[Techtalk] Anyone here have experience working on a Cobalt Qube?

[Emily Berk]

Hi Colleen:

Have you ever done this, or have you just read about it and want to do it?

I am located about 30 miles from my client and although HE can ftp to the Qube and can press the buttons and access it from his web browser, I cannot.

I can ping the server, but I cannot connect to it via telnet or ssh or ftp.

And I've read that successfully telneting the first time is sometimes challenging.  That there is some magic sequence of UI actions that must be taken that are not intuitively obvious.  (According to http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/hardware/cobalt_qube.html : "While testing the telnet capabilities of the Qube 2, I found that some of the security settings are a bit buried in the administration tools. I had a bit of a time figuring out how to enable the telnet server, but a quick email to tech support (answered in 1/2 hour, which is good in my book) fixed the issue (I just didn't know where to look).")

So, what I need is very specific information about how my client should  navigate the GUI on the Qube to make it possible for me to telnet and/or SSH and then very specific information about what I need to set up the telnet and/or SSH session so I can just change the file permissions and get on with my life.

Very specifically, what I am attempting to accomplish is:

There is a known bug http://www.alt-php-faq.org/local/21/ that causes the Qube to be unable to find files in a relative path in PHP, so we need to change the php.ini file.  

But we don't seem to have authorization to overwrite the existing php.ini file with our changed one.  

So, I'm thinking that what we need to do is either:

1.  Telnet into the Qube and change the file permissions.
2.  SSH into the Qube and change the file permissions.
3.  FTP into the Qube with rights to overwrite this file.  

I think that telnet is not configured to respond and I can't seem to ftp in from outside either.

(But I'm open to other suggestions for how to change the php.ini file ...)

-- Emily

>Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 18:05:05 -0500
>From: Colleen Hatfield <evilpig at gmail.com>
>
>To: techtalk at linuxchix.org
>
>On 4/29/05, Emily Berk <emily at armadillosoft.com> wrote:
><SNIP>
>> I've read that there is some sort of dance I need to do in order to make the Qube accessible via telnet, but I can't seem to figure out what the steps in the dance are.
>
>Assuming it's running Cobalt OS, almost everything, including telnet,
>gets configured via a web interface at http://<fqdn of
>qube>/siteadmin/.  Basic stuff like the IP configuration gets done for
>the first time using the buttons and LCD screen on the Qube itself,
>then through the web interface afterwards.
>
>> Feel free to contact me offlist, since I think the Qube may not actually be running Linux...
>
>CobaltOS is based off of an old (6.2, IIRC) version of RedHat, so yes,
>it is running Linux in its own special way ;-D.  CobaltOS was designed
>to be really easy for non-admins to admin, but if you want something a
>little more powerful and current you can run other distributions on
>them.  I run Debian on my Raq 4i.  You should be able to run just
>about any distro on the Qube 3/Raq 3/Raq 4 since those are x86.  The
>Qube 1/Qube2/Raq 1/Raq 2 are MIPS, so then you're limited to
>distributions that support the MIPS architecture (at least Debian and
>Gentoo that I'm aware of).

>- Colleen, who wants a Qube 2 or Raq 2 to go with her Raq 4 ;-)

Emily Berk
http://www.armadillosoft.com