October is here and so is Service Pack 1 for ClearOS Enterprise 5.2! We have added a couple of new features in this release:
The third party software modules integration in the service pack is just a start. We are working away on the next generation in ClearOS 6.0.
ClearFoundation's Community Oversight Committee is pleased to announced today that Dave Loper has been named President of ClearFoundation. Mr. Loper will manage the development and maintenance of the ClearFoundation community. His technology background and expertise will be valuable in defining the future plans and continued flourishment of ClearFoundation and ClearOS.
We would like to thank John Terpstra for his service and involvement with ClearFoundation. We appreciate his continued insight into Linux and the open source community.
Cast your wish for ClearOS Home edition and help focus the scope, features and road map priority.
Simple Soft Products signs Value Added Distributor Agreement after success with ClearOS and ClearBOX Solutions
San Antonio, TX - September 1, 2010 - ClearCenter, a leading provider of open source Linux Server, Network and Gateway solutions, welcomed Simple Soft Products today as an Exclusive Value Added Distributor in the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) region.
“Simple Soft Products brings the kind of resources, commitment and expertise ClearCenter needs in the Benelux region”, said Michael Proper, CEO of ClearCenter. He added, “The ClearCenter Partner program allows partners like Simple Soft Products to build a valuable business with ClearCenter Linux Server, Network and Gateway solutions. We look forward to working with Jeroen Goorts and his team to bring ClearOS, ClearBOX and ClearCenter services to the Benelux region.”
“Since 1996, Simple Soft Products has provided high quality IT solutions that are simple and affordable for the end user”, said Jeroen Goorts, founder and director at Simple Soft Products. “Appropriate to this mission, we continually look for systems and solutions that fulfill those tasks and find that ClearCenter fits perfectly. We are excited to standardize and deploy ClearCenter services, ClearOS and ClearBOX for partners and customers in the Benelux region.”
Simple Soft Products will inventory ClearBOX servers as well as recruit and train regional partners. Simple Soft Products will also translate the ClearCenter site into Dutch and assist in marketing ClearCenter and ClearFoundation in the Benelux region.
About ClearCenter
ClearCenter, based in Salt Lake City, UT - U.S.A. and Toronto, Ontario - Canada, provides professional products and services for ClearOS, an open source Linux server distribution with Network, Gateway and Server features that can be tailored to the needs of small IT environments that is simple, secure & affordable. ClearOS is installed in more than 140 countries in over 20 languages. ClearCenter updates software, content and services for ClearOS using ClearSDN, a cloud based Service Delivery Network deployed in data centers around the globe. For more information about ClearCenter, visit www.clearcenter.com or call 1+801.851.5555.
For more information about Simple Soft Products, visit www.sspnet.nl
A salesman comes to you and says, 'I have a client that is really excited about using ClearOS and getting rid of their over-complex environment.' Well maybe not this excited, but you get the point.
You start to ask the technical questions and you find out that they are running Quickbooks Enterprise 10 (QBE10) in their environment. As the engineer you start to think of all the creative ways you can get this done, virtualization, running the DB engine from a workstation that stays on, keeping their old Windows Server around ... But for this client, none of them fit the bill as nicely as an integrated solution.
That integration barrier is coming down here at ClearCenter. We have completed phase one of Quickbooks Enterprise 10 integration with ClearOS 5.2. This first phase consists of command line instruction through the ClearFoundation and support of QBE10 through ClearCare. Subsequent phases will include the addition of QBE Server 10 as a module in Webconfig and integrated configuration of the QBE service through its own database screen.
Quickbooks Enterprise 10 is a product of Intuit who has been helping small businesses and individuals with their financial accounting and tax preparation needs for over 25 years.
Read more...Many thanks go out to a number of people who have helped to close a bug which caused an error message to display when joining a Samba domain. What is significant and noteworthy about this bug and the resolution is that it required a team of people to solve it from multiple companies. The bug is described here at this link.
I'd like to thank the partners of ClearCenter who originally reported the bug, the Samba team members who confirmed and tested the bug, and special thanks to the engineers at Microsoft who found the solution.
