Linux Blimp

A recent report from McAfee has revealed that while most organisations believe they use a very modest-sounding 30 cloud services, in reality they use approximately 1,935 services, a a frankly terrifying amount. This massive disconnect has been mainly caused by the advent of Shadow IT and an ever-escalating need for business agility. With cloud services so easy to procure and use these days, business units within companies are taking IT into their own hands and creating the resources that they need, as opposed to following internal procurement processes.

Shadow IT isn’t necessarily a bad thing – during this digital revolution, everyone needs to operate in a more agile fashion, and Shadow IT is just one way of doing things. However, not only does this lead to businesses not knowing where their data and apps are, it also leads to potential accounting nightmares and the threat of sensitive data being unprotected.

Sensitive data in the cloud

According to the report, 21% of all files in the cloud contain sensitive data, which is an increase of 17% over the past two years. If properly secured and stored, this shouldn’t be a problem. However, the report also reveals that businesses have an average of at least 14 misconfigured IaaS instances running at any one time, leaving sensitive data unprotected. With 65% of organisations around the world using some form of IaaS, that is a large number of potential data breaches waiting to happen.

Additionally, the report reveals that 5.5% of all AWS S3 buckets in use aren’t configured correctly – this means that anyone with the link can access the contents of the bucket through the public internet. 5.5% doesn’t sound like much, but that’s around one in every twenty S3 buckets that have not been secured.

Is the public cloud unsafe?

Some of the public cloud naysayers out there will be predicting that the end of the (public cloud) world is nigh, and that public cloud has no place within an enterprise. However, that’s not really true. Just as a hammer, a knife or even a car can be inherently unsafe in the wrong hands with inadequate protection, training or expertise, so too can the public cloud.

The public cloud has had a phenomenal impact on businesses of all sizes – it has enabled startups to get off the ground without having to invest substantial amounts of capital expenditure in hardware and software. It’s enabled business units within enterprises to react quickly to changes in customer and market demand. It’s generated millions of dollars of revenue for enterprises (and governments) of all sizes around the world. But is it right for everything?

Internal IT as a service provider

In the turbulent world we live in, increases in regulatory compliance and changes in the global political arena means that we need to be more careful of where we store our data, and how we protect it. While in the past some business units may have seen internal IT teams, procurement and provisioning as an inhibitor to getting their job done, internal IT teams are a necessity within businesses, particularly enterprises.

This is particularly highlighted by the statistic in the report that most organisations think they use 30 cloud services, but actually use approximately 1,935. Allowing internal IT teams to take this role within the business means that the line of business departments are able to get back to focusing on their roles, as opposed to trying to be a mini-service provider for themselve

The case for multi-cloud and internal IT

Internal IT should be viewed as an enabler for enterprises, offering a simpler and easier to audit route to approved (and correctly configured) public cloud services, in addition to private cloud services for the most business-critical of data. As enterprises around the world explore what it means to have a bi-, or multi-modal IT stack, this kind of multi-cloud setup would seem to be an obvious choice for enterprises. But most importantly, it should be managed centrally by an internal IT team – this shouldn’t mean a reduction in business agility, or a slow-down in procurement times, it just means that enterprise data can be appropriately stored and protected so that the business can continue to grow.

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The Windows 10 October 2018 Update has been plagued by trouble.

In September 2017, Microsoft boasted that it had just released the “best version of Windows 10 ever.” A year later, as Windows engineers struggle with the most recent release of the company’s flagship operating system, there’s a compelling case that the October 2018 Update is the worst version of Windows 10 ever.

The month began almost triumphantly for Microsoft, with the announcement on October 2 that its second Windows 10 release of the year, version 1809, was ready for delivery to the public, right on schedule. Then, just days later, the company took the unprecedented action of pulling the October 2018 Update from its servers while it investigated a serious, data-destroying bug.

Also: Microsoft serves up 40 new Windows 10 bug fixes

An embarrassing drip-drip-drip of additional high-profile bug reports has continued all month long. Built-in support for Zip files is not working properly. A keyboard driver caused some HP devices to crash with a Blue Screen of Death. Some system fonts are broken. Intel pushed the wrong audio driver through Windows Update, rendering some systems suddenly silent. Your laptop’s display brightness might be arbitrarily reset.

And with November fast approaching, the feature update still hasn’t been re-released.

