Boston University Linux is based on Fedora Core Linux, but specifically tailored for the BU environment.

Weve added security updates, made modifications to make software work better with the way things are set up here, and added some applications that we think you might like to have.

The server edition of BU Linux provides a modern, stable, and robust server platform suitable for long-term deployment in many roles throughout the university.

Supported Hardware

Currently, only i686-class machines are supported. This includes almost everything from Intels Pentium Pro on. AMD64 and Intel EM64T systems will work fine using their 32-bit mode. Watch for a 64-bit version later this summer.

Specific Notes on Server Applications

Mail Server:

BU Linux 4.5 Server Edition (Zodiac) includes three different choices of Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) for your mail server. Each of these open source servers has its unique strengths, and you can install one or more and use the utility system-switch-mail to choose which is active.

The default is IBMs Postfix, which is designed from scratch to be secure and easily configurable. On a newly-installed BU Linux machine, Postfix is configured to exchange mail on the local machine and to send mail out to other systems, but not receive mail from the network. For this reason, outgoing mail from global BU accounts (those matching valid BU login names and with the proper UID) will appear to come from @bu.edu rather than @hostname.bu.edu. Local users (including system accounts) will retain the hostname, but without reconfiguration, any replies will bounce. Changing the system to accept mail is easy; see the BU Linux web site for details.

For the maximum flexibility and for compatibility with existing configurations (and with existing expertise), we also include the traditional standard Sendmail. And, if you have particular special needs, you may find that the new Exim MTA fits your situation best.

No matter which MTA you choose, please contact us if you need any assistance. With so many options available, the situation can be confusing, and its unfortunately easy for an accidentally misconfigured system to become a target for spam relayers. We have significant expertise at configuring both Postfix and Sendmail in a variety of situations, and will be glad to help.

FTP Server:

This release of BU Linux provides two options for FTP. The first is vsftpd, which is designed to be simple and secure. This is the most appropriate for almost all situations, but if you require more power and flexibility, we also include ProFTPd, which has many more options and a configuration syntax similar to that of the Apache web server.

Please also remember that FTP is an insecure protocol and that any passwords used travel over the network in plain text. For this reason, its best to avoid anything but anonymous FTP. For user-authenticated file transfer, use SSH and SFTP. (SFTP is provided by the OpenSSH server and enabled by default.)

Web Server:

The web server software included in BU Linux is the industry-standard Apache httpd. We also include PHP 4.3 and many other useful tools for building a web server.
If you need to provide authenticated access to web services to BU users, please contact us and we will provide you with our University-standard Weblogin module. This provides a powerful and flexible means of single-signon access control for the BU user community and we want to make it as easy as possible for you to provide this for your users.

Database Server:

BU Linux includes MySQL 4.1 and PostgreSQL 7.4. For less demanding SQL applications, we also provide SQLite 3, which provides simple SQL databases without the management overhead of running a SQL server.

Linux is an increasingly popular open source Unix-like operating system. These pages arent intended as a general guide (for that, check out our list of resources) but rather information specific to using Linux here at Boston University, and particularly to using our custom distribution, BU Linux.

BU Linux is based on Fedora Core Linux, but specifically tailored for the BU environment. Weve added security updates, made modifications to make software work better with the way things are set up here, and added some applications that we think you might like to have. For details, see the FAQ.

Online is a speed focused program to give a textual display of your friends/buddies currently logged onto a unix host.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful for everyone, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330,
Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

WWW::Yahoo::DrivingDirections is a Perl module to generate driving directions for multiple-stop trips in the United States, courtesy of maps.yahoo.com.

ABSTRACT

Object-oriented interface to the maps.yahoo.com driving directions.

SYNOPSIS

use WWW::Yahoo::DrivingDirections;
my $yd = WWW::Yahoo::DrivingDirections->new ();
$yd->add_stops ( @ARGV );
$yd->get_maps();
or
use WWW::Yahoo::DrivingDirections;
my $yd = WWW::Yahoo::DrivingDirections->new (
{
roundtrip => 1,
return_html => 1,
save_html => 0,
save_format => output_%d.html,
},
atlanta, ga,
123 fake st, boston, ma,
0 church st, cambridge, ma,
LAX,
);
$yd->add_stops ( paris, tx, 1 main st, springfield, IL );
$yd->roundtrip ( 1 );
$html_array_ref = $yd->get_maps();

WWW::Yahoo::DrivingDirections provides a simple means of generating driving directions for trips with more stops than a start and a finish. Driving from LAX airport to 1 Main St, Portland, OR to Denver, CO? Just do this:

use WWW::Yahoo::DrivingDirections;
my $yd = WWW::Yahoo::DrivingDirections->new (
LAX, 1 Main St, Portland, OR, Denver, CO
);
$yd->get_maps();

and the directions will be saved in trip_leg_1.html and trip_leg_2.html.

Games::Baseball::Scorecard is a Perl module.

