[BlueOnyx:24632] Re: Old Blue Cobalts

Tue Dec 15 04:36:55 -05 2020

Hi,
that's correct, there also was a natural connection between Cobalt and
Symantec as the EMEA Vice President for Cobalt, George Korchinsky used
to be theEMEA Vice President for Symantec.
Best regards,Rickard
On Tue, 2020-12-15 at 02:25 -0600, ^Gecko^ 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.
> > 
> > _______________________________________________Blueonyx mailing 
> > listBlueonyx at mail.blueonyx.it
> > http://mail.blueonyx.it/mailman/listinfo/blueonyx
-- 
Bluapp AB
Rickard Osser
CTO
Solberga Ängsväg 3
125 44 Älvsjö
Sweden

Web: http://www.bluapp.com
Mail: rickard.osser at bluapp.com
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