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Cross-Platform Unix Software Packaging
Facts and Features
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IT Managers
System Administrators
Package Developers
- Cost reduction
If the unified approach of OpenPKG is used, the cross-platform Unix system administration costs can be reduced substantially. Experience shows that a factor of 50% is expectable. This way resources can be freed and the efforts spent on important service improvements instead of wasting them for tedious administration tasks only. - Open source software
OpenPKG is Open Source software. You don't have to pay any license fees but nevertheless receive a high quality application created by enthusiastic developers which are experienced system administrators and know what they're doing.
- High quality consistent installation
Your engineers need no experience in package porting. They just install and concentrate on their primary task of configuring the applications. This makes installations consistent and more reliable. - Multiple instances
Need virtual servers? OpenPKG is good for you! It can be installed more than once on a single machine squeezing out everything the device can offer. - Built-in porting knowledge
Application packages were build by experienced developers with portability in mind. Take advantage of that free service. - Cross platform
OpenPKG supports FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris, it runs on Intel, Sparc and Alpha CPUs. On any system the behavior of OpenPKG is the same so engineers using it will see a unified environment across these platforms. This significantly reduces the complexities normally resulting from dissimilar systems. Have your engineers do application configuration rather than wasting time finding the differences between systems. - Minimum OS dependencies
A OpenPKG installation has minimum dependencies to the underlying operating system. In fact, OpenPKG ignores most packages bundled with the OS. Withdraw any items from your customer meetings discussion list that favor one operating system over the other because of vendor supplied or omitted packages. You're free now.
- Signed packages
Officially released OpenPKG packages are digitally signed. Verification of that sign makes any tampering on packages evident. Successful verification assures that any package you grabbed came from a trusted source and includes the content you expect without any damage or surprises inside. - Package integrity verification
Files from already installed packages can be compared against the original package's content. Check system integrity any time you like. Ensure your last filesystem check did not damage any executable. - Self contained Packages
A OpenPKG package contains either source and instructions to create or binaries to install an application. If the build or install process depends on other packages, OpenPKG will tell you about these dependencies and halt the process until you resolve the dependencies installing related OpenPKG packages. You don't have to touch the base operating system ever. - Support for unprivileged user
Unless a package explicitly requires root privileges, i.e. a network daemon listing on a UDP/TCP port below 1024, a user can place a private instance of OpenPKG in any writable location like his home directory. - Arbitrary prefix
Although our binary packages are usually build for the hardcoded /openpkg prefix this was our internal design decision. OpenPKG does not enforce this prefix. It can be configured when bootstrapping. If you choose a different path you must build your binaries yourself which is just a matter of CPU horsepower and source RPM download speed. - Multiple instances
Isolating multiple installations and creating virtual servers is a snap. Just bootstrap OpenPKG to more than one location. We already got all the tweaks and quirks out of the packages. Assume network daemons will properly listen to configured not wildcard addresses and applications log to their own not to the common system var area. - Minimal OS intrusion
OpenPKG tries not to touch the operating system at all. Only very few adjustments are being done related to user/group accounts, system startup and shutdown (rc) and periodic execution of commands (cron). - Useful preconfiguration
Package installations yield useful preconfigurations which allow immediate exploration or usage of an application while avoiding unnecessary security threats. - Uninstallable packages
A OpenPKG package can be removed entirely from the system. Every static content is removed automatically while variable user data like configuration and databases survive deinstallation. Locating user data is easy due to the clean filesystem structure that OpenPKG enforces. - Powerful queries
RPM already provides powerful query mechanisms allowing insight view to any package, list everything from textual description down to the attributes of a single file. Never again be in doubt what the original permissions of the file you just accidentally touched have been. OpenPKG has been designed to provide as many useful informations as query results as possible. - Run-command facility
The run-command facility makes it easy to enable or disable, run, stop, restart or reload daemons. Best of all, it works consistent across all platforms.
- Support for entire package lifecycle
With OpenPKG you create packages from original tar-balls. You specify instructions how to fetch original sources and patches, commands to bundle everything together into a source RPM and list how to build a binary RPM. All instructions are placed in a single.spec file which is more or less a shell script. - Open source software
OpenPKG is open source software. In the (unlikely) event you push it to the limits, have exhausted any documentation or suspect you found a bug you have full access to the source. This allows you to have an in-depth view behind the scenes and we won't stop you if you proceed and tailor OpenPKG to your needs.
- Support for unprivileged user
All packages can be build without having root access to the system. - Dependencies for build and runtime
Source package include information for build dependencies and binary packages include information for install dependencies. - Clean and compact package specifications
The one single.specfile is the ultimate source for any information regarding the package from user viewable description over compiler options to install targets. It's all there. - Run-command facility
A powerful run-command facility unifies the startup and shutdown as well as the periodic (cron) scripting across all platforms. Every package has all necessary shell commands for actions related to run, stop, restart and reload daemons in a single file. Commands for periodic execution are placed there as well.
More Information
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