BlueOnyx

BlueOnyx is an open source, server-oriented and Linux kernel-based operating system designed from the ground up to act as a TurnKey appliance suitable for web hosting servers. Initially derived from CentOS, the distro is now based off of Scientific Linux, which in turn is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

It’s distributed as a dual-arch Live CD

The BlueOnyx operating system can be downloaded via Softoware or directly from its official homepage (see link above) as a dual-arch ISO image that can only be installed on computers supporting both the 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

There are several installation options on the boot menu

When booting the ISO image from the BIOS of a PC, you will encounter a boot menu that allows you to install the operating system on a local drive with normal options, with the “nodmraid” option, for disks smaller than 20GB or by using a single disk and no LVM (Logical Volume Management).

In addition, it is possible to rescue an existing operating system that is no longer bootable, as well as to boot an OS that is currently installed on the first disk drive detected by the BIOS.

The installation is fully automatic, text based

No matter what installation method you choose, the entire installation process is fully automatic and text based. The good thing about the fully-automated installation is that you won’t have to do anything to install the operating system, but the bad part is that it will automatically erase and partition the disk drive, without asking you. Therefore, make sure that you don’t have important that on it before attempting to install BlueOnyx.

After installation, the reboot the computer and log into your brand-new BlueOnyx system by using the credential displayed above the shell prompt (“root” username and “blueonyx” password). Follow the steps on the Quick Setup Utility to configure your server.

What is new in this release:

• BlueOnyx 5207R and 5208R are already in productive usage on several important servers of our own and have been since the late Alpha stage. So far the most critical bugs are gone, but there are always some things that are hard to spot as usage cases and scenarios differ.
• It is possible to upgrade an existing BlueOnyx 5107R or 5108R to the new GUI. The mechanism for that involves just installing the new "blueonyx-yumconf" RPM, doing a "yum update" and running the script /usr/sausalito/sbin/SSL_fixer.pl as root from SSH.
• However: If you have any third party software (from the BlueOnyx Shop, Solarspeed Shop or Compass Networks Shop) installed on your BlueOnyx, then you should not yet perform such an upgrade. Please wait until we have released updated versions of the PKGs that are ready for BlueOnyx 5207R and BlueOnyx 5208R. Otherwise you will loose the GUI pages for managing the third party software until the time that updated PKGs for the third party software become available.

What is new in version 5.6-20110621:

• The ISO from 18th June works fine, although with 721MB it was a bit too large to fit on a CD. We trimmed off some fat by removing the PXE-boot related images and files from the ISO, which most users won't need anyway. That brings the new CD down to 671MB, which should make it fit on a 700MB CD again.