SYNOPSIS

my $score = Games::Baseball::Scorecard->new($dir, $name, {
color => [ .4, .4, .4 ], # grey
fonts => [ # Myriad Condensed regular/bold
[ myriadrcrrl => 9 ],
[ myriadrcbrl => 14 ],
[ myriadrcrrl => 14 ],
[ myriadrcbrl => 22 ],
],
});

# fill initial scorecard out
$s->init({
scorer => Pudge,
date => 2004-10-24, 20:05-23:25,
at => Fenway Park, Boston,
temp => 48 clear,
wind => 7 to RF,
att => 35,001,
home => {
team => Boston Red Sox,
starter => 38, # jersey number
lineup => [
# [ num, position ],
[ 18, 8 ], # Damon, starting at CF
# ...
],
roster => {
# num => name
18 => Damon, Johnny,
38 => Schilling, Curt,
# ...
},
},
away => {
team => St. Louis Cardinals,
# ...
}
});

# draw the game
$s->inn; # new inning / end of last inning

$s->ab; # new at-bat
# works to full count
$s->pitches(qw(s b s b b f));
# struck out looking
$s->out(!K);

$s->ab;
# home run to left-center
$s->hit(4, lc);

# calculate/draw stats
$self->totals;

# finish the job
$s->generate;

# open final PDF
$s->pdfopen;

Games::Baseball::Scorecard is a frontend to a PDF scorecard written in Metapost by Christopher Swingley (http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/baseball/scorecards.php). That scorecard is drawn out, and has a nice API for actually drawing out the elements of the game: all the ball, strikes, outs, etc.

Being Metapost, it is laborious to do all this. So this module provides a nice frontend, that also keeps track of balls and strikes and hits and runs and outs and more, making input of the game quite simple and efficient.

This module does not include the entire API, but most of it. Patches and ideas welcome. Feel free to call output directly if you want to generate Metapost on your own, or to modify the $SCORECARD variable (which contains the base Metapost code), or the $TEX (single page) and $TEXD (duplex) TeX files.

I wont give a tutorial on scoring baseball games, or on Metapost, below. Seek other resources (Swingleys URL above has a nice tutorial on scoring baseball games, using the scorecard he designed, which is what were using here).

SYNOPSIS

Plenty of people have learned WWW::Mechanize, and now, you can too!
Following are user-supplied samples of WWW::Mechanize in action.

You can also look at the t/*.t files in the distribution.

Please note that these examples are not intended to do any specific task. For all I know, theyre no longer functional because the sites they hit have changed. Theyre here to give examples of how people have used WWW::Mechanize.

Note that the examples are in reverse order of my having received them, so the freshest examples are always at the top.

Starbucks Density Calculator, by Nat Torkington

Heres a pair of scripts from Nat Torkington, editor for OReilly Media and co-author of the Perl Cookbook.

Rael [Dornfest] discovered that you can easily find out how many Starbucks there are in an area by searching for "Starbucks". So I wrote a silly scraper for some old census data and came up with some Starbucks density figures. Theres no meaning to these numbers thanks to errors from using old census data coupled with false positives in Yahoo search (e.g., "Dodie Starbuck-Your Style Desgn" in Portland OR). But it was fun to waste a night on.

Here are the top twenty cities in descending order of population, with the amount of territory each Starbucks has. E.g., A New York NY Starbucks covers 1.7 square miles of ground.

New York, NY 1.7
Los Angeles, CA 1.2
Chicago, IL 1.0
Houston, TX 4.6
Philadelphia, PA 6.8
San Diego, CA 2.7
Detroit, MI 19.9
Dallas, TX 2.7
Phoenix, AZ 4.1
San Antonio, TX 12.3
San Jose, CA 1.1
Baltimore, MD 3.9
Indianapolis, IN 12.1
San Francisco, CA 0.5
Jacksonville, FL 39.9
Columbus, OH 7.3
Milwaukee, WI 5.1
Memphis, TN 15.1
Washington, DC 1.4
Boston, MA 0.5

Camera Life (FDCL) is a system for cataloging your photo collection. Camera Life project gives users the ability to search your archive by albums that you set up, or by directory structure.

Camera life (FDCL) is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

FDCL is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Chatterbox; see the file LICENSE. If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA. Or visit http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

Here are some key features of "Full Decent Camera Life":

Self Updating

· When you add photos to the photo directory you specified when installing, FDCL will cache, thumnail and make public all such photos (Administration: File Manager). You can allow certain user classes to maintain your site by editing the photo descriptions and delete photos that suck.

Topic view and Folder View

· On the main page, users are presented with the option of viewing photos by topic or folder. In topic view, albums (collections of like photos) are categorized by topic (ex: People, Things, My Vacataions).

· Folder view is hierrical and based on the directory structure of the photos. When viewing a photo, users are given the option to view others photos in the same topic or folder.

Image deletion

· When viewing a photo, you have the option to delete it. When a user deletes an image, FDCL actually flags it as non-public. An admin has to actually erase it (Administration: File Manager). And when you erase it, FDCL just moves it to the erased folder. FDCL will never rm your photos. With this in mind, it is sensible to allow users to delete offensive images and admins to erase them.

Themes

· You can easily change the look of the entire site by choosing a different theme (Administration: Customize: Themes). Official themes can be downlaoded from http://fdcl.sourceforge.net other themes are available at your local supermarket (or not).

Users

· Users can anonyously sign up an account. The admins choose which accounts to give privileges to. All authentication is done by random cookies saved in the DB and passwords are salted and hashed.

Logging

· Some actions are logged to the logs table. This is done via the db_log function. You can view the logs (Administration: Log Viewer) and see the audit trail to modifications to the ssytem. You can then rollback specific action (like renaming a photo) by simply choosing the previous state to go back to.

Whats New in This Release:

· This version adds support for Gallery Remote API, microformats, sitemaps, OpenSearch, and RSS feeds, and supports iPhoto photocasting.
· There are now photo keywords with a del.icio.us-like keyword editor.
· Checkpoints allow you to review and approve changes to the site.
· Your users can now order prints online.
· There are also big changes under the hood and some security enhancements.