ClearFoundation is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a new paid app - Webmail.  This app is intended for businesses and organizations who use the ClearOS IMAP/POP3 Mail Stack and want to offer users the option of a webmail experience.

Webmail is a $US 15 one-time cost for unlimited users.  For the first time, we are using a paid model to help support/fund upstream development from the Roundcube community.

For more information, please visit the ClearCenter Marketplace.

Thanks,

ClearFoundation

The ClearCenter development team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a new paid app - Mail Archive.  This app is intended for businesses and organizations who need to meet regulatory compliance or enforce internal policies for e-mail use in the workplace.  Mail Archive stores an exact duplicate of all incoming and outgoing mail when configured in either mail filter gateway mode or final destination MTA.

Mail Archive is a $US 95/yr subscription service (up to 50 mailboxes) with discounts offered via ClearCenter Partners and to educational and non-profit organizations.  The app can be purchased and installed on both ClearOS Community or Professional editions.  For environments over 50 mailboxes, please contact ClearCenter Sales.

Feedback (via email or the forums) is always welcome.

Thanks,

ClearCenter Development Team

The ClearFoundation development team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a new FREE app - Software RAID Manager.  This app provides an integrated Webconfig UI to the ubiquitous mdadm software RAID management tool.

The app will be available for install via the Marketplace next week.  For now, if you have software RAID on your ClearOS server and want to give it a whirl, from the command line, run:

yum --enablerepo=clearos-test install app-raid

Feedback (via email or the forums) is always welcome.

Thanks,

CF Development Team

A new app from the ClearFoundation development team has been added to the Marketplace this week.  The app integrates a Dropbox client onto your ClearOS server, providing users with the ability add a Dropbox folder to their home directory on the server and have the ability to access that folder from any device (smartphone, tablet, laptop etc.) with a Dropbox sync to the same account.

The app is available free of charge.  It's pretty simple in it's configuration and inner workings (think version one dot oh) and doesn't use any Dropbox API's (a GUI-less Linux client from binaries provided by Dropbox are used), but if anyone in the community would like to add features, please connect with us to continue on with this app's development.

Documentation for the Dropbox app can be found here.

The ClearCenter team will likely be looking at GoogleDrive and Dropbox for Teams in the near future for cloud based file storage/sync for our end-users in companies, education, distributed enterprise and government.

With the release of ClearOS 6 drawing closer, we'd like to update the community on the continued evolution and direction of ClearOS.

ClearOS 6 marks a significant step forward on two fronts to engage developers and ISV's currently outside the ClearOS community to develop on the ClearOS 6 platform:

• the new webconfig framework
• ClearCenter's Marketplace.

Webconfig Framework

The re-factoring of the ClearOS 5 webconfig code to utilize a more modern, secure and extensible PHP/UI framework (CodeIgniter and Jquery/JqueryUI was chosen) will assuredly make new developers to ClearOS feel more 'at home' and be productive faster than learning a completely custom API.  In addition, significant resources were allocated towards documenting the development process and creating tools to lower the barrier to entry to new developers and OSS projects/ISVs interested in integrating into ClearOS.

ClearCenter's Marketplace

Modules (renamed apps in ClearOS 6) in ClearOS 5x essentially originated from a very small pool of developers - 95% of which worked for ClearCenter.  With the new ClearCenter Marketplace, a framework exists for developers and companies outside the core development team to easily (and very visibly) have their contributions adopted by the ever-growing ClearOS install base.  Marketplace not only abstracts away from the developer the tasks of marketing, downloading and installing apps - it also provides a variety of business models in which to do so.  The Marketplace will have both free and paid apps, supported and unsupported, all at the discretion of the developer/vendor.

The Future of ClearOS - Two Versions Today - More to Come!

With a common framework and Marketplace in place, the ClearOS platform can evolve towards markets currently being under-served.  For example, a Home Edition has been discussed on the forums in numerous threads but the lack of apps specific to home use (media servers, home security, home automation etc.) have yet to warrant a separate image (i.e. ClearOS Home Edition).

The team at ClearCenter (the single largest commercial organisation supporting ClearOS) feels now is the right time to differentiate the solution specific to ClearCenter's focus - small/distributed business, education, NGOs and government.

To accommodate and future-proof against these changes, ClearOS Enterprise Edition 5x will be renamed ClearOS Community Edition in 6.x and beyond, to more aptly reflect the development model and support processes in play.

At the same time, a second product ISO will be launched by ClearCenter, named ClearOS Professional.  This image will share much of the same code-base and OSI licensing as the Community Edition.  The main differences (explained in more detail when ClearCenter officially announces the release) will be the 'built-in' commercial support and a Marketplace that includes all the apps in the Community Edition in addition to half a dozen or so apps that will be exclusive to the Professional Edition.  In addition to simplifying the messaging and providing more clarity to new users of ClearOS, this change was necessary to adequately support and maintain the apps focused on installations where there is a business-case to do so.

