Free university software for linux

Network technology evolves quickly, but available bandwidths are still not sufficient for fast transfers of big files to a bunch of clients (for example populating operating systems installation images).

This paper describes Multicasting Master-Slave Network Filesystem (mmsnfs) -- a new method of distributing entire filesystem among several client-machines simultaneously and efficiently.

Moreover it provides mechanisms for modifying distibuted filesystem structure reliably and securing it against introducing inconsistencies. It is designed to be used in small networks of similarly-configured machines, for instance university labs or internet cafes.

Jungle Monkey (JM) is a distributed file sharing program. Users join channels where they receive announcements for available resources. These resources may include files, chat groups, search groups, and other channels.

Users can send announcements for their own file and for chat groups, search groups, and channels they create. JM is for Unix only. There may be a Windows port someday. See the Information section for more information.

Jungle Monkey is part of a research project at the EECS Department of the University of Michigan. Were looking at end-host multicast, distributed keyword search, and distributed data structures. The lead developer is David Helder, a PhD student at U of M.

Jabber is an instant messagings system (and a few other things but Ill forget about these for the moment), but it uses XML so its easy to create clients for it, and to link it in with other systems.

As well as that anyone can run a Jabber server, so youre school, university or office could have their own messaging system.

Dave Gnukem is a 2D scrolling platform shooter. It is inspired by and similar to Duke Nukem 1, one of my all-time favourite games. It currently runs on Windows, Linux and BeOS.

Although this is by no means a finished game, it is playable. You can walk, jump, shoot baddies, collect stuff, die, teleport, open doors, use lifts, open boxes etc. There is also a level editor.

I started writing this back in 1995 in my first year at university (actually it goes back longer than that, before that there was a pascal/assembly version), and work on it intermittently whenever I get time and inspiration.

It was originally a DOS-based 16 color EGA game; I then converted it to Linux/GGI, then I did a DirectX-based Windows port, and then I converted it to SDL. The code is a bit messy due to its colourful history, Im slowly trying to clean it up.

Let me know if you would like to help with this project; comments, code, graphics, sound and levels are all very welcome.

JVOIPLIB is an object-oriented Voice over IP (VoIP) library written in C++.
It is based upon work done for my thesis at the School for Knowledge Technology (or School voor Kennistechnologie in Dutch), a cooperation between the Hasselt University and the Maastricht University.
A part of this library was developed at the Expertise Centre for Digital Media (EDM) in Diepenbeek, Belgium. The EDM is a research institute of the Hasselt University.
Main features:
- Easy VoIP session creation and destruction.
- Highly configurable sessions: sampling rate, sample interval, compression type, ... can all be selected by the user. These features can also be changed during a session.
- Openness and extensibility: the object-oriented nature of the library makes it very easy to add features; new components can easily be tested by registering them as User Defined modules.
- Support for 3D effects: for my thesis I also did some research and development about VoIP in networked virtual environments, which included adding 3D effects to sound. For this reason, Ive added this feature to the library.

Boston University Linux is based on Fedora Core Linux, but specifically tailored for the BU environment.

Weve added security updates, made modifications to make software work better with the way things are set up here, and added some applications that we think you might like to have.

The server edition of BU Linux provides a modern, stable, and robust server platform suitable for long-term deployment in many roles throughout the university.

Supported Hardware

Currently, only i686-class machines are supported. This includes almost everything from Intels Pentium Pro on. AMD64 and Intel EM64T systems will work fine using their 32-bit mode. Watch for a 64-bit version later this summer.

Specific Notes on Server Applications

Mail Server:

BU Linux 4.5 Server Edition (Zodiac) includes three different choices of Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) for your mail server. Each of these open source servers has its unique strengths, and you can install one or more and use the utility system-switch-mail to choose which is active.

The default is IBMs Postfix, which is designed from scratch to be secure and easily configurable. On a newly-installed BU Linux machine, Postfix is configured to exchange mail on the local machine and to send mail out to other systems, but not receive mail from the network. For this reason, outgoing mail from global BU accounts (those matching valid BU login names and with the proper UID) will appear to come from @bu.edu rather than @hostname.bu.edu. Local users (including system accounts) will retain the hostname, but without reconfiguration, any replies will bounce. Changing the system to accept mail is easy; see the BU Linux web site for details.

For the maximum flexibility and for compatibility with existing configurations (and with existing expertise), we also include the traditional standard Sendmail. And, if you have particular special needs, you may find that the new Exim MTA fits your situation best.

No matter which MTA you choose, please contact us if you need any assistance. With so many options available, the situation can be confusing, and its unfortunately easy for an accidentally misconfigured system to become a target for spam relayers. We have significant expertise at configuring both Postfix and Sendmail in a variety of situations, and will be glad to help.

FTP Server:

This release of BU Linux provides two options for FTP. The first is vsftpd, which is designed to be simple and secure. This is the most appropriate for almost all situations, but if you require more power and flexibility, we also include ProFTPd, which has many more options and a configuration syntax similar to that of the Apache web server.

Please also remember that FTP is an insecure protocol and that any passwords used travel over the network in plain text. For this reason, its best to avoid anything but anonymous FTP. For user-authenticated file transfer, use SSH and SFTP. (SFTP is provided by the OpenSSH server and enabled by default.)

Web Server:

The web server software included in BU Linux is the industry-standard Apache httpd. We also include PHP 4.3 and many other useful tools for building a web server.
If you need to provide authenticated access to web services to BU users, please contact us and we will provide you with our University-standard Weblogin module. This provides a powerful and flexible means of single-signon access control for the BU user community and we want to make it as easy as possible for you to provide this for your users.

Database Server:

BU Linux includes MySQL 4.1 and PostgreSQL 7.4. For less demanding SQL applications, we also provide SQLite 3, which provides simple SQL databases without the management overhead of running a SQL server.

mod_ometer is a web counter implemented as an apache C module. mod_ometer Apache module uses gd 2.0.28 or later to generate its images. Gd has some built-in fonts, but for real excitement you can use any TrueType font you want for the counter.
In addition to allowing font choice, mod_ometer has all sorts of options for customizing size, width and color of your counter as well as the ability to output the counter as jpeg, png, or gif.
Main features:
- ignore: ip address or domain name is forbidden to increment the counter.
- font: use a truetype font instead of the counters default.
- width: how many digits are displayed, maximum of 10.
- rand: display a different random number everytime.
- reset: reset the counter to a specific value.
- text: set font color using the "web color" scheme.
- bgcolor: set background color using the "web color" scheme.
- point: set point size of the counter font.
- image: choose jpeg, png or gif.

PyDespike is a program to graphically process (ie. despike) Raman and other spectroscopic data. Removing spikes in data due to artificial background fluctuations can be a tedious and time-consuming process, and since no other software with these requirements was known to exist, PyDespike was created to make Raman data processing more efficient.

PyDespike is the brain child of Michael Vance (Department of Chemistry, Stanford University) and much thanks is given to him for supporting the development of a scientifically useful project and providing valuable feedback to the graphical interface of PyDespike in its beta stages.

It was written using python and the python extensions to Qt and Qwt (PyQt and PyQwt), and thus, is cross-platform. PyDespike application has only been tested on Gentoo Linux and Windows XP, but there is no reason for it not to be supported on any platform with python, PyQwt, and PyQt.