Category Archives: Work
Alfresco Document management system is open source
Alfresco is a Document management system, also known as enterprise content management system. While products like google docs and live office making a lot of noise in the document editing market and products like dropbox helping us save and share our documents and other type of files. There is an open market for enterprise class content management system.
Though it is called an ECM, individual users or a small team like can greatly benefit from it.
How would you like to have all your documents searchable on the cloud, group them, categorise them, render them on the fly, download and view them on any device and share them with any group of people. This is what a document management system is all about. Though the product is not targeting individual users or small groups, never the less the benefits are undeniable once you know what you’re missing. Products like google doc and live office are not any document management system, they are just storage for your document with online editors and allow you to share and collaborate them in a very limited way.
Watch this video to see some highlights of alfresco features
On the other hand smart products like Dropbox makes sure your file is always with you. Features like Dropbox offline syncing can be a great extension to alfresco. However seamless integration of Dropbox with various platforms did not come cheap.
Talking about offline file sync, Alfresco do supports CIFS export of its contents; with Microsoft offline sync you can access them offline too.
Alfresco is Open Source Open Standard product, built on java and runs on java tomcat application server and even on Jboss platform.
You can deploy it on your own cloud and set it up without spending a penny for license, which is almost as good as the enterprise edition, and good enough for most of small and medium enterprises.
Feature wise Alfresco lines up with products like Microsoft SharePoint portal and it’s a great alternative to it.
Tag: alfresco, google docs alternative, sharepoint alternative, what is alfresco, Alfresco feature lists, open source
read more on alfresco vs googledocs
Open Source Hardware! Build your own design you can touch and interact
Open source software was born when software started to become expensive. All you needed was hardware and a complier and a group of people who was willing to share their work for free to the world provided code stays free in its re-distribution. We have come a long way since that first day. Today we all are using open source in some way or others and some using it more than the others.
Interaction with logic using just software and a computer limits our ability to interact and automate within visible 3D graphic and sound. Occasionally the software can recognize your voice and respond.
The birth and mass production of 3D printers changes a lot. It gives us the ability to share and re-produce and build on Open Source Hardware.
This recent ted talk from Arduino shows how much progress we have made in hardware and design innovation using Open Source hardware. This makes me ask why, should Sony or apple lead all design innovation? There is so much we would like to have but just have to wait for the big guys to think it is feasible and can bring billion dollars before they makes a move on it.
Chinese has shown you can just copy hardware and rule the world. We software users have been working so long for software integration and automation. Imagine how much we can accomplish with hardware and design innovation. The next great innovation could be a design innovation with Open Source Hardware.
I am interested in seeing what comes out of open source hardware like Robotics and Renewable energy projects
Massimo Banzi: How Arduino is open-sourcing imagination
Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilization
Source: bog.ted.com ted global 2012
Open-sourcing the blueprints of civilization: Marcin Jakubowski on TED.com
10 alternatives to Moodle for e-Learning software, LMS Platform using open source/GPL
A learning management system (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, e-learning programs, and training content. An LMS, based on the focus can also be called as e-Learning software, Virtual learning environment (VLE), Course management system (CMS), learning delivery platform, course delivery systems etc.
A virtual learning environment (VLE) is also a prominent term which stands out. It is an education system based on the Web, that models conventional real-world education by integrating a set of equivalent virtual concepts for tests, homework, classes, classrooms and perhaps even museums and other external academic resources. It normally uses Web 2.0 tools for 2-way interaction, and includes a content management system.
LMS is a software for planning, delivering, and managing learning events within an organization, including online, virtual classroom, and instructor-led courses. For example, an LMS can simplify global certification efforts, enable entities to align learning initiatives with strategic goals, and provide a means of enterprise-level skills management. The focus of an LMS is to manage students, keeping track of their progress and performance across all types of training activities. It performs administrative tasks, such as reporting to instructors, HR and other ERP systems but it is not used to create course content.
