Ideas for an university project

[AngusYoung]

Hello guys. I'm writing this thread because I need some advices and ideas from you.

I need to present a project to graduate at my university, but I don't know what to do ...
I only know that:

1. It must be written in C (maybe C++, but I don't know this one as much as I know C) or Perl. The project can be written in any language I want, but I only feel confortable with C and Perl.
2. I want to use only open source tools (ideas using Gentoo and FreeBSD are welcome).
3. I would like to do something related to networking ... but any idea is welcome.
4. It can't be too complex (if so, it won't be ready until presentation), but also cannot be too simple.
5. I will release this project under GPL.

Thanks in advance for your support and ideas.
_________________
N.U.S.: A cross platform C++ application development framework
My blog (in Portuguese)

[rojaro]

how about this - a virtual KVM (for keyboard and mouse only) ... an example: i've got three machines, a windose and my two beloved linux boxes. all have a monitor of their own (and the windose has an additional one as i use the box for photoshop and illustrator), a keyboard and a mouse. but i would like to have only one keyboard and one mouse on the desk as they eat a lot of space. well, the easiest solution would be to use a simple kvm (keyboard and mouse switch), but then i would have to buy an additional device. so here is the idea for a tool which involves both - linux and windows - and is not really trivial:

1. make a tool for windows (and optionally also for other plattforms like apple mac os x) which resides in the systray and transmits all keyboard and mouse action encrypted via udp to the linuxbox, but this tool should only do this when it recieves a customizable keyboard shortcut or when the mouse is moved of the screen (the direction should be customizable too, as one can have the second monitor on the left or the right side), but also take care of multiscreen setups in windows. also support more than one machines.

2. make a userspace daemon or kernel module (i would prefer a userspace daemon for better security) which recieves and decrypts (via kernel crypt methods as they are probably the fastest and you wont have to implement them on your own) all the keyboard and mouse events activity and inject it into the kernel via devfs.

the oposite way is also possible to do but probably much harder to implement as this would require deep insight into the windows libraries and kernel (and who the f**k is interessted in that) and this way is already hard enough. this should give you a pretty deep insight of tcp ip networking, encryption and the linux kernel. keep the code of both (the client and the server) as portable as possible so ports to other operating systems such as MacOS X, *BSD or Solaris.

this idea isnt actually new and there is already an implementation which is named Synergy (find it here) but this one only works with X11 and also doesnt use any encryption.

well, i know at least four other people which have similar hardware setup's like i have and they surely would love such a piece of software. i am sure there are a lot more people which would love such a software.
_________________
A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems. ~ Alfred Renyi (*1921 - †1970)

[AngusYoung]

Thank you for your idea. It's very interesting tool ... I am not sure about creating a windows port, but I think a *BSD port could be implemented.

I also have an idea of creating a a p2p network and, by now, I'll present your idea along with the p2p to my teacher.

Thank you.

I am still accepting ideas ...
_________________
N.U.S.: A cross platform C++ application development framework
My blog (in Portuguese)

[Scorp]

wow, rojaro, thanks a lot I was looking for something like that /me goes over to download synergy, btw to the original poster rojaro gave you a great idea and I'm guessing you can use synergies source code as a basis or simply as "help" for your own program. A project like this will probably require some research though! Good luck.
_________________
PowerBook G3, 400 Mhz, 192 megs of Ram Running Gentoo 1.4 and XFCE4

[broschi]