Linux Blimp

Today, we are announcing a suite of open source Linux kernel components and related tools that address critical fleet management issues. These include resource control, resource utilization, workload isolation, load balancing, measuring, monitoring, and much more.

Kernel and kernel application developers at Facebook partner with various internal teams to develop technologies that resolve issues and concerns in Facebook’s data centers — the same challenges that many throughout the industry share. The following products are now in production on a massive scale throughout all of Facebook’s infrastructure, as well as at many other organizations.

BPF

BPF is a highly flexible, efficient code execution engine in the Linux kernel that allows bytecode to run at various hook points, enabling safe and easy modifications of kernel behaviors with custom code. Although it’s been widely used for packet filtering, BPF’s instruction set is generic and flexible enough to support and allow for a wide variety of use cases beyond networking such as tracing and security (e.g., sandboxing).

Read more at Facebook blog

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RALEIGH, N.C., Nov. 1, 2018 — Red Hat, Inc., a leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6, a consistent hybrid cloud foundation for enterprise IT built on open source innovation. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 is designed to enable organizations to better keep pace with emerging cloud-native technologies while still supporting stable IT operations across enterprise IT’s four footprints.

According to Gartner, “the landscape of cloud adoption is one of hybrid clouds and multiclouds. By 2020, 75% of organizations will have deployed a multicloud or hybrid cloud model.” Red Hat believes that this indicates that a common foundation, one that can handle workloads in a consistent fashion regardless of whether they are running on bare metal or on a public cloud instance, is a key need for enterprises as they embrace a variety of cloud computing models.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 helps to provide this foundation, enabling organizations to deploy applications on a footprint that can best fit their unique needs, with the knowledge that the underlying operating system remains the same consistent and mission-critical-ready platform. The latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 brings enhancements designed to address a range of IT challenges, emphasizing security and compliance, management and automation, and Linux container innovations.

Security and compliance

IT security remains a constant, key challenge for many IT departments, and one that does not get easier in complex hybrid and multicloud environments. To better answer these IT security needs, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 introduces Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 hardware modules as part of Network Bound Disk Encryption (NBDE). This provides two layers of security for hybrid cloud operations to help keep information on disks physically more secure: The network-based mechanism (NBDE) provides security across networked environments, while TPM works on-premise to add an additional layer, tying disks to specific physical systems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 also makes it easier to manage firewalls with enhancements to nftables, simplifying the configuration of counterintrusion measures and giving operations teams more visibility into these mechanisms. Additionally, updated cryptographic algorithms delivered for RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) are enabled by default, helping organizations handling sensitive information to better keep pace with Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) compliance and requirements from standards bodies like the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Management and automation

As Linux becomes a default choice in many datacenters, Linux operating systems need to become more accessible to new administrators, both those new to the role and sysadmins that have previously managed other operating systems like Windows. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 is designed to help make Linux adoption easier for these users with enhancements to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Web Console, which provides graphical overview of Red Hat system health and status. These enhancements include easier to find updates, automated configuration of single sign-on for identity management and a firewall control interface.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 also provides support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Roles, a collection of Ansiblemodules that are designed to provide a stable and consistent way to automate and remotely manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments. Each module provides a ready-made automated workflow for handling common, complex tasks that arise as part of the day-to-day management of Linux environments. This automation helps to remove the human element of error from these tasks and free up IT teams to focus on adding business value instead of “keeping the lights on.”

Linux container innovations

The rise of cloud-native technologies as a component of enterprise digital transformation remains a key focus area for Red Hat, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 addressing this through Red Hat’s lightweight container toolkit. Built with enterprise-grade security in mind, the toolkit is comprised of Buildah, Skopeo, CRI-O and now Podman. Each of these tools are built on fully open source, community-backed technologies and based on open standards like the Open Container Initiative (OCI) format.

Complementing Buildah and Skopeo and sharing the same foundations as CRI-O, the introduction of Podman enables users to run containers and groups of containers (pods) from a familiar command-line interface without requiring a daemon to do so. This helps to reduce the complexity around container creation and makes it easier for developers to build containers on workstations, in continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) systems and even within high-performance computing (HPC) or big data scheduling systems.

Availability

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 is available today to Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers with active subscriptions.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat is a leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Red Hat helps customers integrate new and existing IT applications, develop cloud-native applications, standardize on our industry-leading operating system, and automate, secure, and manage complex environments. Award-winning support, training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500. As a strategic partner to cloud providers, system integrators, application vendors, customers, and open source communities, Red Hat can help organizations prepare for the digital future.

Source: Red Hat, Inc.

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Wyrmsun, the free and open source retro-looking RTS just had a sizeable update with some great new stuff included. The game uses a modified version of the old Stratagus engine which has itself been in development since sometime in 1998.

