CDSS: Secure Distribution of Software Installation Media Images in a Heterogeneous Environment

CDSS is a framework for the distribution of software installation media images and their contents over multiple file sharing protocols. The CDSS system provides a unique isolated server instance for every accessing user, even when another instance of that server is already running. CDSS uses the Linux host-based firewall system to transparently redirect inbound connections from each user to his specific server instance. By doing so, multiple users can access the CDSS server over the same protocol on the standard port without requiring any special configuration by the user. Each user can only communicate with the server instance that was started explicitly for him and that has been automatically configured by CDSS to allow access only to the files that he has requested.

CDSS is currently implemented as a collection of web and shell scripts that run on Linux servers that support the IPTables and IPChains firewalling systems. CDSS currently supports image distribution via the following protocols: HTTP, FTP, TFTP, NFS, SMB, and AppleShare IP. CDSS can share any filesystem image file stored on the server as well as the individual contents of those images that the server can loopback-mount.