David Loper
VP Technology, ClearCenterClearCenter’s ClearBOX and ClearOS on-premise solutions integrate seamlessly with cloud-based applications and services such as Google Apps.
San Antonio, TX - August 9, 2010 - ClearCenter, a leading provider of open source Linux Server, Network and Gateway solutions, today detailed its Hybrid Service Provider strategy during the “Selling the Green IT Promise” panel discussion at CompTIA Breakaway 2010. ClearCenter’s ClearBOX 300 is a power efficient Linux server that consolidates all on-premise Server, Network and Gateway functionality with integrated cloud based services including Google Apps, Remote Server Backup, Content Filter Update, Dynamic VPN and more.
“From its inception, ClearBOX was designed to integrate cloud based services with on-premise solutions for Network, Server and Gateway functionality,” said Micheal Proper, CEO, ClearCenter. He continued, “Most applications are moving to the cloud, but there will always be on-premise Server, Network and Gateway functionality. ClearBOX 300 elegantly provisions services, updates, monitoring, and backup through ClearSDN - ClearCenter’s cloud based Service Delivery Network.”
Hybrid cloud is widely understood as a combination of public, community or private cloud applications offered under a measured or monthly service model. ClearCenter’s ClearBOX 300 operates on-premise to perform critical functions on the local area network while seamlessly integrating cloud based services and applications. Hybrid cloud solutions can also create mirrored or duplicate services for both LAN and Internet based environments, so that applications and data are always available in the case of loss of connection or disaster recovery.
ClearBOX fulfills the “green” IT promise by consolidating all on-premise Server, Network and Gateway functions into a single hardware appliance to dramatically reduce the eco-footprint and energy requirements for the small or distributed business. What used to require an entire IT server rack for a small business - Gateway, VPN, file server, print server, application servers and more - is now replaced by a single, power efficient server integrated with cloud based applications and services.
ClearCenter Partners gain from the Hybrid Service Provider cloud strategy by providing more than valuable consulting and configuration services for ClearCenter solutions. The hybrid cloud strategy also enables recurring revenue from both ClearCenter services and cloud based applications. ClearCenter Partners are experts in creating the appropriate hybrid cloud environment for each customer based upon their individual needs, applications and security requirements.
ClearBOX running ClearOS 5.2 is released! This release includes new features and utilities. Some of these features are contributions from community members and innovations at ClearCenter labs.
In addition to the great features provided by ClearOS 5.2, ClearBOX 300 now features:
ClearBOX is an all inclusive ClearOS appliance solution for businesses and users. Get the most out of ClearOS, get yours today!
Thank you to our great development team at ClearFoundation and the many contributions and suggestions from the ClearFoundation community. With each release we improve the over-all feature base and performance of ClearOS, the leading open source linux server, network and gateway solution for small business and distributed environments. The primary ClearOS 5.2 changes include:
At ClearFoundation, we are always improving the open source environment for SMB and distributed IT environments with dedicated linux server features such as open source firewall and open source VPN packages. We listen and deliver!
As usual, please consult the Release Notes for specific upgrade information regarding your ClearOS version.
Have fun and thank you!
The ClearFoundation Team & Community
The first release candidate for ClearOS Enterprise 5.2 is now available. All the major features have been implemented and upgrades from ClarkConnect 4.x and later are now supported. The major changes since beta 2 include:
There are still a dozen of bugs that need to be squashed before the final release. We also need to finish some experimental features that will be released in ClearOS 6.x. The final release is just around the corner!
Please read the release note for more information.
The ClearOS Enterprise 5.2 Beta 2 release is here! The big news with this release is the available upgrade path from ClarkConnect 5.0. Please keep in mind that this is still a beta, so proceed with the usual caution. Other changes since 5.2 Beta 1 include:
Please read the release notes for more information.
The ClearOS Enterprise 5.2 Beta 1 release is here! Apart from squashing the important bugs, the big news with this release is the available upgrade path from ClearOS 5.1. Please keep in mind that this is still a beta, so proceed with the usual caution. Other changes since 5.2 Alpha 1 include:
Please read the release notes for more information.
