Free remote boot software for linux

rmRemote project lets you remote control xmms with a REALmagic Remote. In the future it may be used to control everything in your house if you add the functionality.

vdr_remote is a graphical remote control for the video disk recorder vdr. vdr_remote connects over a TCP/IP network and gives you a complete remote control.

Etherboot project is a software package for creating ROM images that can download code over an Ethernet network to be executed on an x86 computer.
Many network adapters have a socket where a ROM chip can be installed. Etherboot is code that can be put in such a ROM. Etherboot is normally used for for booting PCs diskless. This is useful in various situations, for example:
- An X-terminal.
- Clusters of compute servers.
- Routers.
- Various kinds of remote servers, e.g. a tape drive server that can be accessed with the RMT protocol.
- Machines doing tasks in environments unfriendly to disks.
- A user platform where remote partitions are mounted over the network and you are willing to accept the lower speed compared to disk.
- Maintaining software for a cluster of equally configured workstations centrally.
Etherboot can boot computers faster than from a disk because there are no delays in spinning up disks, etc. A moments calculation will show that even with a 10Mbit Ethernet, sending a 500kB kernel will take only a couple of seconds typically. With 100Mbit Ethernet it gets even better.
Compared to booting from solid-state devices, e.g. Flash disks, Etherboot has the advantage of centralising software adminstration, the tradeoff being the dependence on a server. This can be partly alleviated by providing redundant servers.
Etherboot can work with RAM disks, NFS filesystems, or even local disks, if desired. Its a component technology and can be combined with other technologies to do things the way you want.
Etherboot is usually used to load Linux, FreeBSD or DOS. However the protocol and boot file formats are general, so there is no reason why it could not be used to load arbitrary images to a PC, including other OSes.
Etherboot is Open Source under the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPL2).
The components needed by Etherboot are:
- A bootstrap loader, usually in an EPROM on a network card, or installed in the flash BIOS, but could be put anywhere in the address space the BIOS probes in. For testing this could be put on a floppy disk or a hard disk partition. Some configurations may even be always run from a floppy disk (e.g. temporary testing setups or pedagogic uses).
- A DHCP or bootp server, for returning an IP address and other information when sent a MAC (Ethernet card) address.
- A tftp server, for sending the kernel images and other files required in the boot process. Alternatively, Etherboot can boot from an NFS mount.
- A Linux or FreeBSD kernel.
- Optionally, a NFS server, for providing the disk partitions that will be mounted if Linux or FreeBSD is being booted.
- Optionally, a RAM disk contained in the loaded image. This can be the initial RAM disk if desired.
- Software tools for building the download image, and tools for debugging.
Enhancements:
- This production release should now compile with gcc 4.x.
- In addition, a number of drivers have been updated, including e1000, MCP51 and MCP55 (nvidia), pcnet32, natsemi, sis900, and tg3.
- NetXtreme II cards are now supported.

Remote Nmap (Rnmap) package contains both client and server programs. Actual idea for this sofware is that various clients can connect to one centralized Rnmap server and do their portscannings. Server does user authentication and uses excellent Nmap scanner to do actual scanning. Rnmap is written entirely in Python and is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Version 0.10 of server is tested mainly on Linux, NetBSD and OpenBSD. Generally it should run on any *nix platform as long Nmap and Python are available for them. Console client is known to work with same platforms as server. Gui client will run on any python (with threads) supported platform.

File::Remote is a Perl module to read/write/edit remote files transparently.

SYNOPSIS

#
# Two ways to use File::Remote
#
# First, the function-based style. Here, we can use the
# special :replace tag to overload Perl builtins!
#
use File::Remote qw(:replace); # special :replace tag

# read from a remote file
open(REMOTE, "host:/remote/file") or die $!;
print while (< REMOTE >);
close(REMOTE);

# writing a local file still works!
open(LOCAL, ">>/local/file");
print LOCAL "This is a new line.n";
close(LOCAL);

mkdir("host:/remote/dir", 0755);
unlink("host:/remote/file");
unlink("/local/file"); # still works too!
symlink("host:/remote/src", "host:/remote/dest");

chown("root", "other", "host:/remote/dir/file");
chmod(0600, "host:/remote/dir/file");

#
# Next, the object-oriented style, if you dont want to
# mess with the builtins.
#
use File::Remote;
my $remote = new File::Remote;

# Standard filehandles
$remote->open(FILE, ">>host:/remote/file") or die $!;
print FILE "Heres a line thats added.n";
$remote->close(FILE);