A little more about it:

Wyrmsun is an open-source real-time strategy game which features elements of mythology, history and fiction.

In the Wyrmsun universe a myriad of inhabited planets exist. Humans dwell on Earth, while dwarves inhabit Nidavellir and elves nourish the world of Alfheim. These peoples struggle to carve a place for themselves with their tools of stone, bronze and iron. And perhaps one day they will meet one another, beyond the stars…

It’s a very retro RTS, with it feeling familiar to old Warcraft titles and other RTS games released around that time. With that in mind, it won’t be for everyone but I think it’s great. There’s multiple races, story-based scenarios, units earn experience and level up, a persistent hero feature and much more.

Release highlights for 3.4.0:

• Playable Norse civilization
• Addition of Mason’s Shop buildings for non-dwarven civilizations
• Inclusion of Ballista/Catapult Tower buildings
• New experience upgrades for some dwarven units

Find it on Steam, GitHub. While it’s free and open for everyone, you can support development by picking up DLC on Steam which are cosmetic or donating via the official site.

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Bitnami Coppermine Module is a free and multiplatform software project, a module for the Bitnami LAMP, WAMP and MAMP stack, specially designed for the Coppermine web-based application. Bitnami’s native installers and modules automate the setup of a Bitnami application stack on GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

What is Coppermine?

Coppermine is an open source, multi-purpose, full-featured web picture gallery script written in PHP using ImageMagick or GD as image library and MySQL as backend. It includes user management, private galleries, automatic thumbnail creation, an ecard feature and a template system for easy customization to match the rest of a website.

Installing Bitnami Coppermine Module

The Bitnami Coppermine Module product is distributed on Softpedia free of charge, as native installers for the mainstream operating systems, supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit (recommended) hardware platforms.

To deploy the Coppermine application on top of your existing Bitnami LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Stack, Bitnami WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Stack or Bitnami MAMP (Mac, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Stack, you should download the file that corresponds to your computer’s hardware architecture, run it and follow the on-screen instructions.

Run Coppermine in the cloud and virtualize it

In addition to deploying the Coppermine application on top of a Bitnami LAMP, MAMP or WAMP stack, you can also run it in the cloud using Bitnami’s pre-built cloud images for the Amazon EC2 and Windows Azure cloud hosting services, as well as to virtualize it, thanks to Bitnami’s virtual appliance for the VMware ESX, ESXi and Oracle VirtualBox virtualization software, based on the latest LTS release of Ubuntu Linux.

The Bitnami Coppermine Stack and Docker container

Besides the Bitnami Coppermine Module product reviewed here, Bitnami also offers an all-in-one solution that greatly simplifies the installation and hosting of the Coppermine application, as well as of its runtime dependencies, on personal computers. A Coppermine Docker container will also be available for download on the project’s website.

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Code to help those managing lots of servers unleashed, designated by jumbles of letters

After years of making the world more open and connected – to everyone’s delight – Facebook recently moved on to bringing the world closer together.

Amid its pursuit of global compression, the data harvesting biz nonetheless developed a handful of difficult-to-pronounce Linux kernel components to make the open source operating system better suited to swarms of servers.

On Tuesday, Facebook made its suite of kernel tools available as open source, to help other organizations looking for a way to manage large numbers of Linux servers more efficiently.

“The kernel components and tools included in this release can be adapted to solve a virtually limitless number of production problems,” said Facebook engineers Tejun Heo and Thomas Connally in a blog post. “…We believe that this collection of services and products will be helpful for any developer building apps to serve millions of users on multiple platforms.”

First, there’s BPF, a code execution engine in the Linux kernel. The name once meant Berkeley Packet Filter and now encompasses a broader set of functions. The software allows bytecode to run in response to specific events for the purpose of modifying and extending kernel behavior. In essence, it’s a generic instruction set capable of making C calls.

Though based on a kernel agent for filtering packets between the boundary separating kernel and user-space, BPF is intended for more than just networking. It can be used for tracing and sandboxing, for example. Facebook uses the BPF virtual machine for network traffic optimization in conjunction with its open source Katran load balancing software.

Google and Netflix have also been involved with BPF.

Then there’s Btrfs, a vowel-starved file system designed for data centers, with an eye towards fault tolerance, file repair, and easy administration. There’s apparently a need for such things as Fujitsu, Intel, Oracle, SUSE and Red Hat are among the organizations that have contributed to project’s evolution.

According to Heo and Connally, Btrfs has made Facebook’s data centers more efficient for a variety of applications. “Recently, Btrfs helped eliminate priority inversions caused by the journaling behavior of the previous file system, when used for I/O control with cgroup2,” they said.