What went wrong? My ZDNet colleague Mary Jo Foley suggests Microsoft is so focused on new features that it’s losing track of reliability and fundamentals. At Ars Technica, Peter Bright argues that the Windows development process is fundamentally flawed.

Or maybe there’s an even simpler explanation.

I suspect a large part of the blame comes down to Microsoft’s overreliance on one of the greatest management principles of the last half-century or so: “What gets measured gets done.” That’s certainly a good guiding principle for any organization, but it also leads to a trap for any manager who doesn’t also consider what’s not being measured.

Also: It’s time for Microsoft to bring Windows 10 Mobile back from the dead

For Windows 10, a tremendous number of performance and reliability events are measured constantly on every Windows 10 PC. Those streams of diagnostic data come from the Connected User Experience and Telemetry component, aka the Universal Telemetry Client. And there’s no doubt that Microsoft is using that telemetry data to improve the fundamentals of Windows 10.

In that September 2017 blog post, for example, Microsoft brags that it improved battery life by 17 percent in Microsoft Edge, made boot times 13 percent faster, and saw an 18 percent reduction in users hitting “certain system stability issues.” All that data translated into greater reliability, as measured by a dramatically reduced volume of calls to Microsoft’s support lines:

Our internal customer support teams are reporting significant reductions in call and online support request volumes since the Anniversary Update. During this time, we’ve seen a healthy decline in monthly support volumes, most notably with installation and troubleshooting update inquiries taking the biggest dip.

Microsoft has been focusing intently on stuff it can see in its telemetry dashboard, monitoring metrics like installation success rates, boot times, and number of crashes. On those measures of reliability and performance, Windows 10 is unquestionably better than any of its predecessors.

Unfortunately, that focus has been so intense that the company missed what I call “soft errors,” where everything looks perfectly fine on the telemetry dashboard and every action returns a success event even when the result is anything but successful.

Telemetry is most effective at gathering data to diagnose crashes and hangs. It provides great feedback for developers looking to fine-tune performance of Windows apps and features. It can do a superb job of pinpointing third-party drivers that aren’t behaving properly.

Also: Microsoft Windows zero-day disclosed on Twitter, again

But telemetry fails miserably at detecting anything that isn’t a crash or an unambiguous failure. In theory, those low-volume, high-impact issues should be flagged by members of the Windows Insider Program in the Feedback Hub. And indeed, there were multiple bug reports from members of the Windows Insider Program, over a period of several months, flagging the issue that caused data to be lost during some upgrades. There were also multiple reports that should have caught the Zip file issue before it was released.

So why were those reports missed? If you’ve spent any time in the Feedback Hub, you know that the quality of reporting varies wildly. As one Windows engineer complained to me, “We have so many issues reported daily that are variations of ‘dark theme sucks, you guys should die’ that it’s hard to spot the six upvotes on a real problem that we can’t repro in-house.”

In response to those missed alarms, Microsoft has added a new field to its problem reporting tool in Feedback Hub, to provide an indication of the severity of an issue.

Windows users can now flag problem reports by severity.

Time will tell if that addition helps or if testers will automatically overrate every bug report out of frustration. Even with that change, the recent problems highlight a fundamental flaw in the Windows Insider Program: Its members aren’t trained in the art of software testing.

The real value of Insider Preview builds is, not surprisingly, capturing telemetry data from a much wider population of hardware than Microsoft can test in-house. As for those manual feedback reports, I’m skeptical that even an extra layer of filtering will be sufficient to turn them into actionable data.

Ultimately, if Microsoft is going to require most of its non-Enterprise customers to install feature updates twice a year, the responsibility to test changes in those features starts in Redmond. The two most serious bugs in this cycle, both of which wound up in a released product, were caused because of a change in the fundamental working of a feature.

Also: Top ten features in the Windows 10 October 2018 Update TechRepublic

An experienced software tester could have and should have caught those issues. A good tester knows that testing edge cases matters. A developer rushing to check in code to meet a semi-annual ship deadline is almost certainly not going to test every one of those cases and might not even consider the possibility that customers will use that feature in an unintended way.

Sometime in the next few days, Microsoft will re-release the October 2018 Update, and everything in the Windows-as-a-service world will return to normal. But come next April, when the 19H1 version is approaching public release, a lot of people will be holding their breath.

Related links

Windows 10 telemetry secrets: Where, when, and why Microsoft collects your data

How does Windows 10 telemetry really work? It’s not a state secret. I’ve gone through the documentation and sorted out the where, when, and why. If you’re concerned about private documents accidentally leaving your network, you might want to turn the telemetry setting down.

