Free to and from software for linux

Automated Linux From Scratch (ALFS) is a project that creates the generic framework for an extendable system builder and package installer.

Why would I want to use ALFS?

After having gone through the LFS and BLFS books more than 2 or 3 times, you will quickly appreciate the ability to automate the task of compiling the software you want for your systems.

What can I do with ALFS?

The goal of ALFS is to automate the process of creating an LFS system. It seeks to make the process of building LFS easier and more efficient while still providing flexibility by granting the user total control and insight into the compilation and management of his LFS build.

How is ALFS implemented?

nALFS

The first ALFS implementation was nALFS by Neven Has. nALFS is a small program written in C. It first parses an XML profile that contains information concerning the LFS build process into a series of internal commands. It can then execute these at your discretion, thus automating the compilation of LFS.

jhalfs

Currently, the official implementation is jhalfs. Originally created by Jeremy Huntwork, but since developed and maintained by Manuel Canales Esparcia and George Boudreau, jhalfs has become a light-weight, practical method of automating an LFS build. jhalfs is a Bash shell script that makes use of Subversion and xsltproc to first download the XML sources of the Linux From Scratch book and then extract any necessary commands, placing them into executable shell scripts. If you do not already have the necessary source packages in place on your system jhalfs can fetch them. Finally, jhalfs generates a Makefile which will control the execution of the shell scripts, allowing for recovery if the build should encounter an error. Since jhalfs extracts its commands to run directly from the LFS book, there are no profiles to edit or maintain.

Note: The 2.2 version of jhalfs has been released. A tarball can been downloaded from http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/alfs/downloads/jhalfs/stable/.

alfs

There are many in-depth features that have been requested for future ALFS implementations. Because of this, development has been slated for an entirely new build tool which will be called alfs. To see a list of features that will appear in alfs, please read our Software Requirements Specification. If you wish to help develop this new tool, please subscribe to the alfs-discuss mailing list and leave a note there explaining your desire to help.

Debian From Scratch is really two systems:

1) a bootable CD for repairing Linux systems or installing Debian;
2) the program that generates the CDs that are used for #1.

You can expect the following from your DFS CD:

* Bootable CD featuring the GNU Grub bootloader. Can be used to boot hard disk partitions even if no hard disk bootloader is present.

* Kernel and userland support for all major filesystems, including ext2, ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS, FAT, VFAT, NTFS, ISO9660, CramFS, tmpfs, and more. Userland support for Reiser4.

* Kernel and userland support for different disk layout schemes including standard partitioning, Logical Volume Manager 2 (LVM2), software RAID, etc.

* Full recovery tools runnable directly from CD, including:

- Filesystem utilities for all mazjor filesystems, including undeletion tools for ext2

- Partition editors (fdisk, cfdisk, parted)

- Text editors (nano, joe, vim, emacs)

- C, Perl, Python, and OCaml development environments. Enough to configure and compile a new kernel and build basic .debs. Kernel 2.6.6 sources included on CD.

- Full networking support, including PPP and various Ethernet cards and DHCP

- Network tools including FTP clients, Web client, ssh, telnet, NFS, smbclient, tcpdump, netcat, etc.

- Backup restoration tools such as rdiff-backup, dump/restore, tar, cpio, amanda client, afbackup client, etc.

- CD and DVD burning tools

- Basic printing tools (cat for local printers, rlpr for remote ones, and netcat for Jetdirect, plus unix2dos for text files and Ghostscript for emergency conversions)

- Mail reader (mutt)

* Base systems for multiple versions of Debian installable directly from CD, including: woody (i386), sarge (i386), sid (i386), and sid (amd64). Alpha CD can install woody, sarge, or sid for Alpha.

* amd64 support: Enough to install or fix an AMD64 system. Includes 64-bit kernel with 32-bit emulation (to run the 32-bit userland on the CD). Also includes 64-bit package for bootstrapping a new AMD64 support. In short, you can boot a 64-bit kernel and be treated as a first-class citizen in almost all respects.

* i386 or x86_64 (amd64) kernels bootable directly from initial boot menu.

* DFS generation scripts support custom kernels, packages, mirrors, compressed ISO images, and a high degree of flexibility.

Antmod is a build management, release management, and repository management tool. Its implementation is an Ant-based extensible engine for retrieving, versioning, building, and deploying code to and from Subversion or CVS.
It standardizes build files for Java projects and provides build plugins for various tasks. Antmod project also standardizes tagging and branching for both CVS and Subversion, and its module and repository management can also be used for non-Java projects.
It greatly speeds up Java software development, promotes reuse of Java software, and standardizes the build-test- release cycle.
Main features:
- Standardized out-of-the-box buildfiles
- For Java projects, Antmod places standardized buildfiles on module and release level, in this way standardizing the way each module and release is built.
- Allow customized builds per module and release
- Antmod allows modules and releases to override default behavior in the buildfile by committing a "local.build.xml" in the root of the module with the overridden build logic.
- Enable reuse of components across projects
- It is as simple as adding the module to the release descriptor of the project.
- Modularized approach to software artefacts
- Code, documentation, configuration, etcetera is grouped in modules that are versioned in a consistent way per module.
- Standardize repository usage
- Everything is in a module, the module is the versioning unit, and tagging and branching happens per module. Tag and branch names are standardized.
- Centralized overview across releases and projects
- Release descriptors describe what a release consists of, and are stored centrally in the repository. This provides a centralized view across releases and projects.
- Separate developer and release manager roles
- The release descriptors can be maintained by a release manager, and do not have to be maintained by the developer.
Enhancements:
- This release adds Subversion 1.4 support, improved command-line support, and module-level merge functions for merging to a branch or the trunk.
- With the out-of-the-box War plugin for building Web applications, this release is a must-have.
- All current users are advised to upgrade.

Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with the steps necessary to build your own custom Linux system.
There are a lot of reasons why somebody would want to install an LFS system. The question most people raise is "why go through all the hassle of manually installing a Linux system from scratch when you can just download an existing distribution?". That is a valid question which I hope to answer for you.
The most important reason for LFSs existence is teaching people how a Linux system works internally. Building an LFS system teaches you about all that makes Linux tick, how things work together, and depend on each other. And most importantly, how to customize it to your own taste and needs.
One of the key benefits of LFS is that you are in control over your system without having to rely on somebody elses Linux implementation. You are in the drivers seat now and are able to dictate every single thing such as the directory layout and boot script setup. You will also know exactly where, why and how programs are installed.
Another benefit of LFS is that you can create a very compact Linux system. When you install a regular distribution, you end up installing a lot of programs you probably would never use. Theyre just sitting there taking up (precious) disk space. Its not hard to get an LFS system installed under 100 MB. Does that still sound like a lot? A few of us have been working on creating a very small embedded LFS system. We installed a system that was just enough to run the Apache web server; total disk space usage was aproximately 8 MB. With further stripping, that can be brought down to 5 MB or less. Try that with a regular distribution.
If we were to compare a Linux distribution with a hamburger you buy at a supermarket or fast-food restaurant, you would end up eating it without knowing precisely what it is you are eating, whereas LFS gives you the ingredients to make a hamburger. This allows you to carefully inspect it, remove unwanted ingredients, and at the same time allow you to add ingredients to enhance the flavour of your hamburger. When you are satisfied with the ingredients, you go on to the next part of putting it together. You now have the chance to make it just the way you like it: broil it, bake it, deep-fry it, barbeque it, or eat it raw.
Another analogy that we can use is that of comparing LFS with a finished house. LFS will give you the skeleton of a house, but its up to you to install plumbing, electrical outlets, kitchen, bathtub, wallpaper, etc.
Another advantage of a custom built Linux system is added security. You will compile the entire system from source, thus allowing you to audit everything, if you wish to do so, and apply all the security patches you want or need to apply. You dont have to wait for somebody else to provide a new binary package that fixes a security hole. Besides, you have no guarantee that the new package actually fixes the problem (adequately). You never truly know whether a security hole is fixed or not unless you do it yourself.
Enhancements:
- The LFS LiveCD Team is proud to announce the release of the x86-6.2-3 version of LFS LiveCD. This version is built using LFS 6.2 and many Beyond Linux From Scratch packages from the Subversion branch. Source packages for LFS 6.2, and the LFS book itself, are included on the live CD. The CD is also suitable as a host for building x86 and x86_64 Cross LFS systems. Other features and bugfixes: the CD supports hibernation; the CD file system can be written to; the CD contains a visually pleasing and easy-to-use window manager, XFce...

Laughing Man Factorial is the paranormal evil twin of Laughing Man. Factorial also has an unexplained superiority complex, almost exponential you might say, over the original Laughing Man which we will hence forth refer to as Junior for appeasement of currently unwarranted hoity-toity.
Like Junior it is an application for monitoring webpage changes, however it does so using the Objective-C/Cocoa framework as opposed to Java, and leverages Core Data, bindings, and value transformers to produce a smaller code footprint. Less fluff and more meat I say, more meat and less fluff.
Factorial is in a experimental state, it is not recommended that current users of Junior switch completely to this version. You can safely import your data and tinker with Factorial, but it is recommended that any data that you want to remain consistent, be done through old stable Junior.
Factorial may not be forgiving on data when upgrading from one version to the next for the next several releases, hence the adjectives paranormal and evil in the preface.
Junior Equivalent functionality
Splitbar position saved on shutdown
Categories display like junior
New Features
Drag and drop funtionality greatly enhanced
supports dragging to and from Safari and OmniWeb
Change log embedded into application and available through menu.
Enhancements:
- This release fixes several bugs, and provides several feature enhancements, bringing the Factorial branch almost up to par with the original Laughing Man.
- Most notably, a nasty Java to Objective-C, Date to NSDate porting bug in the beta was fixed.
- The beta was usable, but users had to wait a little under 3 years for each site refresh.
- This issue has been fixed in 0.1, but you must reset your data if you used the beta.

JSON::DWIW is a Perl module that converts Perl data structures to and from JSON. The project does what most Perl programmers would expect without having to set any extra options.

For example, it converts objects to their underlying data structures (for hash or array) and turns IO objects into strings. It is also faster than the JSON or JSON::Syck modules on CPAN in the developers tests.

Requirements:

• KDE

ext2hide allows the user to save and restore an arbitrary number of files to and from the reserved space in an ext2/3 filesystems primary and backup superblocks.

Using ext2hide, you can use this reserved section to store an arbitrary number of files, where they will be completely invisible to normal filesystem utilities, but still residing in permanent storage on disk.

This can be useful for public keys, passwords, anything you like.

This space is invisible to the operating system and filesystem drivers, and thus can be used to store data that is invisible to the normal filesystem tools, and therefore is one of the last places someone would look to find secret information on your filesystem, unless they are scanning your disk sector-by-sector.