Filed under: Business, Security, Utilities, Features, Windows, Productivity, Freeware, Open Source
24 Great Open Source Apps for Admins & Technicians
If you're in the same boat as me, hopefully you're already utilizing some open source options. If not, I've put together this list of two dozen great applications that I can depend on to keep things running smoothly on my office LAN and customer systems as well.
Some of these you'll recognize, but I hope that there are some that are new to you as well.
- PING - I may be beating a dead horse here with my love of PING, but it's just a great piece of open source. Drive imaging with network and spanning support, password blanking, it's just an excellent app.
- NTRegEdit - The Windows Registry editor hasn't seen many changes over the years. NTRegEdit offers some great additional features like recursive export, color coding, improved searching, and quick edit window below the values list.
- Safarp - A portable alternative to appwiz.cpl (add/remove programs), it provides a few extra useful features - like silent uninstalls and repairs of Windows Installer-based apps. It also opens in a flash, unlike the clunky appwiz.
- WPKG - Maintaining software installs on computers in a small business environment can be a little frustrating sometimes. WPKG gives you push/pull installs and it can run as a service, so silent installs run transparently with no user ineteraction.
- ClamWin - Open source antivirus that does damn near everything the "big boys" do: automatic updates, scheduled scans, email scanning. There's no realtime shield, but coupling it with the next app in the list lets ClamWin do that, too.
- Winpooch - Originally designed to detect activity from trojans and other spyware, Winpooch monitors program activity on your system and gives you greater control over them (like preventing an .exe from connecting to the net or writing to a system folder).
- Vispa
- Xpy - These two offer fast ways to tweak XP or Vista by turning off unwanted services and features.
- WCD - Its stands for Wherever Change Directory, and it's a real timesaver for anyone that works with the Windows command prompt. All it needs is part of a directory name to change to it (wcd username to get to a user's home folder).
- Angry IP Scanner - If I'm asked to inventory a location, I usually start with Angry IP. It quickly builds a list of all live hosts on a network and makes it easy to locate the addresses for devices like Wireless APs, print servers, and the like.
- Startup Manager - MSconfig's startup control pane doesn't have a lot of functionality. Startup Manager is an excellent replacement, and it's available in a portable version as well.
- JKDefrag - Anything that automates system maintenance is worth a look, in my opinion. JKDefrag's screensaver installer puts your users' idle desktops to work for you, defragmenting whenever the .SCR kicks in.
- WinDirStat - Need to locate spacehogs on a user's hard drive? Fire up WinDirStat and let it go to work and it'll build a detailed (if not visually distracting) report of where drive space is being allocated.
- DeltaCopy - A fast incremental backup tool based on rsync. It supports scheduled backups and email notifications, and syncs client machines to virtual directories on a central server. I back up our point of sale history with this app - because a full copy of 1.2gb doesn't make sense when only a few hundred kilobytes have changed in the last business day.
Both the client and server apps are included in the 6.3mb download. - EchoVNC
- InstantVNC - Run these two together and you've got a free (albeit visibly slower) version of TeamViewer. Make sure you (or your client) enters a password when launching InstantVNC, or anyone viewing the list of clients with Echo could, theoretically, take control of the machine.
- Putty - A fantastic portable SSH and telnet client. What else can you say about Putty?
- InfraRecorder - I don't necessarily want burning software installed on all my client desktops, but I need it from time to time to do a quick backup. Since InfraRecorder is portable, I can run it from my flash drive or a network share.
- 7-Zip - I know 7-Zip doesn't have the prettiest GUI, but I rarely use it from anywhere but the context menu. It works like a champ and handles all the archive types I deal with on a daily basis.
- FreeOTFE - If you have any sensitive data on your network, you may want to have a look at Free On The Fly Encryption. It sports an easy-to-use interface that allows the creation of virtual encrypted drives. There's also a PDA version available to protect mobile data.
- QLiner Hotkeys - I love my hotkeys, and I miss them when I'm working on someone else's system. QLiner is portable, so I can just fire it up on an unfamiliar rig and access them without missing a beat. Add in the Zip tool to archive files with a single keypress.
- HealthMonitor - Keep tabs on your servers (or workstations) and get email or SMS alerts when trouble's afoot. It'll monitor everything from ram and drive space to services and event logs.
- Memtest - The tool I rely on to troubleshoot RAM issues. I've never run a Memtest and had it miss a faulty module. If the test does't launch or if the screen goes red, I know it's found the problem.
