Why FreePort? ( was RE: OPS: Re: implementing upgraded Lynx (cf. Lynx28, PINE42))

[Joe Mabel]

Has anyone taken a serious look at how Speakeasy RAIN does things?  They 
seem to have a very adequate menu system -- much simpler, I might add.  No 
idea, though, how much admin time this portion of their system takes, nor 
how much custom work they did to create it.

-----Original Message-----
From:	Rod Clark [SMTP:bb615 at scn.org]
Sent:	Monday, February 14, 2000 9:31 AM
To:	Joe Mabel
Cc:	scn at scn.org; hardware at scn.org
Subject:	Re: Why FreePort? ( was RE: OPS: Re: implementing upgraded Lynx 
 (cf. Lynx28, PINE42))

> Which leads me back to a question I've asked before but can't
> remember getting a good answer to:
>
> Why are we still using FreePort?

Joe,

   It's because it's a way to manage a huge number of user
accounts automatically, with little need for constant admin time
to deal with them and with a good deal of built-in security. It
also has a reasonably good, usable menu system for dialin
non-PPP users, that insulates them from the Unix shell (both for
the beginners' benefit and SCN's).

   The bad part is that FreePort is inflexible about some
things, it's poorly and confusingly programmed, and its built-in
mail programs are incompatible with other mail programs.

   A possible alternative is the Chebucto community networking
software, which Operations has been looking into and Ken
Applegate has installed and has been trying out on a separate
machine. There's also a recent major revision of FreePort that
we don't yet know enough about yet.

   In the near term, we want to keep the good parts (menu
system, low sysadmin maintenance for user accounts, built-in
security). None of these are trivial for SCN. Unlike the usual
ISP, we have an extensive beginner-oriented menu system, where
the average ISP takes a "Here's Unix - deal with it" approach if
they offer access to shell tools at all.

   At the same time, we have to get rid of the FreePort mail
programs and some other undesirable parts of FreePort, before we
can offer mail services that all work properly together.

Rod Clark




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