- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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 .spec file 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.
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