The Register asked Facebook if it could provide any metrics to quantify how its code improves things. A company spokesperson declined to go beyond the general promise of efficiency outlined in the blog post.

That brings us to cgroup2, a Linux kernel tool for controlling workloads by dividing them into groups and allocating resources like memory, IO, and processing. Facebook uses the software to isolate and protect main system workloads from binaries and other system services being run. It even conducted a case study to document utilization improvements.

Open source turns 20 years old, looks to attract normal people

READ MORE

Another piece of code candy in the suite is called Netconsd. Though it sounds like a laxative, it’s in fact code for shuttling and structuring Linux netconsole messages, which is to say log data.

“It logs data continuously from millions of hosts and allows engineers to extract meaningful signals from the voluminous log data noise generated in the kernel, helping on-call production engineers rapidly identify and diagnose misbehaving services,” said Heo and Connally.

As a complement to cgroup2, PSI, which stands for Pressure Stall Information and serves double duty as an unintended homonym for the K-pop singer of “Gangnam Style,” offers a way to measure memory, CPU, and I/O. The point of the tool is to allow organizations to respond to resource shortages before things go off the rails.

And lastly, there’s Oomd. Not to be confused with an ’80s techno-pop band OMD, it’s a process executioner that respond to out-of-memory (OOM) conditions. Oomd intervenes in userspace to prevent OOM conditions in the Linux kernel. It supports custom logic detection and can be tailored for different workloads. ®

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Bitnami Coppermine Stack is a multiplatform and free software project that makes it easy to deploy the Coppermine application and all of its runtime dependencies on desktop computers and laptops. The Coppermine stack from Bitnami is distributed as native installers for all mainstream operating systems, LAMP/WAMP/MAMP modules, a virtual appliance, cloud images and a Docker container.

What is Coppermine?

Coppermine is a free and platform-independent web-based application that has been designed from the offset to act as a multi-purpose and full-featured picture gallery script written in the PHP programming language and using the GD or ImageMagick as image library, with a MySQL backend.

Coppermine includes user management, support for private galleries, automatic thumbnail generation, an ecard functionality and a template system for easy customization to match the rest of a website.

Installing Bitnami Coppermine Stack

To install the Coppermine application and its server-related requirements on your PC, you will have to first download the package that corresponds to your computer’s hardware architecture (32-bit or 64-bit), run it and follow the instructions displayed on the screen.

Run Coppermine in the cloud

Thanks to Bitnami’s pre-build cloud images for the Amazon EC2 and Windows Azure cloud hosting providers, users will be able to run their own Coppermine stack server in the cloud with their hosting platform or with any other supported cloud provider.

The Coppermine virtual appliance and Docker container

Besides the cloud images and native installers, Coppermine can be virtualized using Bitnami’s pre-built virtual appliance based on the latest stable release of the Ubuntu Linux operating system and designed to work with the Oracle VirtualBox and VMware ESX, ESXi virtualization software. A Coppermine Docker container is also available for download on the project’s site.

The Bitnami Coppermine Module

The Bitnami Coppermine Module product will allow users to deploy only the Coppermine application on personal computers, without having to download and install its runtime dependencies. It is available for download on Softpedia, free of charge.

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News briefs for November 1, 2018.

GNOME 3.30.2 was released yesterday. It includes several bug fixes, and
packages should arrive in your distro of choice soon, but if you want to
compile it yourself, you can get it here. The
full list of changes is available here. This is the last planned point release
of the 3.30 desktop environment. The 3.32 release is expected to be
available in spring 2019.

Braiins Systems has announced Braiins
OS, which claims to be “the first
fully open source system for cryptocurrency embedded devices”. FOSSBYTES
reports that the initial release is based on OpenWrt. In addition,
Braiins OS “keeps monitoring the working conditions and hardware to create
reports of errors and performance. Braiins also claimed to reduce power
consumption by 20%”.

Ubuntu 19.04 will be called Disco Dingo, and the release is scheduled for
April 2019. Source: OMG! Ubuntu!.

IBM announces Project OWL is the winner of its first Call for Code
challenge. Project OWL is “an IoT and software solution that keeps
first responders and victims connected in a natural disaster”. The team
will receive $200,000 USD and will be able to deploy the solution via the
IBM Corporate Service Corps. The OWL stands for “stands for Organization,
Whereabouts, and Logistics”, and it’s a hardware/software solution that
“provides an offline communication infrastructure that gives first
responders a simple interface for managing all aspects of a disaster”.

Google yesterday announced four new security features for Google accounts.
According to ZDNet,
Google won’t allow you to sign in if you have disabled JavaScript in your
browser. It plans to pull data from Google Play Protect to list all
malicious apps installed on Android phones, and it also now will notify you
whenever you share any data from your Google account. Finally, it has
implemented a new set of procedures to help users after an account has been
attacked.