In this article we shall be reviewing the following open source LMS/e-Learning software.
eFront, Dokeos, Claroline, ATutor, ILIAS, OLAT, Sakai, .LRN, openelms, Fedena
and the bonus one WeBWorK
Essential tcp ip network tools, network Swiss army knife
Being a Network administrators, systems administrators we always like to have some tools handy to look into, troubleshoot or just to figure things out. There are many open source, free tools available specialized for different purposes
In this blog I shall attempt to list some of them, give a brief description and list the available platform. I prefer to run these tools from a laptop on both windows and linux platform. I also prefer to have the ability to carry them around in a pen drive in a portable format. Linux boot disks are also useful in these cases
The basic tools to check tcp/ip
Ping is the most basic tool we use to check connectivity. We also use arp to check the local broadcast domain and the arp resolution table. traceroute(linux)/tracert(windows) is used to check the path to the destination host. “mtr” is a powerful tool to view the network part for a longer period of time, usually installed as an additional package. Windows version of mtr is also available, even a portable version. One more useful tool comes mostly of out the box is nslookup (windows and linux) and dig for linux; they are very useful troubleshooting identifying dns related investigation. “whois” is one more tool useful to find out more in some ip or domain name, owner, contact authority, as number etc. Last but not the least netstat available both in windows and linux is a useful tool to find out the local network status easily. A follow the link for a detail tutorial on how to use these basic tools.
OpenVAS Screen shot
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The future of computer human interface, BrainGate
Computer and human interface will probably be one of the most important areas of development in next few decades. While we work to master our technology to make computers work for us more efficiently, and double processing power every 18month, little we have seen to improve our direct interaction with computers.
What we seen is form factor changes (tablet/smart phone), introduction to motion sensing input (Kinect), use of GPS, accelerometer, google goggle, google glass, etc. In my opinion, we probably took a step back by heavily depending upon touch keyboards moving away from using 10 fingers (QWERTY keyboard) to 2 fingers. Fashion statements have become one of the key driving factors in the market. Most of our attempts to make handwriting recognition popular were never successful.
Our ability to instruct computers directly from our brain will probably be one of the great leap forward. We have the technology in hand. Project BrainGate is one of them.
BrainGate is a brain implant system, currently under development and in clinical trials, designed to help those who have lost control of their limbs, or other bodily functions, such as patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or spinal cord injury. The sensor, which is implanted into the brain, monitors brain activity in the patient and converts the intention of the user into computer commands.
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How to upgrade Cirtix Xen 5.0 to 5.5 to 5.6 to 6.0
Prefix: We have been planning to upgrade our Citrix XenServer from 5.0 to the latest version 6.0.
XenServer only permits upgrades from the last major release. For example, in order to upgrade from version 5.0.0 to version 5.6, you must first upgrade version 5.0.0 to version 5.5, and then upgrade version 5.5 to version
5.6, and to 6.0 and so on.
As I couldn’t find a straight forward upgrade only documentation online. I am creating one. This can be used for a full upgrade from 5.0 to 6.0.1 or any of its subsets independently
If you are upgrading to a feature pack, XenServer permits a direct upgrade from the preceding release. For
example, you can upgrade directly from version 5.5 to version 5.6 Service Pack 2
How to extend your LVM disk
How to extend a LVM
This document is a continuation of LVM made easy, my previous blog
This document is on LVM2 and assuming your Linux distribution supports LVM2
This document also assumes you have LVM setup out of /dev/sdb
Volume group name is “mail-storage-group”
Logical volume name is “mail-storage-lv”
And we shall attempt to extend “mail-storage-lv” by adding a new disk
- Initialize a new physical volume in the on the disk/partition as applicable
- Add the physical disk to the existing volume group “mail-storage-group”, you want to expand
- Expand the logical volume “mail-storage-lv” receding in the volume group “mail-storage-group”
- Do online resizing of the partition
How to securely and effectively erase a disk with DD
At times we need to clean up our disks for whatever reason, like installation errors, privacy, security or to clean up an infected file you need a special deleting procedure.
Tools like regular delete only remove the inode of the file, which does not touch the data/contents. It is possible to recover these deleted files with simple utility. A secured delete tool like dd will overwrite the disk blocks with zero which makes the recovery impossible
To clean up the entre disk the only way to do it by booting via a boot disk, I prefer a linux boot disk
Setting up backup mail exchange server with sendmail
Setting up backup mail exchange server with sendmail
Most systems admin is used to setting up the primary mail server, but many of them (like me) are not used to setup a backup mail server in a regular basis. This is my attempt to create a complete document on setting up a backup mail server and testing it for the dooms day. (Actually it in used more often than you can think of)
Lets say we have mail server for @example.com
Therefore there is a mail server called mail.example.com.
Mail and dns works hand in hand. DNS server tells where to deliver the email. MTA always looks for DNS entry to find the primary and secondary mail server incase the primary is not reachable. So the first thing we need to do it setup a DNS entry for the backup mail server
