mandriva

Pulse 2 - Open Source Computer System Management for medium and large organizations


Pulse 2 helps organizations ranging from a few computers to 100 000+ heterogeneous computers to inventory, maintain, update and take full control on their IT assets. It has been designed to handle 100 000+ computers spread on many sites.
It supports heterogeneous platforms such as MS Windows, GNU/Linux (Mandriva, Redhat, Debian, Ubuntu., etc.), Mac OSX, HP-UX, IBM AIX and Solaris systems.

June 24th 2010 - Pulse 2 Imaging new preview version available

The Pulse 2 team is now working for several months on adding a mastering / cloning module (Imaging) into Pulse 2.

This "Pulse 2 Imaging" module is derived from the port of the "Imaging" part of Linbox Rescue Server (LRS being Pulse 2 ancestor), thereby benefit of many years of experience and proven reliability.

The team is finalizing the integration of this new module. Nevertheless we now wish to reveal some of this new functionality through the release of a virtual machine demo image accompanied by an evaluation guide.

The beta testers of the first version of the demo helped us to fix common bugs and add some missing functionalities. Thanks a lot !

This second edition of the demo features:

  • the boot menu behaviour is now fully configurable: timeout, hidden menu, CLI access, etc.
  • profile system: all computers members of a profile will follow the profile configuration. For example, if the boot menu of a profile is changed, the boot menu of all the computers owned by this profile will also be changed
  • EXT4 file system support: EXT4 partitions can now be saved and restored.

To discover this new version, please go to the following page : http://pulse2-trial.mandriva.com/beta. There you find all information related to this evaluation appliance :

Please be cautious : this demo is not intended to production use. It's main purpose is to evaluate the possibilities of the application regarding to your habits, procedures and architectures (whenever being a legacy LRS user or other asset management systems addict), in order to quickly identify gaps and lacks in terms of ergonomics or features.

Your feedback is valuable, so we count on your participation to this evaluation to cover more of your needs. You can send us your questions and remarks, preferably before July 15, 2010, at the following address: pulse2-beta <at> mandriva <dot> com.

Thank you in advance to all, and have a good test session !

May 7th 2010 - Pulse 2 Secure Agent (SSH) version 2.0.0 is available

This new release is based upon Cygwin 1.7 and, thus, brings Windows Seven support and improved one for Vista and 2008 Server. All binaries have been updated to provide up-to-date unix tools for your Windows system. See the compatibility chart.

Other changes are more installer related :

  • Better detection of NTFS/FAT filesystems using Cygwin's helpers,
  • Do not use Windows-style paths in Cygwin anymore (suppress warning message),
  • Rewrite the whole installer part that detects user's profile directory to mount it as /home,
  • Various installer improvements to allow upgrade from pulse2-secure-agent-1.2.3.
  • And as usual, all Cygwin binaries have been updated.

As usual, installation instructions, documentation and packages are available here. Upgrade instructions are available here.

Previous SSH Agent announcements can be found here.

May 4th 2010 - Pulse 2 Imaging preview version available

The Pulse 2 team is now working for several months on adding a mastering / cloning module (Imaging) into Pulse 2.

This "Pulse 2 Imaging" module is derived from the port of the "Imaging" part of Linbox Rescue Server (LRS being Pulse 2 ancestor), thereby benefit of many years of experience and proven reliability.

The team is finalizing the integration of this new module. Nevertheless we now wish to reveal some of this new functionality through the release of a virtual machine demo image accompanied by an evaluation guide.

To discover this new version, please go to the following page : http://pulse2-trial.mandriva.com/beta. There you find all information related to this evaluation appliance :

Please be cautious : this demo is not intended to production use. It's main purpose is to evaluate the possibilities of the application regarding to your habits, procedures and architectures (whenever being a legacy LRS user or other asset management systems addict), in order to quickly identify gaps and lacks in terms of ergonomics or features.

Your feedback is valuable, so we count on your participation to this evaluation to cover more of your needs. You can send us your questions and remarks, preferably before May 17, 2010, at the following address: pulse2-beta <at> mandriva <dot> com.

Thank you in advance to all, and have a good test session !

November 20th 2009 - Pulse 2 1.2.4 available

Beyond the traditional maintenance fixes, the aim of this release is to push away the limits of the system, under heavy load and/or on potentially unreliable networks. In this context, this release introduces several enhancements :

  • Package-server side : for MS/Windows XP and later, a new reactor to able the server to handle up to ten times the usual amount of parallel requests, as well as a better user feedback in case of errors (pserver down, unreachable, etc ...)
  • Scheduler side : some mechanisms are now available to ensure a better behavior in hard environments : broken commands can be automatically neutralized, and an optional lock system can be activated for systems under heavy load.

Amongst other things of interest, starting with this version we are GLPI 0.72 compliant.

As usual, installation instructions and packages are available in the Download section, and up-to-date documentations may be found in the Documentation section. Upgrade instructions are available on the upgrade procedures page. The Pulse 2 demo image has also been updated, amongst its evaluation guide.

Previous Pulse 2 announcements can be found here.

October 14th 2009 - Pulse 2 Secure Agent (SSH) version 1.2.3 is available

This release features a tools to better handle NIC information under MS-Windows : pulse2-ether-list.exe . This able the agent to gather NIC informations using a more reliable source than the usual 'ipconfig', and deal with situations where, on a computer with several NIC, the first NIC is not the main NIC.

Other changes are more installer related :

  • warn and abort installation if the same version is already installed , unless the new flag "/FORCE" is set (see the release notes for more information),
  • permissions enforced on sensitive files,
  • and as usual, all cygwin binaries have been updated.

As usual, installation/upgrade instructions, documentation and packages are available here. Upgrade instructions are available here.

Previous SSH Agent announcements can be found here.

July 21th 2009 - New website section : Pulse 2 Snippets

A new section has been opened on the website : Pulse 2 Snippets.

Pulse 2 Snippets allows Pulse 2 users to share their packaging experience to build a repository of generic scripts that can be used together within the MSC module for maintenance or deployment purposes.

The various snippets are freely brows-able / download-able / search-able on the site, and a classification system (platform, application, label etc ...) provides quick access to desired scripts. To avoid spam, the publication of new snippets requires a user account whose creation takes only a few clicks. More information can be found on the "about" page.

The site just opened its doors, thus few snippets have already been posted, however we plan to regularly inject our own scripts and we hope you will contribute too !

Previous Website announcements can be found here.

Last modified May 5th 2010