# Create a new file and change its permissions
$remote->mkdir("host:/remote/dir");
$remote->touch("host:/remote/dir/file");

# Move files around
$remote->copy("/local/file", "host:/remote/file") or warn $!;
$remote->move("host:/remote/file", "/local/file");

# Read and write whole files
my @file = $remote->readfile("host:/remote/file");
$remote->writefile("/local/file", @file);

# Backup a file with a suffix
$remote->backup("host:/remote/oldfile", "save");

# Use secure connection methods
my $secure = new File::Remote (rsh => "/usr/local/bin/ssh",
rcp => "/usr/local/bin/scp");
$secure->unlink("/local/file");
$secure->rmdir("host:/remote/dir");

This module takes care of dealing with files regardless of whether theyre local or remote. It allows you to create and edit files without having to worry about their physical location on the network. If a file passed into a function is of the form host:/path/to/file, then File::Remote uses rsh/rcp (or ssh/scp, depending on how you configure it) to edit the file remotely. Otherwise, it assumes the file is local and passes calls directly through to Perls core functions.

The nice thing about this module is that you can use it for all your file calls, since it handles both remote and local files transparently. This means you dont have to put a whole bunch of checks for remote files in your code. Plus, if you use the function-oriented interface along with the :replace tag, you can actually redefine the Perl builtin file functions. This means that your existing Perl scripts can automatically handle remote files with no re-engineering(!).

Remote Monitoring Agent (RMA in short) is an auxiliary application for HostMonitor. Enterprise license for Advanced Host Monitor already includes license for 10 installations of the agent. Holders of a Lite, Standard or Professional licenses may buy an additional license for Remote Monitoring Agent separately.
HostMonitor 4.0+ can monitor remote networks using Remote Monitoring Agents (RMA). RMA is small application that accepts requests from HostMonitor, performs test and provides information about test result back to HostMonitor.
Why you may need RMA? Here are just several reasons:
RMA increases security of the network. When you have to run the tests such as CPU Usage test or Performance Counters tests on a remote Windows system, HostMonitor must be able to log in to that system with administrators privileges. Instead you may now use an agent installed on that remote system. In this case HostMonitor will not have to log on to that system at all. HostMonitor needs just one TCP port to communicate with the RMA agent (by default it uses #1055 port, however you may set an agent to use any other port).
Remote Monitoring Agent is also a very useful tool when you have to monitor two (or many) separated networks (connected through Internet). In this case installing just one instance of RMA behind the firewall in network "A" will allow to monitor entire network "A" using the HostMonitor located in the network "B" with just one open TCP port.
RMA decreases the network traffic. E.g. frequent use of "File Integrity" or "Compare Files" tests in an array of remote systems may apply significant load on the network. The more and the bigger files you test the more traffic increase you get. RMA runs locally and sends only the test results to the HostMonitor thus decreasing the amount of network traffic.
Remote Monitoring Agent simplifies network administration. You no longer need to share local drives/folders to perform tests such as File Integrity, Folder/File Size, File Availability, Count Files, etc
RMA for Linux / BSD / Solaris allows you to perform tests that HostMonitor cannot perform. For example HostMonitor cannot monitor processes that are running on Linux systems. RMA can do that.
Main features:
- All traffic between Remote Monitoring Agents and HostMonitor is encrypted.
- It is possible to customize the list of enabled tests for each of the agents (e.g. living only Count Files and UNC tests only).
- You can restrict incoming TCP connections with the list of acceptable addresses.
- With RMA Manager you may configure, restart and even upgrade agent(s) remotely.

AmaroK XUL Remote is an amaroK script that allows you to control amaroK from any Firefox browser on your network.
Main features:
- basic player manipulation: play, pause, stop, next, previous, seek, volume
- playlist view, plays a track when clicking on it
- collection browser with filtering, support for compilations
- drag and drop tracks, album and artists from the collection to the playlist

Remote MySQL Query is a PHP class that can easily execute queries on a remote MySQL server using only HTTP.

It works by accessing a PHP script on the remote web server that executes queries based on passed in URL parameters.

The client passes a secret key to the remote script to prevent unauthorized access.

The remote script passes back the results to the requesting client using XML to marshal the data.

The class parses the results XML data returned by the server script and returns an array.

It, also, retrieves (into class variables) the number of records returned by the query and the time the query took to execute.

The server script may be used to execute MySQL queries that can be retrieved by programs written in other languages besides PHP.