Two Windows 10 feature updates a year is too many

Opinion: The idea of delivering two full Windows 10 upgrades every year sounds great on paper. In practice, the Windows 10 upgrade cycle has been unnecessarily disruptive, especially to home users who don’t have the technical skills to deal with those updates.

Windows 10 1809 bungle: We won’t miss early problem reports again, says Microsoft

Microsoft makes changes to its Feedback Hub after failing to notice early reports flagging up data losses caused by the Windows 10 October 2108 Update.

Microsoft halts rollout of Windows 10 October 2018 Update: What happens next?

Only days after releasing its latest feature update to Windows 10, Microsoft abruptly stopped the rollout and pulled the new version from its download servers as it investigates “isolated reports” of a data-destroying bug. What should you do now?

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You will find a bunch of video players online which you can download for free on your Linux operating system and start watching your favorite movies and videos right away. While every video player will have the capability of playing a video file, the ones which will interest you more are those which will offer additional features to make the software convenient to use and your experience more enjoyable. Are you looking for a good video player for Ubuntu but do not know where to start? You can start right here! After plenty of research, we have sieved out all the ordinary ones and handpicked for you only the best video players which are guaranteed to offer the experience you deserve. Without further ado, here are the top 5 video players for Ubuntu:

Released back in 2001, VLC Media player is one of the oldest and the most popular video players available on the internet. The reasons for its popularity are many. Not only is it available for Ubuntu, but for countless other operating systems as well including Windows, Android, iOS etc. This open source media player can support almost any media file you throw at it without the hassle of any additional plugins. Besides the flexibility to play most kinds of audio and video files on VLC, viewing subtitles is also a breeze.

What also makes it stand out is the support for DVD and videos saved on your USB flash drive which is not very common in media players available for Linux. The list of features is endless; streaming and downloading videos from websites like Youtube, add-ons for browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, support for high definition videos such as MPEG and HEVC, ability to download subtitles without any additional plugin, and so on.

Installation of VLC on Ubuntu is as simple as typing:

on the command line.

2. SMPlayer

Another favorite of Ubuntu users, SMPlayer, is actually an upgrade of the older Mplayer with a user-friendly interface. Released in 2006 under GNU GPLv2, this media player is just as capable of running most audio and video files without the requirement of any additional plugins as the first one in our list.

Without any additional codec, you can use the software to play and download Youtube videos, search and download subtitles from the internet and load them into the video via the player, and resume videos from the point where you stopped watching. Other features include countless skins which can easily be downloaded from the internet, the ability to adjust playback speed, the presence of effective audio and video equalizers, and a customizable toolbar.

All the attractive features apart, a good media player should offer a great playback performance and SMPlayer maintains a reputation for delivering exactly that. Download SMPlayer simply by running the commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install smplayer smplayer-themes smplayer-skins

3. MPV Player

MPV Player is another free media player released in Oct 2016 under license from GPLv2. Similar to SMPlayer, this media player is also an advancement to the older MPlayer. The primary reason for this advancement was to make the media player easier to use by including a graphical interface. Certain other features were introduced as well to make the overall experience better for the user. Another improvement in the design of the original MPlayer worth mentioning is the improved quality of client API which MPV offers since it can be used by other programs with a library interface by the name of libmpv.

Although you will not find an option to open a media file using the player, you can drag and drop a video or audio file on the video player to play it. What’s distinguishing about MPV is its ability to decode 4K videos which is better than what you would find in most other video players available for Ubuntu. With the use of youtube-dl, you can play high definition videos from Youtube and hundreds of other websites using the video player. Besides supporting almost all the different video and audio file extensions, MPV also offers media encoding, smooth transition between two frames, color management, and more.

Here are the commands using which you can get MPV Player on your system:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/mpv-tests
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y mpv

4. XBMC – Kodi Media Center

Kodi, which was originally known as Xbox Media Center or XBMC, is a cross-platform media player licensed under GNU which is quite a popular software for playing audio and video files on Ubuntu. It offers support for most formats of audio and video files that are available online or saved in your system. In the form of add-ons, it offers loads of attractive features including screensavers and themes for a customized interface, syncing and downloading subtitles, video streaming, and visualizations. As Kodi was originally designed for a gaming console, Xbox, it also offers support for joystick and other gaming controllers.

