If you want a guaranteed way to hose your Web server, install Ensim. In a nutshell, Ensim is a control panel application that completely takes over your Web server and turns it into an appliance that any neophyte can manage themselves. The base operating system more or less gets pushed into the background, Ensim installs its own customized set of applications, and you never have to touch the command line again.
That’s all well and good for someone who wants Web Server in a Box functionality, but no good for a geek who wants full control over their system. If you ever want Ensim to die a horrible death, simply install some vendor security patches. Everything breaks horribly.
I was looking at hosting with rackshack.net and was reading at the communities for the different ‘appliance’ options they had in order to get a feel for what worked and didn’t. The ensim community was universally adamant that the product was buggy and linux service patches would cripple the product (and the server), as you’ve noted. cpanel seemed to have fewer problems.
I didn’t go with rackshack for various reasons, opting for something less ambitious. I just don’t have the necessary cycles to do a competent job on admin and security.
- jim
Ensim webppliance will not do everything for you without having to touch the terminal. I have one box with rhel 3 and ensim and another without ensim running rhel 3. I can do all the same tasks on the ensim box that I can do on the plain box.
Updates are the main issue with this software.