Free rocks software for linux

Rocks provides an user-level package for reliable and mobile network connections.
Rocks protect sockets-based applications from network failures, particularly failures common to mobile computing, including:
.Link failures (e.g., unexpected modem disconnection);
.IP address changes (e.g., laptop movement, DHCP lease expiry);
.Extended periods of disconnection (e.g., laptop suspension).
Rock-enabled programs continue to run after any of these events; their broken connections recover automatically, without loss of in-flight data, when connectivity returns.
Rocks work transparently with most applications, including SSH clients, X-windows applications, and network service daemons.
Main features:
- Reliable: Rocks detect connection failures within seconds and reconnect automatically when connectivity is restored. Reconnection succeeds even when one end of the connection obtains a new IP address.
- Safe: Rocks recover lost in-flight data no matter when failures occur, safely interoperate with ordinary sockets, and authenticate resumed connections.
- User level: You can install and use rocks as an ordinary user. They do not require any kernel modifications.
- Transparent: You can use rocks with existing programs without re-programming, re-compiling, or re-linking.
- Easy to use: Rocks come with simple command-line tools for enabling rocks in ordinary programs.
Enhancements:
- Bug fixes.

Rocks Cluster is a complete "cluster on a CD" solution for x86 and IA64 Red Hat Linux COTS clusters.
Building a Rocks cluster does not require any experience in clustering, yet a cluster architect will find a flexible and programmatic way to redesign the entire software stack just below the surface (appropriately hidden from the majority of users).
Although Rocks includes the tools expected from any clustering software stack (PBS, Maui, GM support, Ganglia, etc), it is unique in its simplicity of installation.
From a hardware component and raw processing power perspective, commodity clusters are phenomenal price/performance compute engines. However, if a scalable ``cluster management strategy is not adopted, the favorable economics of clusters are offset by the additional on-going personnel costs involved to ``care and feed for the machine. The complexity of cluster management (e.g., determining if all nodes have a consistent set of software) often overwhelms part-time cluster administrators, who are usually domain application scientists. When this occurs, machine state is forced to either of two extremes: the cluster is not stable due to configuration problems, or software becomes stale, security holes abound, and known software bugs remain unpatched.
While earlier clustering toolkits expend a great deal of effort (i.e., software) to compare configurations of nodes, Rocks makes complete Operating System (OS) installation on a node the basic management tool. With attention to complete automation of this process, it becomes faster to reinstall all nodes to a known configuration than it is to determine if nodes were out of synchronization in the first place. Unlike a users desktop, the OS on a cluster node is considered to be soft state that can be changed and/or updated rapidly.
This is clearly more heavywieght than the philosophy of configuration management tools [Cfengine] that perform exhaustive examination and parity checking of an installed OS. At first glance, it seems wrong to reinstall the OS when a configuration parameter needs to be changed. Indeed, for a single node this might seem too severe. However, this approach scales exceptionally well, making it a preferred mode for even a modest-sized cluster. Because the OS can be installed from scratch in a short period of time, different (and perhaps incompatible) application-specific configurations can easily be installed on nodes. In addition, this structure insures any upgrade will not interfere with actively running jobs.
One of the key ingredients of Rocks is a robust mechanism to produce customized distributions (with security patches pre-applied) that define the complete set of software for a particular node. A cluster may require several node types including compute nodes, frontend nodes file servers, and monitoring nodes. Each of these roles requires a specialized software set. Within a distribution, different node types are defined with a machine specific Red Hat Kickstart file, made from a Rocks Kickstart Graph.
A Kickstart file is a text-based description of all the software packages and software configuration to be deployed on a node. The Rocks Kickstart Graph is an XML-based tree structure used to define RedHat Kickstart files. By using a graph, Rocks can efficiently define node types without duplicating shared components. Similiar to mammalian species sharing 80% of their genes, Rocks node types share much of their software set. The Rocks Kickstart Graph easily defines the differences between node types without duplicating the description of their similarities. See the Bibliography section for papers that describe the design of this structure in more depth.
By leveraging this installation technology, we can abstract out many of the hardware differences and allow the Kickstart process to autodetect the correct hardware modules to load (e.g., disk subsystem type: SCSI, IDE, integrated RAID adapter; Ethernet interfaces; and high-speed network interfaces). Further, we benefit from the robust and rich support that commercial Linux distributions must have to be viable in todays rapidly advancing marketplace.
Wherever possible, Rocks uses automatic methods to determine configuration differences. Yet, because clusters are unified machines, there are a few services that require ``global knowledge of the machine -- e.g., a listing of all compute nodes for the hosts database and queuing system. Rocks uses an SQL database to store the definitions of these global configurations and then generates database reports to create service-specific configuration files (e.g., DHCP configuration file, /etc/hosts, and PBS nodes file).
Enhancements:
- Rocks v4.3 is released for i386 and x86_64 CPU architectures. New features: Rocks command line - initial release of the Rocks command line which facilitates non-SQL administrative access to the database; PXE First - hosts can now be configured in BIOS with a boot order of CD, PXE, hard disk. Enhancements: based on CentOS 4.5 and all updates as of July 4, 2007; Anaconda installer updated to 10.1.1.63; performance improvement when building torrent files for the Avalanche Installer; database indirects, more flexibility with Rocks variables; Globus updated to gt4.0.4 with web services....