Downloading Kodi on Ubuntu is very simple using the commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y kodi

5. Miro

Miro, which was formerly called Democracy Player or DTV, is a free audio and video player and also an internet television application which you may use on Ubuntu besides all the other major operating systems including Windows. It is released under GNU General Public License and offers support for almost all media formats including the ones with HD quality. It also features a user-friendly video converter based on FFmpeg which can convert almost any video/audio file format into mp4 or h264. The media player is easy to use and allows you to download and watch videos from various websites on the internet using RSS.

Type the following commands on the command line to get Miro on Ubuntu:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:joyard-nicolas/ffmpeg
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg miro

So, now that you have the top 5 video players for Ubuntu on your fingertips, it shouldn’t be hard to pick the one that suits your requirements best. Download your pick right away and start enjoying your favorite movies and songs without a hitch.

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To keep you entertained a little longer, Two Point Studios have updated Two Point Hospital with a new sandbox game mode.

While it’s a nice addition, it does require you to have played the game for a while first. You’re not actually able to access it, unless you’ve gained at least one star in the third hospital. If you’ve already done that, you need to load you campaign once for it to show up.

It’s not exactly a sandbox in the way you might think, you don’t just get given a blank lot to build up your hospital. Instead, you can pick from one of the existing locations and do basically whatever you want there. There’s a number of options to tweak and eventually you can start building and keep going forever:

You also now have the ability to specify diagnosis or treatment for rooms that can handle both, they’ve added a visual effect for projector in Training Room along with various bug fixes.

I’m keen to see what else they add to the game. I do like it rather a lot, with some especially good humour. You can find it on Humble Store and Steam.

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Fedora is known to offer a bleeding edge Linux desktop experience; other distributions often employ many new technologies that are first implemented by Fedora. It’s also known as RHEL’s testing lab as Red Hat provides the newest features to Fedora users before shipping them in RHEL.

Following the same trend, the Red Hat-supported and community-driven Fedora has just received its latest update in the form of Fedora 29. The next week also marks 15 years since the initial release of Fedora Core 1, so it’s kind of special.

What makes Fedora 29 more exciting is the fact that it’s the first release to include Fedora Modularity feature on all different versions and spins. With Modularity, the developers can ship different versions of a package on the same base. You can choose a version of the software that matches your needs.

Another big change that’ll surely be noticeable to users is GNOME 3.30 that comes with its own set of features and changes. It goes without saying that a large number of open source packages are now updated.

Fedora 29 also marks the first release of Silverblue variant. It’s the new face of Fedora Atomic Workstation from Project Atomic. With the focus on container-based workflows, this Workstation version targets developers. You can read more about it here.

If you’re already using Fedora, simply update the system to the latest features. In case you want to install a fresh image, go ahead and download it here.

Also Read: Manjaro 18.0 “Illyria” Released

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Bitnami DreamFactory Stack is a free and cross-platform software that provides users with an one-click install solution for easy deployment of the DreamFactory web-based application and its runtime dependencies on real hardware.

What is DreamFactory?

DreamFactory is an open source mobile services platform heavily used by enterprise developers to build native HTML5 or mobile apps. It is designed to allow programmers to begin coding immediately, without the need of managing the backend infrastructure.

Installing Bitnami DreamFactory Stack

Bitnami DreamFactory Stack is distributed as native installers for the GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems, which have been designed to support both 32-bit and 64-bit (recommended) hardware platforms.

To install DreamFactory on a desktop computer or laptop, download the package that corresponds to your PC’s hardware architecture, run it and follow the instruction displayed on the screen.

Run DreamFactory in the cloud

Thanks to Bitnami, users can run DreamFactory in the cloud by using a pre-built cloud image for the Windows Azure and Amazon EC2 cloud hosting platforms, or run their own DreamFactory stack server with a private hosting provider.

The DreamFactory virtual appliance and Docker container

Bitnami also offers a virtual appliance, based on the latest LTS (Long Term Support) release of the world’s most popular free operating system, Ubuntu, and designed for the Oracle VirtualBox and VMware ESX, ESXi virtualization software. A DreamFactory Docker container is also available for download on the project’s homepage.

The Bitnami DreamFactory Module

Besides the Bitnami DreamFactory Stack product reviewed here, you can also download a Bitnami DreamFactory Module software for the Bitnami LAMP, WAMP and MAMP stacks, which allows users to deploy the DreamFactory application on top of the aforementioned stacks, without having to install its runtime dependencies. Bitnami DreamFactory Module is available for download on Softpedia, free of charge.

