[BlueOnyx:24629] Re: Old Blue Cobalts

[^Gecko^]

Also, Chris, hope to see some new tow videos, ROFL!!!

On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 2:25 AM ^Gecko^ <starlite528 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I remember Symantec had the 'Velociraptor" firewall appliance, which was a
> raq of some sort, except the front bezel was yellow instead of......cobalt
> blue.
> I don't know if that was some kind of licensing deal or what.
>
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 6:39 PM Rickard Osser <rickard.osser at bluapp.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Yeah, walking down memory lane...
>>
>> I got a Qube 2700 from a little know company named Cobalt Microserver. No
>> 88 when I checked the s/n...
>>
>> Anyway I saw this small notice in Linux Journal I guess:
>> -
>> Can you guess what DaveM is doing now?
>>
>> Yeah, porting Linux to MIPS at Cobalt Microserver..
>> -
>> DaveM ported Linux to Sparc and by using that I knew about him. I also
>> hajj opened to get the exact same idea for an integrated Soho server with a
>> Web-gui about 2 weeks before I saw the notice. I stopped developing and
>> called the company from Sweden instead, getting a distribution deal and my
>> first Qube.
>>
>> Anyway, many Qubes, RaQs and years later I'm still here.
>>
>> When they closed the Cobalt office in Amsterdam, they sent the rest of
>> the old stuff and repair kits to me in Stockholm.
>>
>> I made an WiFi AP of the qube2, and numerous SSL packages for qubes and
>> raqs, until they could implement it as standard with the raq3/4...
>>
>> All in all I think we sold around 600 Cobalts from 1999-2002 in Sweden
>> not selling more than 5 to any one customer. No big hosting partners and
>> only through the channel, resellers. But a lot of custom machines. Extra
>> disks, raids, larger disks, more memory and custom packages. It was fun...
>> :-)
>>
>> And very stylish! :-)
>>
>> BTW, In one conference about 2001 I saw a sales/support presentation
>> where they broke down sales figures and support calls to every country in
>> EMEA. I had sold 99% of all servers in Sweden in 2000, a few hundred and
>> there was only 1 support call from Sweden, not from me though... I actually
>> got a glass-plaque at the diner. Well, my partner in Denmark also got one,
>> for other reasons.
>>
>> Ahh... Memories. :-)
>>
>>
>> Sorry for taking up your time.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Rickard
>>
>> Michael Stauber <mstauber at blueonyx.it> skrev: (15 december 2020 00:43:17
>> CET)
>>>
>>> Hi Chris,
>>>
>>> We have kept a collection of stuff over the years, and finally decided
>>>> to start unboxing all the old stuff and put it on display.   Customers
>>>> enjoy seeing it.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I can imagine.
>>>
>>> I was never aware of the Cobalt Control Station when it was out, though
>>>> maybe we never operated the machines at a scale that it would have made
>>>> sense.   Seems like a really cool gadget, though and especially if
>>>> you're managing a bunch of them.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yeah, the ControlStation was kinda nice. It had a custom tailored RaQ550
>>> GUI that had the Vsite hosting bits stripped and instead the management
>>> features added. It basically ran a NewLinQ server from which you could
>>> distribute PKGs. And on top of that some monitoring stuff with which you
>>> could check the state of attached RaQs and Qubes and send alerts on
>>> service failures.
>>>
>>> Back in the days I poked through the innards of the ControlStation and
>>> found a couple of hair raising security flaws. I don't recall much of
>>> the details, but once I had reported them they (mostly) got fixed.
>>> Still: The ControlStation was of course a low hanging fruit for
>>> exploitation - considering that it could do remote patching and even
>>> remote code execution on all attached devices.
>>>
>>> In some parts the CS looked like it had been rushed out of the door and
>>> lacked some of the ingenuity and security mindedness that the rest of
>>> the stuff had.
>>>
>>> As for the Qubes, would you believe I've never laid hands on one?
>>>>
>>>
>>> That surprises me. I'd have guessed you at least had one on your desk as
>>> toy back in the days. :p
>>>
>>> I had a Qube3 and Qube4, but I didn't do much with them aside from
>>> rolling up packages and playing around a little.
>>>
>>> Sometimes I wonder if in an alternate universe would Cobalt have
>>>> retooled their product lineup to fit the times and been a player in the
>>>> space of, say, Synology/Qnap, hybrid cloud, and maybe even some
>>>> crossover with Ubiquiti.    I suppose if that had happened, we wouldn't
>>>> have anything like BlueOnyx today.   We'd have... something else.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yeah, that would have been interesting, indeed. OTOH: Once they had sold
>>> out to Sun whatever creative potential the remainder of the staff had:
>>> It wouldn't and couldn't fit into Sun's corporate architecture and had
>>> no chance to thrive there. Imagine a big bank buying up a tiny e-payment
>>> provider. They get assigned a small broom closet in the basement and
>>> eventually someone forgets they're still there and accidentally turns
>>> off the lights for good.
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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>
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