Free system administration software for linux

The Arusha Project (ARK) seeks to provide a framework and/or tools for collaborative system administration of multi-platform Unix sites with many dozens of machines.

The core ARK developers are interested in using the Arusha Project as a comprehensive solution for system administration.

It is therefore easy to miss the point that the core ARK engine---which simply provides a ``configuration language to say sysadminish things---can be used in many less-than-comprehensive ways.

Here is a ``laundry list... There are undoubtedly hundreds of other weird-and-wonderful possibilities we havent thought of.

Also note that some of these uses are orthogonal to each other. You could pick one (or none) of the ways to tackle software packages and pick one (or none) of the ways to manage the config files in /etc and pick one (or none) of the ways to manage user accounts, etc. -- this gives you many ARK options, without even breaking a sweat.

1. As a multi-platform package manager for user applications, particularly standard freeware packages.

(We arent pleased to have written Yet Another package manager, but the others [RPM, BSD ports, etc.] just arent up to much when you have several diverse Unix platforms for which you want the ``same packages.)

(Other system administration would be done by other means.)

2. To provide an early-adopter `playpen: [a variant on #1] at a site of any size, you will have a small number of people keen to try out beta- and even alpha-quality software. (It is wise to let them do so---they accumulate much ``intelligence which is helpful when deciding about new software to roll out to the general user population.)

You could use ARK to set up a `playpen where early-adopters could do their trials in a controlled and non-problematic way. (The Sidai version wrapper stuff is one way to get a handle on the multiple-versions-live-at-the-same-time problem.)

3. As a `unifier for diverse package managers: Imagine you have a site of Solaris, Linux, and NetBSD boxes, .and you want to use the native package managers for each. But you want the ``same packages on all hosts, and want a site-at-a-time way to manage them; i.e. ark package install ALL should install all packages on all hosts, each in the appropriate way.

4. As a (binary) package producer: One can imagine having a small number of ARK hosts whose job is to produce (say) binary RPM packages of everything of interest to your site. Your (many?) client/production hosts would then simply use the RPMs.

5. As a front-end for Cfengine or PIKT, or similar: Express what there is to know about the hosts, etc., at your site in the ARK object way (including constraints between them), then push a button to generate a configuration for one of the established sysadmin tools, which will do the heavy lifting for you.

6. As a fancy `rdist: A Unix site has bunches of config files that need to be ``the same across many machines, e.g. /etc/hosts or /etc/resolv.conf. The distributed ARK code (notably from team Sidai) is a good way to do this stuff, and you might use ARK just for that.

7. As an `idea bank: Dont run ARK code at all; simply study others sysadmin solutions as a source of ideas. This is a pathetic choice in our view :-), but entirely legitimate!

8. Toss it for system administration and build chip designs with it, instead! (While this is a mostly-facetious suggestion, it reflects the fact that the earliest ARK ideas emerged alongside some chip-building ideas at Glasgow University in 1999.)

PHPoto is a photo gallery system for the Web. All client-side markup is semantically correct XHTML and styled with valid CSS.

Installation and gallery administration are very easy through the Web-based interface.

Other features include multiple albums, uploading of pictures, automatic thumbnailing, photo captions, and ADOdb database abstraction.

Komba2 is a windows network administration tool for the K Desktop Environment.

Our target is to make administration beautiful and intuitive without sacrificing power.

PHP-Nuke is a Web Portal System or content management system. PHP-Nukes goal is to have an automated web site to distribute news and articles with users system. Each user can submit comments to discuss the articles.

Main features include: web based admin, surveys, top page, access stats page with counter, user customizable box, themes manager for registered users, friendly administration GUI with graphic topic manager, option to edit or delete stories, option to delete comments, moderation system, Referers page to know who link us, sections manager, customizable HTML blocks, user and authors edit, an integrated Banners Ads system, search engine, backend/headlines generation (RSS/RDF format), and many, many more friendly functions. PHP-Nuke is written 100% in PHP and requires Apache Web server, PHP and a SQL (MySQL, MySQL4, msSQL, PostgreSQL, Access, ODBC, DB2, Oracle and SQLite).

Support for 33 languages, Yahoo like search engine, Comments option in Polls, lot of themes, Ephemerids manager, File Manager, Headlines, download manager, faq manager, advanced blocks systems, reviews system, newsletter, categorized articles, multilanguage content management, phpBB Forums included and a lot more.

OSLA (Open Source Logistics System) is an open standard Web system for logistics featuring support for shipment, tracking, barcode labelling, a 3rd-party interface to industry document messaging format APIs of DHL, FedEx, UPS, etc., document export to CSV to make invoicing more convenient, cargo manifest, a multilingual interface, user permission administration, data analysis, statistical reports and graphs, and more.

