Posts made by jrc

@wirestyle22

Yeah, it seems like an extra step that just complicates and confuses things.

To me a group is a collection of a certain type of user and is then used to streamline permissions to certain resources. EG Instead of giving read permission to Cathy, Joan and Frank, you can just create a group with them in it, and give that group read permission thereby simplifying your job.

I cannot for the life of me think why you would want a single user group with the same name as the user in it. Are there permissions that can only be assigned to a group rather than directly to the user?

What am I missing here?

@Tim_G

The machines you see in the picture are mostly 286 and 386 machines, so 1987 - 1991 or so. That said, 5.25' drives were still used in computers well into the early 90s.

@Mike-Davis

Do you need it findable on search engines? If the answer is no, then I don't think you need it indexed by the robots out there. Unless they do something else that I am not aware of (very possible).

Just remember that when a robot hits your site, it will generate bandwidth, and if you have a lot of them doing so, then you'd generate a lot of bandwidth. I vaguely recall someone else having an issue that was very similar to yours here, and the solution was denying robots access. No idea where I heard about it, may have been on Security Now, though I really am not sure.

@Mike-Davis

It was in an abandoned storage locker I bought. Everything in there was mid-90s and earlier. So that is why I am saying this thing has to be early 80s or older.

Anyone mention web crawlers on here? Indexing servers (like Google) will hit a website over and over again looking for changes to catalog and add to their index.

Try adding a robots.txt to the root (http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html(

@scottalanmiller

I am kicking myself for not photoing it more than I did, especially the back. Though I do not recall any markings on the back.

Honeywell did not make too many large machines as near as I can tell, so I am really hoping that some of the old timers on here might recognize it.

@scottalanmiller

CD Drives? The two parts with LEDs on them? No, those are actually hard drives on their side (notice the lack of eject buttons?). I'd guess it pre-dates CD-ROM drives, probably early 80s, possibly much older.

I would love to open it up and look all around the inside, however the dam thing is 3 hours north of me at the moment, so not able to do that until I move the remaining stuff down here.

I believe it is a mini mainframe from honeywell, but I simply cannot find any more info on it at all. Only thing I can find on Google is a pinterest post that references an ebay listing for the same machine, but that listing is either older than 90 days or has been removed. Either way it's a dead end.

So does anyone here have any idea about it??

EDIT: This machine is old, 1990 at latest, but probably much older, from the era of the mainframe.

NethServer would run in XenServer without issue, correct?

@JaredBusch said in Substitutes for Active Directory and Windows Server:

@scottalanmiller said in Substitutes for Active Directory and Windows Server:

You can turn those things off, of course.

Do this.

@scottalanmiller said in [Substitutes for Active Directory and Windows Server]

Or just use CentOS, Fedora, openSuse, Ubuntu, etc. as your Samba 4 base OS. Even FreeBSD is an option.

I would not do that. That requires more advanced knowledge of the pieces needed. Uunless the OP desires to learn those skills, doing things this way would be a waste of time when there are solid products available.

If I could maintain it 8 hours a day 7 days a week, then I would totally build it from scratch. Something that could be fun to do.

However, I can only maintain it from a distance and fleetingly, so having something that is tried and true, offers a solid community and has a time saving front end is what I would need in order to keep them up and running smoothly.

I'll give NethServer a go, since it seems to check the boxes I need.

@scottalanmiller

I like the option to use a Web front end, which the pre-builts seem to have. Community support for a specific build would also be pretty critical.

@scottalanmiller

Fair enough. They just use it for AD services (users, groups, access permissions, some minor group policy stuff and as a file server).

Sounds like NethServer could do all of that, and DNS as well.

Hmm, the problem with the pre-built ones you mentioned is that they come with a ton of things that won't be needed. There is no reason for it to handle email, or web filtering among other things. AD, DNS and File Server is all they need.

I assume the non-needed services can be turned off so that they do not consume any resources?

@coliver

The application is a custom (badly) build one that they have to use as per their franchise agreement. It has to be local, and it has to be on Windows.

@coliver

Pre-built is good, I am always a fan of like Pre-built!

I remember that ClearOS did this at one point, but it looks like ClearOS is no longer free, or at least the free version is limited.

@coliver

Is there a web front end that could used with it to make config easier? I am not shy to use the command line, but I do like to make my life easier when I can.

Are there any good linux substitutions for AD and Windows Server?

The client I have in mind for this is currently running about 10 workstations (Windows 7 Pro), all joined to AD domain. The server is used as a DC, DNS, file server and application server.

My thought was to replace Windows Server with a Linux distro and would smell, taste and look like a Windows AD server to the Windows clients and then split out the Application server onto it's own Windows VM (probably Windows 7, because that is all it really needs).

So what do you guys think? Is there a way to do this for free using Linux?

EDIT: Mods, can you move this into the IT Discussion section. I am not sure how I accidentally posted it here, second post today I've done that with.

@BRRABill

O, those are my favorite, but I never that the last bit, mine always go:

"Have you tried rebooting it"
"Yes, I think so..."
"When was that"
"Last week sometime.."
"Yeah, go ahead and restart and call me back if the problem persists"

The call back rate is about 1 in 10.

@BRRABill

Yeah, people laugh at me when I say that I hate computers. Not sure why, I genuinely do hate the f-ing things...