[ug-crosug] idea for crosug

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Thu, Jun 28, 2007 at 04:01:34PM -0400, Ben Creitz wrote:

> This is a bit ambitious, but I'll ask.  Is there any chance of
> sticking an OpenSolaris server out on the Internet, and giving user
> accounts to crosug members?

I'll go out on a ledge here and tell you that I think the reason no one 
has responded to this is that doing so is largely unnecessary and at the 
same time potentially dangerous for the owner of the box.

The it's unnecessary is that you should be able to install OpenSolaris 
yourself using one of the various available distributions, including 
Solaris Express, which comes directly from Sun. I know that Harry has 
discussed an Installfest. If you're itching to try OpenSolaris but are 
unable to get it to install properly, that might be something you'd want 
to look into.

Having a standard account on a box running OpenSolaris would be no 
different from having an account on any other Unix platform. The tools 
included in Solaris are fairly traditional, and if you're used to 
GNU/Linux or one of the BSDs, then you might even find them somewhat 
limited, since Sun has been fairly conservative with its userspace 
tools.

Many of the features that are talked about for Solaris 10 and 
OpenSolaris are really most benefitial to system administrators and may 
not be as obvious to someone with a normal account. I'm specifically 
thinking about DTrace, which requires extended user attrributes. Other 
features of Solaris such as SME and ZFS, will be completely invisible to 
a normal user.

At the same time, there's a great deal of risk associated with running 
such a service, since someone could easily abuse the platform or make a 
mistake that might allow the system to be compromised , putting the 
person or organiziation running it at some risk. In the early days of 
the GNU project, accounts were given away to users, but that practice 
had to end due to security issues.

So, if you want to try OpenSolaris, your best best is probably to try it 
on your own computer.

- Serge

[1] I'm limiting this to only OpenSolaris distributions that are 100% 
Free Software.