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For years, Ansible has been a go-to choice for infrastructure automation. As Kubernetes adoption has skyrocketed, Ansible has continued to shine in the emerging container orchestration ecosystem.

Ansible fits naturally into a Kubernetes workflow, using YAML to describe the desired state of the world. Multiple projects, including the Automation Broker, are adapting Ansible for use behind specific APIs. This article will focus on a new technique, created through a joint effort by the Ansible core team and the developers of Automation Broker, that uses Ansible to create Operators with minimal effort.

An Operator is a Kubernetes controller that deploys and manages a service or application in a cluster. It automates human operation knowledge and best practices to keep services running and healthy.

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Posted On: Oct 31, 2018

Amazon RDS Performance Insights, an advanced database performance monitoring feature that makes it easy to diagnose and solve performance challenges on Amazon RDS databases, is now generally available on Amazon RDS for Oracle. It offers a free tier with 7 days of data retention and a paid long-term data retention option.

Performance Insights allows non-experts to detect performance problems with an easy-to-understand dashboard that visualizes database load. It also supports Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL compatibility, Amazon Aurora with MySQL compatibility, Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, and Amazon RDS for MySQL, with additional database engines available in preview.

You can get started by logging into the Amazon RDS Management Console, enabling Performance Insights for a new or existing database instance, and viewing the Performance Insights dashboard. The Amazon Web Services API and SDK make it easy to integrate Performance Insights data into on-premises and third-party monitoring tools. For more information, please visit the documentation.

Amazon RDS makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale database deployments in the cloud. For more information about Amazon RDS Performance Insights, please visit the product page. For regional availability, see the Performance Insights pricing page.

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How to Multi-Task in Linux with the Command Line

One of the most jarring moments when moving from a Windows-based environment to using the command line is the loss of easy multi-tasking. Even on Linux, if you use an X Window system, you can use the mouse to just click on a new program and open it. On the command line, however, you’re pretty much stuck with what’s on your screen at any given time. In this tutorial, we will show you how to multi-task in Linux with the command line.

Background and Foreground Process Management

However, there are still ways to multi-task in Linux, and some of them are more comprehensive than others. One in-built way that doesn’t require any kind of additional software is simply moving processes into the background and the foreground. We’d written a tutorial on that a short while back. However, it has some disadvantages.

Disadvantages

First, to send a process into the background, you have to pause it first. There’s no way to send an already running program into the background and keep it running in one go.

Second, you need to break your workflow to start a new command. You have to exit what you’re currently doing and type more commands into the shell. It works, but it’s inconvenient.

Third, you have to look out for output from the background processes. Any output from them will appear on the command line and interfere with what you’re doing in the current moment. So background tasks need to either redirect their output to a separate file, or they need to be muted altogether.

Because of these disadvantages, there are huge problems with background and foreground process management. A better solution is to use the “screen” command utility as shown below.

But First – You Can Always Open a new SSH Session

Don’t forget that you just open a new SSH session. Here’s a screenshot of we doing just that:

It can get inconvenient to open new sessions all the time. And that’s when you need “screen”

Using “Screen” Instead

The “screen” utility allows you to have multiple workflows open at the same times – the closest analog to “windows”. It’s available by default within the regular Linux repositories. Install it in CentOS/RHEL like this:

sudo yum install screen

Opening a New Screen

Now start your session by typing “screen”.

This will create a blank window within your existing SSH session and give it a number that’s shown in the title bar like this:

My screen here has the number “0” as shown. In this screenshot, I’m using a dummy “read” command to block the terminal and make it wait for input. Now let’s say we want to do something else while we wait.

To open a new screen and do something else, we type:

ctrl+a c

“ctrl+a” is the default key combination for managing screens within the screen program. What you type after it, determines the action. So for example:

• ctrl+a c – Creates a new screen
• ctrl+a [number] – Goes to a specific screen number
• ctrl+a k – Kills the current screen
• ctrl+a n – Goes to the next screen
• ctrl+a ” – Lists all active screens in the session

So if we press “ctrl+a c”, we get a new screen with a new number as shown here:

You can use the cursor keys to navigate the list and go to whichever screen you want.
Screens are the closest thing you’ll get to a “windows” like system in the Linux command line. Sure, it’s not as easy as clicking with the mouse, but then the graphical subsystem is very resource intensive in the first place. With screens, you can get almost the same functionality and enable full multi-tasking!

If you are one of our managed VPS hosting customers, you can always ask our system administrators to set up this for you, They are available 24/7 and can take care of your request immediately.

If you liked this post on how to multi-task in Linux command line, please share it with your friends on social media networks, or if you have any question regarding the blog post please leave a comment below and one of our system administrators will reply to it.

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