I came to BeOS rather late in the game, so I’ve never really had a chance at using it. I’m waiting for Haiku now.
Question is, how viable would Haiku/BeOS be as a server platform? Specifically web (SQL, PHP) and mail. The load would not be heavy. The question is more of a prelude to a project then anything else.
Would the fact that BeOS and Haiku R1 are/will be single user pose any security problems? I imagine that the use of multithreading will greatly enchance a server’s load-bearing potential.
What other problems/advantages could be seen in using Haiku as a server platform?
I don’t have a BeOS machine at the moment, but there’s a Toshiba 440 CDT laptop sitting here doing nothing which wll do once I get a AC adaptor. Haven’t checked Frizbe yet, but will do.
I think Haiku will be better as a server than R5, but not as good as the BSDs/linux. The networking side of things should be greatly improved as the network stack will be housed in the kernel, which will bring large speed benefits.
However Haiku is tuned to be a desktop OS - that means it switches threads very quickly to stay responsive to user input at all time. The switching does incur a penalty though, for webserving it’s not as vital that everything stays responsive for everyone (and under heavy load, is really not worth trying), it’s more helpful to devote most processor time to dealing with requests. It’s a different problem.
What my original idea for a time-killing project was to build a set of server admin tools for BeOS that manipulate BSD/*NIX servers. The aim being that you don’t need a GUI on your server or knowledge of CLI to adminster your box.
I don’t even know if this would be possible - was also thinking that you’d run into problems with seperate Linux distros putting files in different spots.
Other then that, it was only an idea to play with. Would it be feasible?
I don’t see why you couldn’t build a front-end to CLI tools or something.
However the nature of X-Windows means you don’t need a monitor sat on your server but you can view it from a remote client. OK, so you do have to run an X server, but at least you’d be looking directly at your server box rather than going through some other box.
It’s your time you’re killing, don’t let me stop you!
I don’t think Haiku should be advertised as a server OS at all.
Linux or Solaris will probably always be better for server stuff.
Focusing on stuff like maintenance tools, etc takes away from
what Haiku should really have: efficient clients to talk to the
servers. Stuff like good support for the SMB protocol (and other
standard protocols), modular design and support for high-bandwidth multimedia takes the cake for me.
SMB, NFS or even some kind of BeOS specific file/volume sharing system. I think it is crazy that BeOS went up to r5 without being able to move files between multiple, homogeneous systems.
My vote is for advancement… if it can be done, let’s do it!
…even if, in fact, Linux and Solaris are very hard competitors… BeOS has a great power in it!
