[BlueOnyx:01997] Re: Getting up to speed on Blue Onyx

[Michael Stauber]

Hi dnk,

> From what I can gather, Blue Onyx is just a fork, and open source as
>
> BQ was, and anyone can download and use it. Please correct me if I am
> incorrect (IE licensing fees, etc).

It's the same for BlueOnyx as it is for BlueQuartz: BlueOnyx is available 
under the under the Sun modified BSD license under which Sun released the 
RaQ550 sources.We kept the license terms the same as there was no reason to 
change them.

> Now if the above statement is true, is there a migration path?

Yes, there is. You can use CMU (the Cobalt Migration Utility) to export and 
import sites, users, their settings, emails and webpages. CMU is already 
installed on BlueQuartz and BlueOnyx:

/usr/sbin/cmuExport
/usr/sbin/cmuImport

Although the CMU version on BlueQuartz has some issues, so we usually 
recommend to download our version of it when you migrate. You can find our CMU 
for BluQuartz here:

http://www.blueonyx.it/index.php?page=migration-utility

> I noticed on the home page that there is some sort of upgrader
> script/installer coming. Is there an ETA on that? 

No, unfortunately not. The idea to provide an "in place" upgrader that 
transforms a BlueQuartz into a BlueOnyx has been canned. It's way to risky to 
upgrade a CentOS4 to CentOS5 and even the CentOS people advise against it.

So the best way is to install BlueOnyx from the ISO image and then use 
cmuImport to import the sites and user that you had exported with CMU on your 
BlueQuartz.

> I looked through the archives, but there seems to be no search option.

No problem. I just added a search function to the mailing list page that 
allows to search through the archives. As Gmane.org started mirroring our list 
a few days ago that's now easily possible.

> Is there any security updates still being done for the BQ (nuonce
> installer) that I can use until I can get this box updated to Blue
> Onyx?

Uuuh, that's a somewhat sour topic. Let me try to give a politicaly correct 
answer to this without getting too compassinate about it. It'll be difficult 
for me, though. :o)

The problem with CentOS 4 + BlueQuartz is twofold:

On one hand you get updates to the base OS from CentOS and on the other hand 
you get the GUI related updates from BlueQuartz.org.

That's the theory and it would all be well if that were true. In fact there 
may be no BlueOnyx if that was good enough.

CentOS is currently maintaining both CentOS4 and CentOS5. Two separate teams 
are dealing with this. Of course most of the developers moved to CentOS5 and 
just a small crew of caretakers maintains the old CentOS4 branch.

RedHat released RHEL 4.7 a bit over three months ago (13 weeks or 
thereabouts). However, CentOS 4.7 is still not out. They're even struggeling 
to release important security fixes (bind and kernel updates!) in a timely 
fashion. Often you get those on CentOS4 with an impressive and disturbing 
delay. 

Then there are the patches for BlueQuartz itself. The last BlueQuartz patch 
was released in March (proftpd update) and the one before that in January 
(dovecot update).

About six weeks ago I reported a security problem with BlueQuartz to the 
BlueQuartz developers, but they haven't fixed it yet.

So yeah: In theory you're still getting updates for BlueQuartz, but for 
practical purposes you're getting the short end of the stick and are several 
months behind in all areas.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber