Well, they made a business decision to distinguish for home pro users between a license entitlement to features and actually supporting the product. I've been living with this bug for the last few months, if I had to wait a week for them to help me, I'm not sure it is that big of a deal. But I think they felt that at the price we pay for a license every year, they couldn't really afford to offer support and rather direct people now to forums.
And for normal stuff it's pretty good around here.
But I've got nothing... I've never seen this before. Hundreds of Untangle installations in the field, most of them relying heavily on OpenVPN for years.
Again if I see .crash files in my logs, I assume hardware = bad. Because that's been the case for every single one of them.
Thanks. For good measure, I'll run the system through memory test. It's worth checking, although I'd be surprised if this specific one is due to memory. Normally you see those things manifest in other areas, but these platforms don't support ECC and so seeing SBE entries in the kernel log can't happen.
I'll report back on that. Hopefully Untangle revisits their decision to push paid home licenses to community support, or will at least investigate the crashes further.
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Originally Posted by sky-knight
File a report in the jira. That is where they track their work. It will bypass the first line tech support. They might just close that too but they might see something.Quote:
Originally Posted by swass
Support has always been a big advantage of Untangle. Supporting the community improves support and the product for paid users too. Paid users should also be concerned by this decision.
I'm not, it's the only business decision possible when everyone complains about the additional costs of Home. Also, Home now has a paid support upgrade, so if you want support you can BUY IT. Of course there's now going to be a hard line taken if you don't.Quote:
Originally Posted by donhwyo
I see both sides of this to be fair. As a customer of theirs though, the fact that I bought something they won't actually support me with is the part that I agree with donhwyo is troubling. In my humble opinion though, it's the tech savvy that are usually doing something like this. There may be some -- in fact, I know that there probably are quite a few (or enough) that don't really understand firewall policies, networking, or technology at a deep level, that are using Untangle and may have some issues that are soaking up support hours. But part of the reason for offering a paid home license is that those people doing it may also be network or systems administrators/engineers or be in a technology field and recommend Untangle for their business. Since most of these people aren't likely to fork over $250 for a single year of software support on their own dime, it is very possible they end up in a situation like I'm in where the experience isn't great because they run into an issue and Untangle won't support them. In my case, I am a principal systems architect and do influence and set standards, and I'm sure there are a lot more like me and you guys that could potentially add to their revenue. A consideration for them to think about..
Rob you are in a unique position. Most small business users rely on the product just working out of the box. Up till version 14 I think that was the case. 15 up not so much. Its almost like the release has become a beta program. Is that why support has become such a problem?Quote:
Originally Posted by sky-knight
Maybe it is just the model they use causing the problem. Look at proxmox's model. I don't see complaint like this there. Free version is full featured. It is kind of bleeding edge but users know and understand that. Paid is a bit lagging but more stable. Tested by us free users. How well would that work if they refused to support (learn from) all users?
Your expectations are out of alignment with reality. UTMs have never been a set and forget technology, and not a single UTM ever installed has been successful if the hands that installed it weren't skilled. Untangle needs less skill that most, but it still needs some skill.Quote:
Originally Posted by donhwyo
Current releases are more buggy? No... not according to the CVs, they aren't, and magically... none of my units have these problems. What does that say? I have HUNDREDS of Untangle installations in the wild to my name at this point. If they were all busted my phone wouldn't let me sleep. Yet... my phone is acting like an introvert at a school dance.
Proxmox sells via a different model, and one that Untangle has never used, so your comparative there is equally irrational. Could that model work for Untangle? Perhaps... want to try it? Fork it, and start your own business.
I'm not saying this to put you down, it's just the way that it is. Untangle is in this game to make money, expecting them to behave otherwise is silly. Also, given they're competing against the likes of Cisco and Sonicwall, they could give it away all they wanted and still not make any headway. Heck.. they've actually DONE THAT, and I've watched it not work. Untangle also used to be channel only... Now they're my partner and my competition...
It's a huge mess, but it's what's been made out of the wreckage of all the mistakes made along the way. But from my perspective, you've simply finally understood the nature of the product and the company, for me that was about 8 years ago. So welcome to the club!
Though I must admit... I'm a little astonished Untangle support won't help chase down what appears to be a bug of some sort... that's... new.
My own personal perspective on this aligns to donhwyo. I think the main problems I have with the current situation I find myself in are: 1) Purchased the home license with the understanding that I had support, even if it was de-prioritized, and they changed it prior to my renewal; and 2) Users like myself are now in this 'no mans land' between users that are not paying them anything and therefore shouldn't expect professional support (even if they should have an interest) and businesses that have both full features and support.
They can operate in any model they want, and maybe they will decide to change again in the future, but I do have to say that if they released it in more of a bleeding edge format to users for free and then had developers sitting in the forums looking for real problems to fix prior to promoting a release to stable for commercial customers, that may sit with people better. It's just to say, if I were searching for a full-featured firewall system for home use today, and the choice was between a different platform with solid features and no support (but maybe a bug tracker), and something that I had to pay for to get features but had no support, it is a pretty clear choice that I would just go with the first option. To his point, the company would benefit from having people testing new features and code while not exposing paying customers or running some official beta program.
donhwyo -- thanks for the suggestion about logging a Jira ticket. Assuming it's not an HW/memory issue, which I can determine pretty easily, and no other action from support, that may be the best route to go.
Appreciate your help too, Rob!
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Originally Posted by sky-knight
Given my history with Untangle, I think this situation boils down mostly to poor employee training. They are a relatively small company. And tier 1 support has... well... a spotty history in some very annoying and yet persistent places that might explain your situation.
The suggestion to put it in Jira is a solid one BUT, as I said before if you have any history in the terminal at all that's a strike against you because you've violated the walled garden, even if it's exploratory there's no way to know that's actually true without looking into the box itself. That time investment isn't cheap.
So when you're opening a bug report, it helps to be able to prove your unit is pristine, and that's why that flag exists in the UI. It's not a terribly great arrangement, but it's what we've got.