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Tomcat also known as Apache Tomcat is a web server just like Apache 2 HTTP server that we mostly use to serve PHP web applications. Apache Tomcat is used to serve Java based web applications. Tomcat has support for many of the Java web technologies such as Java Servlet, JavaServer Pages, Java Expression Language and Java WebSocket technologies. In this article, I will show you how to install Tomcat web server on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. So, let’s get started.

Tomcat 8.5.x is available in the universe section of the official package repository of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. So, it is really easy to install. First, make sure that the universe section of the official Ubuntu 18.04 LTS package repository is enabled.

To do that, run the following command:

$ egrep ‘^deb http.*universe.*$’ /etc/apt/sources.list

As you can see, I have the universe section of the official package repository enabled.

If it’s not enabled in your case, you can easily enable it. If you’re using a desktop environment on your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS machine, then open Software & Updates app and make sure the Community-maintained free and open-source software (universe) repository is checked on the Ubuntu Software tab as marked in the screenshot below. The universe section of the package repository should be enabled.

If you’re using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS server in headless mode, then run the following command to enable the universe section of the package repository:

$ sudo apt-add-repository “deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic universe”

Now, update the APT package repository cache with the following command:

The APT package repository cache should be updated.

Finally, install Tomcat 8.5.x with the following command:

$ sudo apt install tomcat8

Now, press y and then press <Enter> to continue.

Tomcat 8.5.x should be installed.

Starting and Stopping Tomcat Service:

In this section, I am going to show you how to manage Tomcat service on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. You can check whether the Tomcat service is running on your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS machine with the following command:

$ sudo systemctl status tomcat8

As you can see, Tomcat service is running.

If you want to stop Tomcat service, then run the following command:

$ sudo systemctl stop tomcat8

As you can see, Tomcat service is not running anymore.

If you want to start the Tomcat service again, then run the following command:

$ sudo systemctl start tomcat8

As you can see, the Tomcat service is running again.

Starting Tomcat at System Boot:

If you want Apache Tomcat server to start when your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS machine boot, then you have to add the Tomcat service to the system startup of your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS machine. To do that, run the following command:

$ sudo systemctl enable tomcat8

Tomcat service should be added to system startup of your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS machine. The next time you boot, it should automatically start.

Removing Tomcat from System Startup:

If you don’t want to start Apache Tomcat web server when your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS machine boots anymore, all you have to do is remove the Tomcat service from the system startup of your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS machine.

To do that, run the following command:

$ sudo systemctl disable tomcat8

Tomcat service should be removed from the system startup of your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS machine. Apache Tomcat web server won’t start when your Ubuntu machine boots anymore.

Accessing Tomcat Web Server:

By default, Apache Tomcat web server runs on port 8080. If you’re using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop, just open your web browser and visit http://localhost:8080

As you can see, the welcome screen of Apache Tomcat web server showed up.

If you’re using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS headless server, then run the following command to get the IP address of your Ubuntu machine which is running the Tomcat web server:

As you can see, the IP address is 192.168.163.134 in my case.

Now from the web browser of any computer connected to the same network as your Ubuntu server machine, visit http://IP_ADDR:8080, in my case http://192.168.163.134:8080

As you can see, I can still access the Tomcat web server running on my Ubuntu machine.

Managing Tomcat Web Server Using Web Based Management Interfaces:

Apache Tomcat has graphical management interfaces which you can use to manage your Tomcat web server from the web browser. In this section, I will show you how to configure it. To get the Tomcat Management interfaces on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, you have to install 2 additional software packages tomcat8-admin and tomcat8-user.

To do that, run the following command:

$ sudo apt install tomcat8-admin tomcat8-user

tomcat8-admin and tomcat8-user packages should be installed.

Now you have to configure a username and password that you want to use to log in to the Tomcat Web based management interfaces. To do that you have to edit the configuration file /etc/tomcat8/tomcat-users.xml and add the required roles and users there.

To edit the configuration file /etc/tomcat8/tomcat-users.xml, run the following command:

$ sudo nano /etc/tomcat8/tomcat-users.xml

The configuration file should be opened.

Now navigate to the end of the file and add the following lines just before the </tomcat-users> line.