To existing users...rest assured no functionality is being removed in the move from version 5 to version 6.  All apps entering the Professional Edition Marketplace are new features that represent time invested by the ClearCenter team and/or partnerships ClearCenter has made with ISV's (i.e. Google, Kaspesky, Zarafa etc.).  Those apps are:

Active Director Connector
Google Apps Syncronization
Kaspersky Antimalware (for file, email and gateway)
Zarafa Small Business
Central Management

A forum thread for further discussion on this topic has been created and available here.

Cheers,

Ben

With the ClearOS Enterprise Alpha (and shortly thereafter, Beta) image nearing release, there are bound to be questions on one of the major features making its debut in the upcoming release - ClearCenter's Marketplace.

Simply put, ClearCenter's Marketplace is an online store featuring apps and services (both free and paid) for ClearOS Enterprise.  For those using or familiar with Android smartphones, there is a good analogy that will help clarify the direction we are taking.  Let's start with the following two premises:

1.  ClearOS is to Server, Network & Gateway what Android OS is to Smartphones.

2.  ClearCenter's new Marketplace is to ClearOS Enterprise (the platform) what Google's Android Marketplace is to Android OS.

Apologies for the delay in bringing you Part 4! Too much to do...too little time.

For those joining late or who have troubles (like me) remembering what they did yesterday, let's do a quick recap.

In Part 1, our focus was to find a solution to the problem "Where has all my disk space gone". We settled on some code written by a software-engineer in the Netherlands who wrote Philesight - a web-based graphical chart of disk usage on a Linux server.

The goal in Part 2 was to get Philesight installed in our environment (ClearOS's webconfig), with a bit of an introduction to packages and RPM dependencies.

We then graduated to embedding the output Philesight provides (i.e. the graph) right into webconfig. Also in Part 3, we created the necessary localization files and took a quick peek into cron jobs and scripts.

In Part 4, we're going to package our work. Ugh....packaging. Gotta do it though, otherwise, we'll have everyone becoming experts in the command line environment and see hourly wages for Linux admins/developers plummet...can't have that on my conscience! Grab a Red Bull...we could be in for a long haul.

In Part 2 of "Princess and the ClearOS", we managed to drink our way into oblivion after getting Philesight installed and displaying the disk usage graph for our ClearOS server.

Before we move on, let's make sure we give credit where credit is due and extend the customary "I'll buy you a beer if I'm ever in..." traditions.

Zevv...thank you for your contribution to ClearOS and OSS in general!

Today's goal is relatively straightforward...we're going to create all the necessary files to have Philesight update the summary database once per day and display as a menu item in ClearOS's webconfig interface.

In Part 1, we found an ideal solution in Philesight for determining where our disk space usage is being consumed.  In part 2, we'll get this software installed on our ClearOS server and functioning.

Put on your developer hat (no, not that kind of developer), and let's get started. Unfortunately, due to this being a 4 part blog, at some point, I'm going to have to assume a base level of technical knowledge.  Accessing the Unix command line, basic shell commands and using a text editor falls into that 'required knowledge' category.  If you're really new to Linux and have yet to jump into to the command line, you'll find some useful resources here, here and here.

Most software for Linux will have dependencies.  A dependency means the software you are intent on installing requires (or is dependent on) other software having been installed correctly, and of a compatible version.  Rather than re-writing a library to perform some task that's already been written, developers are naturally lazy beings and will jump through hoops not to create work for themselves.  Hence, they rely on other software libraries, applications or even languages to be installed, in order for their 'widget' to function properly.

Installing software on a Linux distribution can really be a quick turn-off to a new user coming from the Windows world when one gets into dependency hell.  In part 4 of this series, our goal will be to make installing this module simple (i.e. one click on a page in Webconfig). For now, because we're breaking new ground on this module, we need to follow the installation requirements listed on the Philesight website so that it will function correctly.

Ever have the feeling "ClearOS is good piece of software...maybe even great. I just wish it had __________".  All around the world, in 22 different languages, I'm sure the ending to that sentence has been completed with an equally broad range of functions - from running a media server used for streaming music and movies to your TV to cooking up a corn-beef on rye. For those that are interested, the former is coming soon while the latter...well, maybe never and definitely not from me...I'm not a big fan of the salted beef.

At any rate, I had this exact feeling over the weekend when I started wondering how I managed to fill up a 140 GB hard disk drive on my ClearOS server at home.  Seems the combination of having two girls under the age of 5 has a rather exponential effect of disk space usage with:

a) the number of digital photos of the two of them growing up (Doh! I had to buy the 15.1 megapixel model)

b) the astounding number of princess movies one can downlo....ahem, collect

But I digress, and I'm only going to get myself into copyright trouble. I know about Bash's "du" using a wack of parameters and possibly having to resort to piping the output to yet more cryptic bash commands...