14/2005 - 06:46 (Reply to #7)
Joe
Joe's picture

Hey Jack,

If it isn't something that directly interacts with mail/web/DNS, then there's no question of whether a given software package will work alongside Virtualmin. Even Radius, it just depends on what you're using it for (again, I know next to nothing about Radius--I know it is an authentication system used by dialup and other types of ISP...that's the sum total of my knowledge), and I'd be surprised if there's any problem. In fact, there's no doubt that it will run on the same machine without trouble, I just don't know if you'll be able to use the two in the way you want (again, I don't know what you want to do). That's what I'm getting at: if it runs on a system without Virtualmin, it will run on the same system with Virtualmin...but if you want to integrate Virtualmin with some other software in some useful way, there has to be some awareness on one side of the equation or the other.

UPS monitoring is wholly orthogonal to what we're doing (though a System and Server Status alert for it would be a nice trick, and not too difficult), and there's no reason at all Virtualmin/Webmin/Usermin would get in your way.

And to answer your other question, Mandrake support is very very close. I'm still fighting with SuSE (yast is awe-inspiring in many ways, but damned if it aint a pain for package management...give me yum or apt-get any day), but Mandrake is falling into line nicely. I expect to release EA2 this weekend. EA2 adds quite a few new features, as well as SUSE and Mandrake support (and probably a slew of new bugs!).

Hope this helps.

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