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Cobbler: An open source installation server
December 18, 2010 by christian ·
Cobbler is a Linux installation server that allows for rapid setup of network installation environments. It glues together and automates many associated Linux tasks so you do not have to hop between lots of various commands and applications when rolling out new systems, and, in some cases, changing existing ones.
With a simple series of commands, network installs can be configuredsc for PXE, reinstallations, media-based net-installs, and virtualized installs (supporting Xen, qemu, KVM, and some variants of VMware). Cobbler uses a helper program called ‘koan’ (which interacts with Cobbler) for reinstallation and virtualization support.
Cobbler is a small and lightweight application (about 15k lines of Python code). It tries to be extremely simple to use both for very small and very large installations — as well as easy to work on, extend, and hack. It avoids being “enterprisey” (as in complicated) whenever possible, but is highly useful in all sorts of enterprises by having a lot of advanced features and doing small things to save a large amount of time in repeated tasks.
Cobbler can also optionally help with managing DHCP, DNS, and yum package mirroring infrastructure — in this regard, it is a more generalized automation app, rather than just dealing specifically with installations. There is also a lightweight built-in configuration management system, as well as support for integrating with configuration management systems like Puppet. Cobbler has a command line interface, a web interface , and also several API access options. That sounds like a lot, but it’s really pretty simple. New users may like to start with the web app after doing the initial setup steps on the command line (cobbler check; cobbler import) as it will give them a good idea of all of the features available. Advanced features don’t have to be understood all at once, they can be incorporated over time as the need for them arises.
Website: https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/
LTSP Cluster: deploy and manage large numbers of thin-clients
November 10, 2010 by christian ·
LTSP-Cluster is a set of LTSP plugins and client-side tools that allows you to deploy and centrally manage large numbers of thin-clients. It allows you to run thousands of thin-clients that are able to connect to a load-balanced cluster of GNU/Linux and-or Microsoft Windows terminal servers.
LTSP-Cluster Features: Central Configuration web interface, Load balanced thin clients across multiple servers, Complete autologin support with account creation, Store hardware information for all clients in the control center, Managed PXE configuration, creating links to a specific configuration for a specific node, Integration with iTalc.
Website: https://www.ltsp-cluster.org/
Interesting Article: http://www.stgraber.org/2010/01/28/new-ltsp-cluster-websites-officially-out
FocusWriter: fullscreen, distraction-free word processor
September 24, 2010 by christian ·
FocusWriter is a fullscreen, distraction-free word processor designed to immerse you as much as possible in your work. The program autosaves your progress, and reloads the last files you had open to make it easy to jump back in during your next writing session, and has many other features that make it such that only one thing matters: your writing. The most important thing about writing is your words, and FocusWriter puts them front and center, without cluttering up your view with anything else. However, it’s good to have quick and easy access to the features of any program, so FocusWriter utilizes a hide-away interface: simply throw your mouse to the top, bottom, or right side of the screen to gain access to a number of customizable options and useful information, then flick it aside when you’re no longer interested.
Website: http://gottcode.org/focuswriter/
Interesting Link: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/09/focuswriter-1-3-0-released/
OpenVAS: Open Vulnerability Assessment System
September 16, 2010 by christian ·
The Open Vulnerability Assessment System (OpenVAS) is a framework of several services and tools offering a comprehensive and powerful vulnerability scanning and vulnerability management solution. The actual security scanner is accompanied with a daily updated feed of Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs), over 18.000 in total (as of August 2010). All OpenVAS products are Free Software and mostly licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).
Website: http://www.openvas.org/
GNS3 – Graphical Network Simulator
August 26, 2010 by christian ·
GNS3 is a graphical network simulator that allows simulation of complex networks. To allow complete simulations, GNS3 is strongly linked with : Dynamips, the core program that allows Cisco IOS emulation. Dynagen, a text-based front-end for Dynamips. Qemu, a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer. GNS3 is an excellent complementary tool to real labs for network engineers, administrators and people wanting to pass certifications such as CCNA, CCNP, CCIP, CCIE, JNCIA, JNCIS, JNCIE. It can also be used to experiment features of Cisco IOS, Juniper JunOS or to check configurations that need to be deployed later on real routers. This project is an open source, free program that may be used on multiple operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and MacOS X.
Website: http://www.gns3.net/
GATE: a full-lifecycle open source solution for text processing
August 12, 2010 by christian ·
GATE is over 15 years old and is in active use for all types of computational task involving human language. GATE excels at text analysis of all shapes and sizes. From large corporations to small startups, from €multi-million research consortia to undergraduate projects, their user community is the largest and most diverse of any system of this type, and is spread across all but one of the continents (apparently not in Antartica).
Core GATE is open source free software; users can obtain free support from the user and developer community via GATE.ac.uk or on a commercial basis from their industrial partners. They are the biggest open source language processing project with a development team more than double the size of the largest comparable projects (many of which are integrated with GATE). More than €5 million has been invested in GATE development; their objective is to make sure that this continues to be money well spent for all GATE’s users.
This note summarises the GATE software and process and gives examples of some of their uses. We believe that GATE is the leading system of its type, but as scientists we have to advise you not to take our word for it; that’s why we’ve measured our software in many of the competitive evaluations over the last decade-and-a-half (MUC, TREC, ACE, DUC, …). We invite you to give it a try, to get involved with the GATE community, and to contribute to human language science, engineering and development.
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The goal of this website is to give an end to end open source solution for a typical small company including Telephony, Document management, Customer Relation Application, Networking, Remote access, Desktop solutions and so on.
Although only the tools/applications have been listed on the website for the moment, a complete network diagram and individual how-to articles will follow.
Please note that for most of the installation instructions, we will not re-invent the wheel. A large number of very competent experts have already written how-to articles, we will just refer you to those. We will only document the missing links between the different components or if we feel that some installations could be better documented.
The KinDev team.
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Please note that the text for each of the blog post is taken from their respective websites. The KinDev team have experimented with those tools at different occasions. Your need and requirements could be different than the ones identified by our team for a specific situation, please take the time to read and understand the tool/application features before starting to install in a production environment.
We hope that you will have as much fun as we have discovering, installing and using those tools/applications and please do not forget to donate to the respective open source volunteers that have changed the IT landscape for ever.
The KinDev team.