Mission

Originally, Current was designed to be an open source Red Hat Network (RHN) server. Today, the Current developers believe in creating a much more powerful and useful tool. We believe that there is value in strongly authenticated package repositories, an advanced web management interface, client tracking tools, and a flexible system for grouping and permissions. Many of the existing management tools limit our freedom as they are controlled by corporations and closed source. Other open source tools lack strong authentication and management features. Simply, we believe that the Open Source community can create a significantly more useful management and deployment tool.

Features

• Production quality Up2date server for 2.7 to 4.4 clients with a Fedora Core 5 and 6 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, or 4 server.
• Full SQL database backend.
• TurboGears Web Interface in the devel series.
• Yum support in the devel series.
• As easy to setup for the admin as we can make it.

Recent News

• [1 November 2006] Help with TurboGears

  The Current project is looking for someone that would like to work on the TurboGears web interface. Especially web design and looking up the TG controllers to the Current API. If you are interested please email the developers' list.

• [23 September 2006] Current 1.7.6

  The code path for scanning channels was busted in 1.7.5 so here is 1.7.6. This also has some code to reconnect to MySQL when the database connection times out. The database records more meta information about each client and that is reflected in the TG web interface.

• [14 September 2006] Current 1.7.5

  Current now has user authentication (but not authorization yet). To use the cadmin.py command you must first login by using the login cadmin command. The Current extended parts of the XMLRPC API now require a session argument. The tarball has a TurboGears web interface in the cwebapp/ directory. See the screenshots.

• [06 August 2006] Current 1.7.4

  Basic support for Yum is included. The repositories have Yum's repomd metadata added and a Yum plugin exists that will register a client and allow the client to download files from the Current server. Requires Yum 2.9.3 or better.

• [07 July 2006] Current 1.7.3

  Lots of churn. No more web interface. There are better ways to do that than what I had done. No more makefiles, we now use Python's distutils. First shot at authenticated, tracked clients and multiple channels. See the release announcement for full details.

• [23 Jul 2005] Current 1.6.1

  A new release in the stable 1.6 series. This fixes a few bugs from Issue Tracker and adds support for versions of Up2date that ship with Fedora Core 4.

• [21 Mar 2005] Current 1.6.0 Final

  Its here! Current 1.6.0 Final. Only some documentation tweeks when compared to 1.5.91. Y'all let me know how it breaks.

• [04 Oct 2004] New Maintainer, New Development Version

  Jack Neely is the new maintainer for the Current project. Hunter is still on board and we are working together as co-maintainers. I think Current is a worthy project and would like to see it continue.

  I've beaten CVS head into submission and am releasing a new development version 1.5.6 with a re-worked database layer.

Downloads and Documentation

• Screenshots

• Current FAQ

• Current Manual - This is the manual as shipped with 1.6.0. This should contain full blown instructions for everything in Current. Of course it doesn't, but you are welcome to patch the DocBook source in the Current tar balls, cvs, or svn.

• Releases - All source code and RPM packages of Current releases can be downloaded from the Documents and Files section.

• Source Code Control - The source is stored in tigris.org's Subversion system. Please see the help menu or click on the "Subversion" link at the top left to browse our Subversion repository. Read only access to the actual SVN repository is granted to folks that have an Observer roll in this project.

  Between October 4, 2004 and July 22 2005 I did a lot of work with a personal Subversion server as I waited for Tigris to upgrade their systems. If you would like access to the history and information stored in that SVN server please go here: https://svn.linux.ncsu.edu/svn/slack/trunk/current. As of July 22, 2005 the Tigris SVN resources are now the primary SCM for Current.

• Jack's Current FTP repository: ftp://ftp.linuxczar.net/pub/current

Dependencies

New for Current 1.7 - Current versions 1.7 and up require mod_python 3.1 and Python 2.3. Current should be able to run out of the box on RHEL 4, RHEL 4 rebuilds, and FC3 or better. The TurboGears web interface in the requires TurboGears 0.8.9 and Python 2.4.

All Current Versions - Current does require a few things to run. Fortunately, any of the Red Hat or Fedora Core distributions have everything you need to get Current working in some form or another. The above distributions all include Python, mod_python, RPM, Apache, and a database Current knows how to use. However, Current intends to support several different databases. Below are the names of the databases that we intend to make Current work with. Also, Current only uses SQL databases in version 1.5.x and above.

• PostgreSQL
• MySQL
• SQLite and python-sqlite (See Fedora Extras)

Contributing

To discuss ideas, bug fixes, or submit patches then join the development mailing list. If your patch implements an existing RFE or fixes a known BUG, you can also/instead attach it to our Issue Tracker.

You can usually find one of us on IRC on irc.freenode.net in #current.

If you want to add a bug/rfe/whatever to the Issue Tracker without registering with tigris.org, just send them to the dev or users list. (If you are registered, you do not have to join current.) We'll add it.

Future Directions

A lot of thought has gone into where to take Current. The writing on the wall is clear that an RHN-alike is just not the way to go. The Linux community needs a tool that is to system administration as Yum/Up2date are to package deployment. One of our primary goals will be to bring automated management to Yum based systems by providing an Action Agent similar to rhnsd that can work on non-up2date machines. Here are some specifics to what we are working toward.

• Yum Support
• Action Agent: A client agent that communicates with the Current server. Able to report the status of the machine and run a specific set of Actions. This client will be separate from Up2date and aimed at systems using Yum.
• Client Monitoring: Display in a web tool known information about each system.
• Basic client management: This includes full push (rhnsd/rhn_check) and being able to "group" clients together.
• To infinity, and beyond:
  Applet support, full HTML driven management interfaces, full errata announcements, "proxy" server like support, etc. Similar support using the Current Action Agent instead of the up2date tools.

Related Resources

• Your Maintainer's Blog
• Red Hat Network website - If current doesn't meet your needs, go here. This WILL. Thanks to Red Hat for an excellent client.
• The Python home page
• The apache web server
• The mod_python apache module
• The mod_ssl apache module
• The PySQLite Python Module
• The SQLite Home Page