- DBAN - Darik's Boot and Nuke is a nice tool to keep handy if you donate old hardware. It's available as a floppy, USB, or CD image, and will locate and securely wipe the contents of just about any hard drive. It's even certified by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Arthur said 9:14AM on 10-01-2008
ping ist ok, but Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) is much better
http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front;_id=12
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Isa said 1:52AM on 10-02-2008
PING and TRK cannot be compared. PING is a 20-MB iso, running exclusively on the RAM. It can be used on nearly any computer, and be run in PXE mode. That's why there's no X11 GUI on PING. But you don't need X11 to perform hard disk-related operations.
fabio said 9:56AM on 10-01-2008
... don't forget GParted, I used it a lot of times with never an issue....
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Otafu said 12:00PM on 10-01-2008
Hiren's boot CD has always saved me when I worked as a technician...
http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd
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Lee Mathews said 12:06PM on 10-01-2008
Err...sure, but I think you'll find that a lot of the software on there isn't legal. Ghost, Partition Magic, Acronis, etc.
MK said 1:26PM on 10-01-2008
Hiren is the greatest. It is fast, and works on most old computers.
But yea, since it's partly illegal I wouldn't recommend it in a blog post.
Neowster said 12:15PM on 10-01-2008
now i know what the admins and technicians are up to...... great list.
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mike k. said 2:45PM on 10-01-2008
Wow great list and great starting point. I knew about a few of these, but others I was just completely unaware of but was looking for a good solution for.
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mjc said 3:17PM on 10-01-2008
Driveimage XML. Not open source, but freeware. It's great for backup up a Windows XP PC without the need to reboot, or boot from other media. It locks down the PC while performing backup of the system, but it's quick and saves the data in XML which you can open and browse directories for extraction, or use as a total system restore.
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Marc said 7:55PM on 10-01-2008
What about Freeware Syncback? It's a sync/backup utility and one I use quite often. You can schedule backups and syncs easily and even connect to a repository server. I've tried a few others like areca but I found this the easiest to use.
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fr33mumia said 9:46PM on 10-01-2008
As a technician, currently i'm using Hiren BootCD & System RescueCD(gparted,partimage included) for my daily tasks. Another great lists & alternatives for me and as well as another IT Technician out there.Thanx Lee :D
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WolvenSpectre said 2:23AM on 10-02-2008
Hiren's Boot CD is loaded with Pirated content and some of the shareware and freeware applications on there have commmercial licences (ie if you use them in a proffesional situation or one where you get paid you have to purchase and follow the EULA conditions).
If you get caught you, your employer, and your customer (especially if they are a business) can be sued and in some juristictions have the data and hardware involved siezed for evidence.
As a technician you can loose certifications or have them suspended, your employer can loose industry standings like Microsoft Partnerships and software legally licenced to the business, and your customer could have stuff like recovered data or their commercial licences pulled depending on the work you did for them.
Rob W said 7:48AM on 10-08-2008
I haven't used Hiren's Boot CD before (and this is offtopic for this discussion), but I glanced at the site, since it seemed odd to have so much "pirated" software publicly advertised.
The download is 383KB -- if *you* have copies of the supported software, you can build the disk with whichever ones you have. That's not illegal unless you build it with pirated/cracked copies.
Maybe there are also full ISOs (which would be obviously illegal) floating around out there in P2P, but that's not on their website. It seems like if you follow the rules, it's a useful utility.
WolvenSpectre said 3:37AM on 10-02-2008
If you are going to use Memtest86 you should use the branch known as Memtest86+. It supports more chipsets and processors than Memtest86, is set to test faster unless you need special tests like like ECC tests.
Also it is freeware, and there is also a tuned version released by OCZ for testing preformance RAM.
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bloodvayne said 8:47AM on 10-02-2008
Don't forget UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD) and UBCD4WIN. If you're running more than one OS it could help a lot, as it did when I had to fix my MBR.
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Lee Mathews said 9:29AM on 10-02-2008
UBCD contains several apps that are not open source. It's a great tool, no doubt...but doesn't qualify for this roundup!
Trunker said 4:08PM on 10-02-2008
How about Ethereal? I don't have other sniffers to compare it to, but it seems to do it's job flawlessly and I've used it more than a few times when I actually needed to see network packets.
Looks like it's called Wireshark now:
http://www.wireshark.org/
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Natan said 8:00PM on 10-02-2008
Hi Lee,
I'm Natan, the author of PING, and just wanted to *thank* you for your support and link. It's a real incentive to work more on this opensource tool, so to make it even more useful to the user community.
Your site is a great source of information.
Wishing you a lot of success.
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Ras said 9:56AM on 10-03-2008
Congrats Natan, great work on PING. Really useful tool for a SysAdmin.
greywizard said 6:29PM on 10-03-2008
I have one I would like to suggest for other admins. Spiceworks, great tool for keeping track of a network.
Easy to setup and use. Community is very helpful and they develop the product by what the users tell them they need. And if there is an issue they are like little MR Jonny on the spot to help you fix it. All for free.
Also here is the link to spiceworks and to another list of tools that other admins are using.
http://www.spiceworks.com/
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/12493
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