<role rolename=”admin-gui”/>
<role rolename=”manager-gui”/>
<user username=”YOUR_USERNAME” password=”YOUR_PASSWORD” roles=”admin-gui,manager-gui”/>

Here, change YOUR_USERNAME and YOUR_PASSWORD to the username and password that you want to use to log in to the Tomcat web based management interfaces. I am going to set it to tomcat and tomcat for the demonstration.

Finally, it should look something like this. Now, press <Ctrl> + x and then press y and then press <Enter> to save the changes.

Now, restart Tomcat service with the following command:

$ sudo systemctl restart tomcat8

Now you can access the Tomcat Web Application Manager interface. Just visit http://localhost:8080/manager/html from your web browser and you should be prompted for the username and the password. Type in the username and password you just set and click on OK.

You should be logged in to the Tomcat Web Application Manager interface. From here, you can manage (start, stop and reload) the running web applications and many more.

There is also another web app for managing Tomcat web server called Virtual Host Manager which you can access at http://localhost:8080/host-manager/html

As you can see, the Virtual Host Manager interface is displayed in my web browser.

So, that’s how you install and use Tomcat web server on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Thanks for reading this article.

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In presenting the results of its survey of 4,300 cloud developers, DigitalOcean seemed surprised that only 55 percent of respondents contribute to open source projects. Yet to tech outsiders — or old-timers — it may be more surprising that more than half of developers do contribute. There are relatively few professions in which companies and their employers regularly offer pro bono services for the greater good of the industry.

DigitalOcean, which provides cloud infrastructure software and services, has timed its “Currents” survey release in conjunction with the conclusion of its fifth annual Hacktoberfest program. Co-hosted with GitHub and twilio, Hacktoberfest invites developers to collaborate during the month of October on a smorgasbord of open source projects.

Corporate leaders appear to be sending mixed messages to their developers about open source. Although 71 percent of respondents to the DigitalOcean survey said that their employers “expect them to use open source software as part of their day-to-day development work,” employers are less supportive of their developers contributing to software that doesn’t directly benefit the company. Only 34 percent of respondents said they were given time to work on open source projects not related to work.

Younger developers more willing to contribute

The report reveals some encouraging signs, as well. Some 37 percent of the developers said they would contribute more to open source if their companies gave them the time to do so. In addition, despite some 44 percent of respondents saying they don’t contribute because they feel they lack the right skills and 45 percent saying they don’t know how to get started, the less experienced, and presumably younger, developers appear more open to contributing. A total of 60 percent of developers with five or fewer years of experience contribute to open source, while the number is “significantly less” for developers with more experience, says DigitalOcean. This bodes well for future contribution levels.

Developers in India were more likely to contribute to open source projects (68 percent) than any other nationality. Although DigitalOcean did not speculate, this may be due in part to the younger average age of Indian developers.

Motivations to contribute include the opportunity to improve coding skills, learn new technologies, and advance one’s career. Also noted was the less tangible benefit of being part of a community.

Among the many other findings in the survey, the leading programming language for open source projects was JavaScript (62 percent) followed by Python at 52 percent. The only other languages over 20 percent were PHP (29 percent), Java (28 percent), and CSS (25 percent). When asked which open source projects have “excited you the most” over the last three years, the React.js JavaScript library for building UIs took the top spot with 468 mentions, followed by Kubernetes (335), Docker (252), Linux (240), and Tensorflow (226).

Companies are failing to lead the open source charge by example. Only 18 percent of employees said their companies actively participated in open source organizations such as the listed examples: Apache Foundation, Node.js Foundation, and Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Three out of four respondents said their companies have donated $1,000 or less to such organizations over the last year.

Not surprisingly, high cost was the leading reason (38 percent) why companies skimp on open source donations and labor contributions. This was followed by a preference for in-house development (33 percent) and lack of knowledge of the listed organizations (27 percent). More promisingly, 29 percent said their companies plan to contribute to such organizations in the future.

When asked which of the five leading tech companies were doing the most to support open source, 53 percent listed Google, and Microsoft came in second at 23 percent. Next came Facebook (10%), Amazon (4%), and Apple (1%). Although IBM does not appear on this list, its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat this weekend — the second largest software acquisition in history — should boost its already extensive open source contributions in cloud software.

For more survey results, check out ActiveState’s survey of 1,407 open source developers, which focuses on open source runtimes, and the open source programs survey from The New Stack and The Linux Foundation, which looks at the role of open source programs within organizations.

