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This month in Linux Voice.

We have long believed that you can find a Linux application to do about anything. This month we put that theory to the test with an article on OpenAstro, a free application that lets you generate a complete set of astrological star charts to use for the kind of high-end analysis performed by professional astrologers. Tune in to what the stars were whispering at the moment of your birth. And speaking of whispered (or shouted) discussions of the past, are you old enough to remember Usenet, the vast network of servers that used to supply the world with forums and discussion groups before the World Wide Web stole its thunder? Well Usenet is still out there, and you can still use it to express your thoughts and even download videos encoded into massive text files.

If you want to get even more creative, read on to our tutorial section for a look at how to integrate RSS feeds with your Python scripts.

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Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).

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Bitnami Composr Stack (formerly Bitnami ocPortal Stack) is a cross-platform software project, distributed for free by Bitnami and designed from the ground up to to a help users with the deployment of the Composr (Content Management System) application and all of its runtime dependencies on GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

What is Composr?

Composr is an open source and free web-based software that supports many types of content (galleries, news/newsletters, etc.) – and integrating rich media and advertising into them. Community features include forums, member blogs, WIKI, chat rooms and content commenting/rating.

Installing Bitnami Composr Stack

Bitnami’s Composr Stack is distributed as native installers, which are built using the BitRock InstallBuilder tool and designed to work with all GNU/Linux distributions. To install Composr on your computer, download the package that corresponds to your computer’s hardware architecture (64-bit or 32-bit), make it executable, run it and follow the on-screen instructions.

Run Composr on the cloud

Thanks to Bitnami, users can run Composr on the cloud with their hosting platform or by using a pre-built cloud image that helps you deploy ocPortal on the Amazon EC2 or Windows Azure cloud hosting providers.

Virtualize Composr or use the Docker container

In addition to install the Composr application on your personal computer or run in on the cloud, it is also possible to virtualize it, thanks to Bitnami’s virtual appliance for VMware ESX, ESXi and Oracle VirtualBox virtualization software. The VM image is based on the latest stable release of the Ubuntu Linux operating system.

The Bitnami Composr Module

Besides the Bitnami Composr Stack product reviewed here, Bitnami also offers a module for its Bitnami LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack, which allows users to install only Composr, without its runtime dependencies. Bitnami ocPortal Module is available for download from Softpedia, free of charge.

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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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