Messinet Secure Services
wiki:AboutMSS
Last modified 5 months ago

  1. About Messinet Secure Services
    1. Introduction
    2. Mission Statement
    3. Hardware
    4. Services & Software

About Messinet Secure Services

Introduction

In 2001, my IBM Thinkpad R30 running Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional failed me. I was trying to get IIS up and running to serve a website and encountered blue screen after blue screen, as well as spurious shutdowns with data loss. I resolved to investigate the possibility of "Linux," an operating system I had only heard about at the time. After much searching, I found  www.linux.org and browsed through the list of distributions, eventually settling on  Red Hat Linux, as it seemed to be well supported and user friendly.

Red Hat Linux 9 installed on my laptop without a hitch and I was sold! I pushed this laptop to the limit for the next five years using the  Fedora Linux line of operating systems. I retired the system in January, 2006, when the hard drive ground to a halt.

Meanwhile, I created  Messinet Secure Services and began to learn about the  GNU/Linux platform, the  Open Source Initiative and perhaps most importantly, the mission of the  Free Software Foundation. I started to embrace the cause and configure some basic services such an email server and a web server. I initially offered these basic services to my family members, as they were the only population I could ever imagine depending on something I created. I also knew that they would not be using my services for "mission-critical" applications and could understand if a service was unavailable due to an upgrade or configuration error on my part.

Over the years, I have added several  GNU/Linux based servers and workstations, and of the eleven systems I own, none use proprietary software.

Mission Statement

As I continued to learn, I also unveiled the  Messinet Secure Services mission statement:

Messinet (mess-EE-net) Secure Services is an ever-changing virtual classroom in which I learn about the  GNU/Linux platform and all the services it can deliver. These services are the technological incarnation of an idea centered around keeping my family in touch with each other and technology.

Hardware

Messinet Secure Services employs three geographically distributed, VPN connected  Dell PowerEdge core servers, and one  Dell XPS intermediary server. These core and intermediary systems provide service to four  Dell fixed workstations as well as two  Lenovo ThinkPad mobile laptops and one  Sony VAIO mobile laptop.

Services & Software

Messinet Secure Services provides secure email, web, network, VoIP, storage, VPN, audio/video and various other services for its users supported by the following array of freely-available open-source software. All of our systems run  Fedora Linux 15 with  SELinux in enforcing mode.