Open Source Pixels

There are still a few weeks left before the deadline that demands Oracle appoint a community liaison for their OpenSolaris operating system that is capable of communicating their future intentions to the OpenSolaris community (like where the hell is OpenSolaris 2010.1H) or else the OpenSolaris Governing Board will return control of the community back to Oracle. However, some OpenSolaris community developers have already had enough: they’ve begun work on a new project.

Graylog2 is an syslog implementation that stores logs in MongoDB. Messages are accepted via TCP or UDP. A Web interface allows you to view the log messages. It also implements GELF, the Graylog Extended Log Format, which is a simple JSON string that allows you to send long and structured syslog messages, which is very useful for customized application log monitoring.

Changes: This is the first packaged release.

Release Tags: Beta

Tags: Syslog, Server, daemon

Licenses: GPLv3

Perf4CDI is an add-on package for implementations of CDI (Contexts and Dependency Injection for the Java EE platform, also known as JSR-299) providing convenient integration with Perf4j, a performance monitoring library for Java applications. For basic usage, it’s enough to annotate the profiling method in CDI-based applications. Many settings can be customized.

Changes: The source code was tested with mock unit tests. This is the first version which is available in Maven Central Repository, so it is no longer necessary to download JARs manually.

Release Tags: Beta

Tags: CDI, Weld, OpenWebBeans, OWB, Java, Seam, perf4j, Library, performance counters, Beta

Licenses: LGPL

Aftpd is an FTP server for anonymous access designed for Unix-like operating systems. It uses an asynchronous model of connection processing and provides service for all users within a single process; can use multiple threads to run more efficiently on multi-core systems, with each thread serving multiple clients simultaneously; uses effective mechanisms of transferring files, minimizing copying of data in RAM (sendfile or a combination of the system calls mmap/writev); uses effective event notification schemes (kqueue on FreeBSD and epoll on Linux); uses poll or select in older systems; and supports IPv6. For safety, it works as an unprivileged user and uses chroot.

Changes: A portability bug was fixed.

Tags: FTP, Server, Networking, Internet

Licenses: BSD Revised

Icwri Tools for IBM WebSphere MQ is a group of services based on Icwri script to help IBM WebSphere MQ administration and development. It enables you to do more advanced and complex administration using Icwri Script with ease. The services allow you to read and write messages, clear the queue, get queue depth, resolve in-doubt transactions, resolve an in-doubt channel, get channel status, and get listener status. Icwri Script is a lightweight service oriented Java built-in script engine by the same author.

Changes: A sample of a Web based monitor of WebSphere MQ (using Icwri WebAs version 0.101) was added. The monitor is a very simple, easy to use, and easy to customize.

Release Tags: Beta

Tags: Beta

Licenses: Apache 2.0

PHing Is Not GNU make; it’s a project build system
based on Apache Ant. You can do anything with it
that you could do with a traditional build system
like GNU make, and its use of simple XML build
files and extensible PHP "task" classes make it an
easy-to-use and highly flexible build framework.
Features include file transformations (e.g. token
replacement, XSLT transformation, Smarty template
transformations), file system operations,
interactive build support, SQL execution, CVS
operations, and much more.

Changes: This release fixes numerous smaller issues.

Release Tags: Stable

Tags: Software Development, Build Tools, Libraries, php classes, Utilities

Licenses: LGPL

TCExam is Web-based assessment software for generating and managing online tests and exams. It simplifies the exam cycle, including generation, execution, evaluation, presentation, and archiving.

Changes: This version includes the new version of the TCPDF library.

Tags: education, Testing, Computer-Based Assessment, e-exam

Licenses: AGPL v3

TCPDF is a PHP class for generating PDF documents
without requiring external extensions. TCPDF
supports all ISO page formats and custom page
formats, custom margins and units of measure,
UTF-8 Unicode, RTL languages, HTML, barcodes,
TrueTypeUnicode, TrueType, OpenType, Type1, and
CID-0 fonts, images, graphic functions, clipping,
bookmarks, JavaScript, forms, page compression, digital signatures, and encryption.

Changes: This version fixes a bug related to objects IDs.

Tags: Software Development, Libraries, php classes, Text Processing

Licenses: LGPL

mod_vhs is an Apache 2.2+ Web server module allowing mass virtual hosting without the need for file-based configuration. The virtual host paths are translated from any database supported by mod_ldap or mod_dbd at request time from MySQL, LDAP, PAM, or a system password file. PHP security can be basically auto-configured from the database using this module. Requests are cached by mod_ldap when configured.

Changes: This version is now compatible with Apache 2.2 or newer. libhome was dropped in favor of using mod_ldap or mod_dbd as the backend. Caching is now supported when mod_ldap is used. UID and GID can be changed on the fly when Apache is compiled with mpm-itk. PHP 5.3 is now supported and options like safe_mode have been dropped. The code was split into three files to ease maintenance. Support was added for non-system users on su-php.

Release Tags: Stable

Tags: Communications, Internet, Web, HTTP Servers, Site Management

Licenses: Apache

Check_MK is a complex addon for Nagios/Icinga and consists of three subprojects. The check and inventory system Check_MK is a general purpose Nagios plugin for retrieving data. It adopts a new approach for collecting data from operating systems and network components. It obsoletes NRPE, check_by_ssh, NSClient, and check_snmp. It has many benefits, the most important of which are significant reduction of CPU usage on the Nagios host and automatic inventory of items to be checked on hosts. The larger your Nagios installation is, the more helpful these improvements. The Nagios module "MK Livestatus" gives immediate and fast access to live status data of Nagios and to historic data in the Nagios logfile. It’s a supported backend for many addons like NagVis, NagiosBP, Thruk, and others. The Nagios GUI "Check_MK Multisite" is a feature complete replacement for the classical Nagios GUI, and uses MK Livestatus as a backend. Multisite is very fast, and supports efficient distributed monitoring using Livestatus as transport layer.

Changes: This release contains two important bug fixes concerned
with contact groups.

Release Tags: Bug Fix

Tags: Nagios, Monitoring, Linux, nsclient, nrpe, snmp

Licenses: GPLv2