ROCK is a Distribution Build Kit. You can configure your personal build of ROCK and easily build your own distribution (see the screenshots). Rock Linux is software for managing operating environments. In a way it is a software development toolkit for building OS solutions.
The available config options include, but are not limited to:
Package Selection
You can select the packages you want to have in your Distribution. So packages you dont want or need are not build at all. A list of available packages can be found here.
Compiler and Optimization
You can select a compiler (by default gcc3) and optimization options for building your distribution. That enables you to highly optimize for your hardware. You can also build your entire distribution with the GCC Stack-Smashing Protector enabled for enhanced security.
Dietlibc
You can use dietlibc instead of the GNU LibC as your C library. That can be very useful e.g. for embedded systems.
And much more ...
Other options are: selection of an init-style, custom GNU configure options, cross-building, and much more. A major focus in the ROCK development always has been to make adding new features and config options as easy as possible.
Enhancements:
- Packages can be forked (gcc=gcc3, gcc=gcc4) to reduce code duplication.
- Packages can be split (gcc, gcc:doc, gcc:dev) to reduce necessary filesystem space after installation.
- Postinstall scripts can be run to setup the application after installation rather than after compilation.
- Every ROCK script now has a -help text.
- udev has replaced devfs.
- Toolchain compilation for cross-builds has been made easier.
- Cluster Builds, Pseudonative Builds, and Cross Builds have been made easier.
- Lots of other improvements were made, and practically all of the 1600 packages were updated.

Thinking Rock project is a Java based software application for collecting and processing your thoughts, following the GTD methodology.
Thinking Rock allows you to collect your thoughts and process them into actions, projects, information or future possibilities. Actions can be done by you, delegated to someone else or scheduled for a particular date. Projects can be organised with ordered actions and sub-projects. You can review all of your actions, projects and other information quickly and easily to see what you need to do or to choose what you want to do at a particular time.
Main features:
- It will help you to store in one safe place all the things you have to do or would like to do one day;
- Unlike many task management applications, Thinking Rock lets you to group your actions in projects and sub-projects;
- It gets you moving on your thoughts by encouraging you to think of the next physical action to take;
- It is simple, easy (help documentation provided) and quick to use ;
- We provide free customer support;
- The data file is separate so you can have the application installed on your home computer and at work, and transfer the small data file between computers;
- It is multi-platform: use it on Linux, Machintosh, or Windows;
- Its free.

Asteroids is a simulation game where you have to shoot in some asteroids. Asteroids is a clone of asteroids game.
Control your spaceship with the mouse, shoot rocks until they vaporize completely.
Installation:
I have tried to compile this programs on : Linux and Solaris.
On Linux and Solaris, simply type gmake (On Solaris, typing make will call Suns own make program, that is incompatible with the makefile).
Once the program has compiled, type ./game
Enhancements:
- Sound was added, proving that there is sound in the vacuum of space.