OMnAdren is a scripting language that resembles C.

Computer languages are created for varying purposes and tasks — different kinds and styles of programming. One common programming task is known as scripting, or connecting diverse pre-existing components to accomplish a new related task. Those languages which are suited to scripting are typically called scripting languages. Many languages for this purpose have common properties: they favor rapid development over efficiency of execution; they are often implemented with interpreters rather than compilers; and they are strong at communication with program components written in other languages.

Many scripting languages emerged as tools for executing one-off tasks, particularly in system administration. One way of looking at scripts is as "glue" that puts several components together; thus they are widely used for creating graphical user interfaces or executing a series of commands that might otherwise have to be entered interactively through keyboard at the command prompt. The operating system usually offers some type of scripting language by default, widely known as a shell script language.

Scripts are typically stored only in their plain text form (as ASCII) and interpreted, or compiled each time prior to being invoked.

Some scripting languages are designed for a specific domain, but often it is possible to write more general programs in that language. In many large-scale projects, a scripting language and a lower level programming language are used together, each lending its particular strengths to solve specific problems. Scripting languages are often designed for interactive use, having many commands that can execute individually, and often have very high level operations (for example, in the classic UNIX shell (sh), most operations are programs themselves).

Such high level commands simplify the process of writing code. Programming features such as automatic memory management and bounds checking can be taken for granted. In a lower level or non-scripting language, managing memory and variables and creating data structures tends to consume more programmer effort and lines of code to complete a given task. In some situations this is well worth it for the resulting fine-grained control. The scripter typically has less flexibility to optimize a program for speed or to conserve memory.

For the reasons noted above, it is usually faster to program in a scripting language, and script files are typically much smaller than, say, equivalent C program files. The flip side can be a performance penalty: scripting languages, often interpreted, may be significantly slower to execute and may consume more memory when running. In many relevant cases, however, e.g. with small scripts of some tens of lines, the write-time advantage far outweighs the run-time disadvantage. Also, this argument gets stronger with rising programmer salaries and falling hardware costs.

However, the boundary between scripting languages and regular programming languages tends to be vague, and is blurring ever more with the emergence of new languages and integrations in this fast-changing area. In some scripting languages, an experienced programmer can accomplish a good deal of optimization if they choose. And in general, it is possible to write a script in any language (including C or assembly language). In most modern systems, the latter case is very seldom recommendable, since one or more suitable script languages is usually available.

dispatch is a multi-tier architecture object-oriented framework that allows access to methods and variables at the command line and in shell scripts or via a GUI.
The project is in an early stage and you will probably not be able to compile it easily or use it for significant work.
There are lots of things which are not documented yet, as they only work occasionally. As the current written code is only a framework, no real application of it yet exists, there are still much things to invent. Get involved.
This software package represents a meta program used to manage unix programs. It is a class library in the domain of system administration. It is similar to Microsoft .NET or corba or Unix as it is language independent. Indeed, a method can be written in any language, because the interface of a method is the same as that of a unix command.
That means a method is passed an array of arguments, it has a standard input, standard output and standard error channel and returns a small integer exit code. The difference to a shell script is that there is no actual execve system call involved in calling a method, but the method is in a shared object that can be linked dynamically into the running process.
With interpreted languages like perl, first the interpreter is dynamically linked into the current process which in turn executes the method written in the target language. That means that the second call of a certain method only involves some lookup in internal data structures to find the already loaded (c++, perl) and byte-compiled (perl) implementation.
But this is only half of the story. The power of object orientation to a certain degree comes from the fact that you have abstract interfaces and concrete implementations which are interchangeable to a certain extend. This fact is still true of course, when you map the OO paradigm to the Unix shell and the domain of system management.
But unfortunately this principle was not honored by the software that exists on posix compatible systems so far. An example of an interface relating to system management and configuration is internet server software configuration.
There a many ways to configure on which port a piece of software should listen. In apache, you write Listen or BindAddress, the tcpserver from ucspi-tcp expects a command line argument, the inetd superserver expects it as the first column of a table in a free-form textfile.
It is therefore impossible to know where an arbitrary server listens if you do not write specialized parser code for every configuration file format in existence. It would be so much easier to have an interface that has a method called port that you can call to either query the port or set it. Then you can call the exact same method on any server that implements the interface and dont have to care about syntax rules.
Enhancements:
- Examples added

gdWebSuite System is a script that is designed to be a full featured system for user registration, login, and administration on a Web site.
It also supports account activation and retrieving lost passwords. gdWebSuite System supports visual templates and different styles for each template.
Enhancements:
- New administration features for uploading avatars, a new avatar selection, and one new admin style were added.
- A private message system was started.
- Some changes and updates were made to various parts of the code.