On a warm summer day in 1981, I tried to drag my Radio Shack TRS-80 Model IV out to the picnic table—too many wires! This year I finally cut the wires. My laptop now connects to an IEEE 802.11b wireless network. I can carry my laptop from home to garden, dropping nary a packet. I can also tap into the Internet and connect to my employer's servers from anywhere at home.
In my home office, I currently have a development Web server, a wireless access point, and a gateway router. That's three boxes, and the server is noisy and power-hungry. And yes, there are still too many wires, and it's hard to configure and maintain. Thus, I see a niche for a product that could roll the features I use into one, simple package—one that would be easy to set up and manage. The same package could be equally useful in a small office.
Celestix has created just such a product. The Aries is a tiny, virtually silent box that can work as a full, Linux-based Web server, a firewall router, and a wireless access point. It has a 200 MHz Cyrix MediaGX (Pentium equivalent) processor, 64MB of RAM, and a 10 GB, 2.5 inch IDE drive. With its external power supply, it weighs 3.5 pounds, less than many of my Unix books.
Celestix Aries Network Server
Celestix
www.celestix.com
cost: $999Pros: Treat it as an office appliance or as a full x86-based Linux server and it won't let you down. Cons: It's so small you might knock it off your desk. Keep a good, current set of backups in case you do.
Once you get the Aries home, start it up and connect your existing networked workstation or laptop to the primary 10/100BT Ethernet port. The Aries comes with both straight and crossover Ethernet cables, so you won't even need a hub. Set your laptop to accept an IP address via DHCP, and then connect to the Aries with a Web browser. You can either plug the secondary 10BT Ethernet port in to your DSL/cable modem, plug an external modem in to the serial port, or plug a PCMCIA modem in to one of two slots. Then, you can set up the Aries as a firewall.
The first time you connect to the Aries via a browser, it walks you through a setup wizard. You can set up a firewall, incoming and outgoing email, file sharing via Samba, DHCP, DNS, and Internet proxy services. The Apache Web server is already on, as are telnet and FTP services. The system default establishes a Linux "ipchains" firewall between your system and the Internet. If you want to expose services such as telnet and FTP to the outside, you can limit your exposure by using TCP wrappers. However, configuring that requires you to directly editing system files. Likewise, to provide controlled access to the Web server from outside, you must edit the Apache httpd.conf file. Make no mistake, if you aren't a Linux junkie, there's a steep learning curve once you try to move beyond the Web interface. You can also manage user accounts management can also done via the interface.
The Aries has an LCD front panel. Normally the LCD displays system status—whether the Internet connection is up (a little cloud icon), the current date and time, the status of the print and mail queues, and CPU and disk activity. There are also four buttons for changing the settings on the Ethernet interfaces, starting and stopping most of the available services, and powering down.
A CD comes with the Aries; it contains Web browsers for Linux and Windows, copies of Acrobat Reader, and a PDF-format manual that includes details on using the front panel controls. You don't really need this last item because the front panel interface is pretty simple. The Web interface also includes an extensive Help section.
All Around the SOHO
Although Aries runs a customized version of Red Hat 6.2 with much of the customization at the kernel level, don't let this intimidate you if you aren't a Linux hacker. You can use the Aries as an appliance server, and it can occupy several niches. For a home office, you might use it to replace a firewall or gateway router and for its handy print server. In a small office, you can use the Web and file servers for sharing files. If you add a PC-card modem, you can support a dialup connection for remote users, and enable a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to allow secure connections over the Internet. Rolling all of these functions into a single Aries box could be very cost effective.
A small office could run its public Web site on the Aries, though I'd be inclined to host the pages on my ISP's server and use the Apache server on the Aries for testing and development.
I'd like to see a future Aries version that includes fax server support—something that would be pretty easy to add this to a Linux system.
Going Mobile
Now, pop a Lucent Orinoco card into one of the PC-card slots. This turns the Aries into an IEEE 801.11b-compliant wireless access point. The Aries system is set up to provide the same services via the wireless card that it provides on its Ethernet interface. My laptop picked up a network address via DHCP, and the Aries routed traffic over my DSL line and onto the Internet. Functionally, this is the same as my Linksys access point combined with my Asante router.
A GUI Even a Sysadmin Can Love
Moving beyond the appliance stage is easy. You can telnet into the Aries and work at the command-line level just as you would on any other Linux server. I appreciated the fact that I was able to edit files by hand. These changes are also reflected in the GUI. I could delegate maintenance of user accounts and email aliases to my office manager—because it can be handled by the Web-based GUI—and still use telnet and vi to directly edit the system files whenever I want.
You can also plug a standard VGA monitor and PS-2 keyboard in to the Aries, and log in directly on the console. Since the Aries uses an Intel-compatible processor, you can use standard x86 binaries on it. For example, if you want to add a MySQL server to your Aries, you can use RPM format binaries that are compiled for a Red Hat 6.2 x86 system. This is much easier than finding binaries for the Cobalt 2 or Rebel Netwinder servers, which use more exotic processors.
Backup and Restore
The only serious rough spot I found on the Aries was when I made a mistake changing a system file and consequently made the system unbootable. There is no single-user mode, so I invoked the emergency start procedure by powering up the server and holding down two front-panel buttons. This causes the Aries to boot from a different partition that's reserved for this purpose. Unfortunately, the only option once Aries is booted in recovery mode is to reformat and rebuild the main system and data partitions. This would be a disaster if you didn't have recent full backups.
Celestix should allow a single-user mode prompt on the console so that experienced users could fix simple typos instead of being forced to completely reformat the partitions.
Make sure you learn how to use the Web-based backup and restore facilities. This way, if you have any problems, you won't lose everything you've done. Currently, performing a backup just copies the contents of the Aries hard drive to a tar-format archive file on your client system. A more sophisticated backup script would be nice here.
All Boxed Up
The Aries defines a new niche: It's not a replacement for a big Compaq or Dell file server. You can't throw in another hard drive or add more memory—it's a sealed box. Instead, consider the Aries as an appliance and a replacement for several other dedicated boxes such as a firewall/gateway router, print server, and wireless access point. If you use it in your home, you will appreciate the fact that it has no fan, uses only 15 watts of power, and takes up very little space.
This is the best implementation of a Linux-based file server for SOHO applications that I have seen. As with any new product, I found a few glitches, but Celestix is on course with the Aries.
Brian is cofounder of Harbro Systems in Santa Rosa, CA. Harbro develops Linux-based shared Internet services for home and office. Write to him at [email protected].