The ClearOS Enterprise 5.2 Alpha 1 release is here! Along with updating the base system to CentOS 5.5, this release adds several administrator tools:
In addition, the release provides improved integration with third party mail services; notably Google Apps and Zarafa. Other features for 5.2 are also in the pipeline. Please read the release notes for more information.
It's nice to get high marks for our ease of use and integrated services! Linux Format Magazine, the top Linux magazine in the UK, just published (June issue, page 30) their roundup of firewall distros.
From the review: "ClearOS is by far the sleekest looking firewall distribution...But this distribution is about a lot more than sleek looks."
They found ClearOS to be easy to use and full of extra services to run your network. Clearly the ClearOS setup, interface and configuration scores high in the roundup. We'll keep working on it!
Get the magazine here: http://www.linuxformat.com/
Have you ever had a wish come true? Now you can! ClearFoundation is proud to introduce the ClearFoundation Community Wish List. We created an innovative way to ensure that individual community members can influence the direction and development of ClearOS. With the ClearFoundation Wish List, every community member can make their wishes come true by using their wishes to vote for specific features, ideas and functionality for ClearOS. This gives ClearOS developers and the ClearFoundation Team direct input from the people that use ClearOS! Like the idea? Log in and give it a try!
See you on the Wish List! - Michael Proper
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.
Many who use ClearOS for home servers or gateway services may wonder why so much effort has been placed by me and John Terpstra to the improvement of the Samba services in the core of ClearOS. The reason for me writing this is not to justify or rationalize the work and effort that has already been done and that will yet take place but rather to open your mind to the potential that ClearOS has as a platform for services.
The strength of the emerging technology capability in ClearOS is not the file services at all but rather the directory which powers the backend, and the authentication processes that occur. When your platform has this capability and does it well, you change a significant dynamic from just being a UTM, or small office server. You now have the power to authenticate, authorize, and provide access control to YOUR data, YOUR services, YOUR resources.
Now we move into possibilities of scalability, portability, inter-operability, and flexibility. The cost that must be paid for these improvements is convenience. When you implement these big business best practices you need to remove features which allow access without security. This causes heartburn for some people who just want to use ClearOS as a simple network USB drive equivalent. To these people, I apologize, there are bad guys who will exploit that and while we're not crippling the underlying software which provides this if you HAVE to have it, we will be making it more difficult to create this behaviour. If you have to have it, you will need to know more than you know about how it works and perhaps when you know more, you will choose not to do it that way. This is why UPnP is something you have to get in the forums and even though it would be trivial to add, we won't do it (not if I have anything to do with it). ClearOS is easy to use. This is its greatest strength and its greatest vulnerability.
The goal here is to make ClearOS, a distribution tailored for <50 users, capable of doing all the things that big businesses would need. This way compliance, IT best practices, competitive services, and robust architectures are also available for small business ... and homes. Open source makes this possible. ClearOS supports you, and thanks you for your support.
Shad Lords has joined the ClearFoundation Team as a core ClearOS developer. With Shad's background with SME Server, Shad brings a wealth of experience in Linux development. Key members of the SME Server Foundation - Charlie Brady, Shad Lords and Greg Zartman - have been on the ClearFoundation Committee for some time. There is obvious synergy between SME and ClearOS since both are Red Hat derivations.
"ClearOS is really exciting. The ClearFoundation Team is a solid group with a clear development path. It will be fun to contribute new ideas and develop new features for the ClearOS roadmap." Shad Lords added, "I believe ClearOS will lead the open source market with new, powerful innovations for small business and distributed IT."
Shad - Welcome to the Team!
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 case you missed it, Red Hat just announced the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta. We heard unofficial timelines earlier this year and adjusted the roadmap to reflect the expected Red Hat release dates. Up until recently, we were not sure if the post ClearOS 5.2 release was going to be 5.3 or 6.0. It's official -- it will be 6.0.
Just to update you on the expected release dates for ClearOS, a 5. 2 alpha/beta will be available in May/June with a final release available in June/July. Let me pre-empt the question that many people will ask -- when is 6.0 coming? The answer is ... drum roll ... when it's ready. Yes I know... a cliche.
Here's why...
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