Kirocker Music Display is an Amaork script that makes your Kicker (the KDE main panel) rock with your music.
It is a Kicker applet that displays what you listen to in Amarok
You then always know what you are listening to, and watch its cover: it is always visible on your panel.
It allows you to rate your music with one click: you can quickly change the number of stars of your musics from anywhere on your desktop.
To install:
- Extract the archive
- Open a konsole in the extracted folder (in Konqueror, go to the extracted folder and press F4)
- Run this set of command: ./configure --prefix=$(kde-config --prefix) && make && sudo make install
- It will ask your root password to install the applet on your system
- Right click the Kicker, choose "Add an Applet to the Panel..." (once the panel is unlocked)
- Double-click "Kirocker Music Display"
- Start playing a music: the applet is empty when Amarok is stopped or paused, to not annoy you with useless information when you are working
Also included in the package: the Kicker right translucent white background.
How to make the kicker translucent:
- Your screen resolution need to be 1280*800. If not, you will need some artistic skills and a Gimp experience to modify the given background
- Extract the image "Kicker Right Translucent Background.png" located in the Kirocker Music Display archive
- Open your desktop background image with The Gimp
- Drag and drop "Kicker Right Translucent Background.png" to the Gimp window of your background image
- Save the image and set it as your desktop background image
- Right click the Kicker and choose "Configure the Panel..." (once the panel is unlocked)
- Place the panel on the right (click the button on the right)
- Set the size to "Personalized" and enter "96 pixels"
- In the "Appearance" tab, check "Enable transparency"
- Click "Ok" and youre done: ENJOY!
Enhancements:
- This release fixes an issue with big playlists where Kirocker Music Display would hang up, act badly, or not respond.
- It also solves a long-standing tedious crash.
- Kirocker Music Display should be rock solid now.

Linux Audio Backstop project is a system for automated scheduling of audio recording and playback in a broadcast environment.
It includes features for controlling external audio switcher devices by means of serial and TCP/IP commands, as well as the ability to record and playback relay closures by means of the line of digital GPIO cards manufactured by MeasurementComputing.
The Linux Audio Backstop runs on the popular GNU/Linux operating system. It is freely available under the GNU General Public License.
Main features:
- Record and Playback up to four feeds simultaneously.
- Programmable from any web browser.
- Supports capture and playout of up to twenty-four discrete relay closures.
- Very lightweight and efficient - a Pentium 1 system is capable of hosting a complete system
- Runs on the rock-solid GNU/Linux operating system.
- Totally free and open -- No dongles, unlock codes, software keys or other arbitrary limitations.

polyBSD is a "multi"-purpose (hence "poly") framework for building embedded systems based on NetBSD.

Of the three major *BSD flavors, FreeBSD and OpenBSD are often in the spotlight.
FreeBSD is touted for its stability, while OpenBSD usually claims the title of
the most secure operatin system available.

However, the third flavor (NetBSD) is what many consider to be the unsung hero - it has features that rival those of both FreeBSD and OpenBSD however is not often seen in the news. NetBSD has arguably the cleanest code base of all open source operating systems this fact has unforseen effect on its overall features. The reason for
NetBSDs clean code is the its stated goal to run on as many hardware architecture
as possible. In order to do that, the team behind NetBSD has been forced to write
code that is portable and easy to debug.

Portable code is achieved by using mostly libraries and functions that are likely to compile and run well on most platforms. In addition, in order to be able to reliably port the code to over 40 different architecture, the code has to be well written so that a large group of people can look at and understand it well so they can modify it easily and port it to a new architecture. But how does that translate into stability and security touted by FreeBSD and OpenBSD respectively. Well, clean code usually translates directly into stability - one cant expect a messy code to perform well or be easy to debug.

Clean code also leads to improved security - security bugs are easy to spot and
correct. Also the portability of the code ensures that only standard libraries
and functions are used. However, those standard libarries and functions are the
ones that have been around longer, which means they have been well tested and are
likely to contain the fewest number of security bugs.

The one feature that FreeBSD had long been able to claim exclusively is that in
terms of performance it blows all other *BSD flavors out of the water when it
comes to the i386 architecture.

However, this crown was recently captured by NetBSD thanks to an extensive performance benchmarking, the results of which are referenced on the section "NetBSD tools" on this site. So to sum it all up, NetBSD is no longer simply the portability prodigy on the block. It is a fast, rock-solid and secure operating system that can successfully meet the demands of the modern enterprise. Thats the reason for it being used by the people behind this project to build some tools that will hopefully be useful.