Ubuntu Server graphical interface?

[Jim Tarvid]

After our border gateway hard drive crashed yesterday, we installed
Hardy Alternate CLI on an old spare server which served honorably on
the work bench testing hardware. We installed openssh-server and ebox*
(mostly) and moved to a workstation.

After dealing with network interfaces and adding one firewall rule, we
were back in business. An hour or so of tweaking, mostly with Ebox, we
snatched an Ebox backup and settled into a night of Java which was the
original goal for the day.

It is hard to imagine the utility of a desktop on this server for any
purpose. I wouldn't mind some specific examples where that might be
true.

Ebox has a few rough spots and the documentation is "general" and
presupposes a general understanding of server maintenance. The IRC
chatroom on freenode and the wiki pages at
http://trac.ebox-platform.com/wiki are a help for the unfamiliar.
There is an Apache modules in the works.

We plan on doing a roll up of three servers this month which will
check out the utility of most of the features.

Jim

On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 3:52 AM, Paul Elliott <pre500 at york.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi Ante,
>
>
>  Ante Karamatic wrote:
>  > On Fri, 2 May 2008 14:23:31 -0500
>  > "Dustin Kirkland" <kirkland at canonical.com> wrote:
>
> > What's the purpose of fluxbox, openbox, xfce, enlightenment (etc...) on
>  > server? It's not like you have some point and click application for
>  > setting up apache virtual website or psotfix transport tables.
>
>  We find increasingly a large number of applications are *requiring* a
>  full X environment to run the setup procedure. It's not something I
>  agree with, I strongly believe a CLI installer should always be present
>  for any software that might end up on a server. Unfortunately it's also
>  something outside of our control.
>
>
>  > Even GNOME and KDE don't have flexible applications for server
>  > management. Still, if someone really wants (for some strange reason) X
>  > window system on server, I see more reasons to install full GNOME or
>  > KDE, than some X window manager just for xterm.
>
>  I would suggest the opposite. If a GUI is required on a server then it's
>  best to install the smallest possible environment to save resources and
>  crucially, to limit the attack vector. On average, less code = less
>  chance of a security hole. Coverity[1] research shows that a range of
>  Open Source software contained 0.434 bugs per 1000 lines of code. The
>  more code, the more bugs. We're only human after all. :-)
>
>  [1] http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/3589361
>
>  --
>  Paul Elliott
>  UNIX Systems Administrator and Programmer
>  Computing Service, University of York
>
>
>
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