Hi all,
From: Design & Architecture | NS8 dev manual
Goals
- easy and effective data backup and restore
Very, but very, far away compared to NetServer-7.x
Only in the Cloud => you have confidence in the Cloud ?
Restoration of a simple file ?
- prepare a machine in a lab, deploy at customer’s office
Good luck with that and only if the internet has access to the server in the lab for Let’s Encrypt Certificates…
No acme.sh for LOCAL server.
Assumptions
- containers are the new standard
Unix was the standard for a long time, where is it now ?
Motorola 68000 32 bits was the standard in microprocessors, where is it now ?
Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11 was the standard for quite some time, where is it now?
Novell Netware with almost 75% of market was THE standard, where is it now?
Centos was the standard for a long time, where is it now ?
Docker was the standard for containers, where is it going now ?
Windows is the standard OS - does it make it a good OS choice for all applications ?
- NS8 is designed for small and medium business, with limited resources.
I cannot imagine a small business admin trying to understand NS8 complexity…
- built for cheap hardware or entry-level Virtual Private Server (VPS)
It doesn’t work well on VirtualBox-7 => with app installtion, it generates connection errors, even with 4 CPUS and 20 GB RAM
Design choices
List of things considered almost stable, with or without an existing prototype implementation:
- Centralized certificate management
" Let’s Encrypt certificates are automatically exported to Redis upon request and renewal. Certificates are saved under an hash named /module/traefik/certificate/ key, i.e /module/traefik1/certificate/server.nethserver.org. The certificate is saved inside the cert field, while the key is saved inside the key field."
Not for imported Let’s Encrypt certificate. They are considered “custom”
root@ns8:~# ls -als /home/traefik1/.config/state/custom_certificates/
total 24
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 traefik1 traefik1 4096 26 jui 13:34 .
4 drwxr-xr-x 5 traefik1 traefik1 4096 5 oct 12:32 ..
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 traefik1 traefik1 4025 26 jui 13:34 debian.toto-dev.org.crt
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 traefik1 traefik1 1704 26 jui 13:34 debian.toto-dev.org.key
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 traefik1 traefik1 3721 26 jui 13:34 mail.debian.toto-dev.org.crt
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 traefik1 traefik1 1708 26 jui 13:34 mail.debian.toto-dev.org.key
root@ns8:~#
No acme.sh for LOCAL server.
- considered almost stable
For sure you can say “almost stable” for Roundcubemail and Webtop…
One thing is working “not so bad” is Nginx/MariaDB and even there, when you create a new Virtual host, the first one created disappeares from the UI.
For MariaDB, lucky to have phpMyAdmin to create the user with the % to be able to access it from outside.
The funny way to define “Database hostname:port” as define( 'DB_HOST', 'toto-dev.org:20010' );
- other applications
How can I install an application which is not on the list i.e. Jitsi. I have to create a container ?
- Documentation
Not up to date, not so detailled, spread all over the place(s) // lot in github not in the admin/dev manuals.
- Supported OS
It looks like the focus is on Rocky - will it falls as Centos ?
I prefer Debian as it will be there and LIBRE forever.
My main reasons to choose NS8 are:
- Let’s Encrypt certificate
No way yet if you are on a lab LAN server.
No acme.sh for LOCAL server.
An imported LE certificate is considered a “Custom” one.
Not there yet.
- Webserver
Still some error as written above: “when you create a new Virtual host, the first one created disappeares from the UI”.
- Port forwarding
I cannot find it in the UI.
- Community
Luckily, we have a fantastic forum
June 2024 is not far…
Doubts begin to germinate and invade me about NS8.
Michel-André