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SFTP is a protocol that offers a secure and private channel for transfer of files between systems using encryption. A misconception exists about the acronym SFTP, with some thinking it stands for Secure File Transfer Protocol. It stands for SSH File Transfer Protocol. Where in ‘FTPS’ is different, FTPS client will first check if the ftps server’s certificate is trusted and use Secure Sockets Layer protocol (TLS).

One may be forgiven to think that SFTP and FTP are similar in terms of functionality but, the two employ varied protocols. You, therefore, cannot use a standard FTP client to connect to an SFTP server. In this guide, we will focus on the commonly used SFTP commands.

Read Also: 12 lftp Commands to Manage Files with Examples

The standard application of SFTP is to run on a command interface within its own environment. That is why in most cases you will notice the program interface changing to the prompt sftp>. The moment you have invoked the SFTP session, the usual system commands will not execute unless you call them using a specific language that is in the SFTP command line standard.

Not all computers can process SFTP commands. You can choose to use the graphical interface version of SFTP or the command line depending on the Operating System you are using. The GUI interface requires you to install an SFTP utility.

In this article, we will take you through some SFTP commands examples that you can use via the unix/linux command line.

How to Connect With SFTP

The SSH protocol used to establish communication are the same as those required by an SFTP channel. Most people prefer to use saved passwords set as defaults, but I would recommend the use of SSH keys that you can use when you need to access any system.

To start an SFTP session, you need a username and the remote hostname. Alternatively, you can use the IP address of the host name at the prompt like shown below:

~ # sftp [email protected]
[email protected]‘s password:
Connected to [email protected]

In the above example, if there were a connection that allows the processing of the above command, you would expect a password prompt before gaining access.

1) How to Get Help at the Prompt

If you have no clue on the type or format that can be used on an SFTP command line, use the “?” or “help” at the prompt as follows

sftp ?

2) Confirm the Working Directory

Using the command lpwd will give more information on the working directory. The pwd is used to check the remote working directory.

sftp> lpwd

Output

Local working directory: /root
sftp> pwd

Output

Remote working directory: /upload

3) Listing Files

At the SFTP command prompt, you list both remote and local files using different commands.

Remote listing

sftp> ls

Local listing

sftp> lls

4) Uploading Files

Uploading can take place by placing single or multiple files on the remote host.

Single file on the remote host use,

sftp> put Hello-World.txt

Output

Uploading Hello-World.txt to /upload/Hello-World.txt
Hello-World.txt

Multiple files on the remote host

sftp> mput *.txt

Output

Uploading Hello-World.txt to /upload/Hello-World.txt
Hello-World.txt 100% 0 0.0KB/s 00:00
Uploading file1.txt to /upload/file1.txt
file1.txt 100% 0 0.0KB/s 00:00
Uploading file2.txt to /upload/file2.txt
file2.txt 100% 0 0.0KB/s 00:00
Uploading file3.txt to /upload/file3.txt
file3.txt 100% 0 0.0KB/s 00:00
Uploading file4.txt to /upload/file4.txt
file4.txt 100% 0 0.0KB/s 00:00

5) Downloading Files

You will be able to download single or multiple files in a local-path or system.

sftp> get file1.pdf

Output

Fetching /upload/file1.pdf to file1.pdf

Download multiple files on a local-path or system

sftp> mget * .pdf

Output

Fetching /upload/file1.pdf to file1.pdf
Fetching /upload/file2.pdf to file2.pdf
Fetching /upload/file3.pdf to file3.pdf
Fetching /upload/file4.pdf to file4.pdf
Fetching /upload/file5.pdf to file5.pdf

It is evident that when downloading a file in the local system is done using the same name. When you want to use a different name on a remote file download, the name should be specified at the end of the command.

6) Switching Directories

On the remote server, you use the command,

sftp> cd test

On the local machine, you use the command,

sftp> lcd Documents

7) Creating directories

Creating directories on both remote and local paths is possible

A new directory on the local path

sftp> mkdir test

A new directory on a remote host

sftp> lmkdir Documents

8) Removing Directories

Removing a directory or file in remote hosts

Removing a file in remote hosts

sftp> rm Report.xls

Removing directory in remote hosts

sftp> rmdir Department

Note: This command will only work if the target directory is empty

9) Exiting the Command Shell

The exclamation mark! (known as a command in this case) is used to get out of the SFTP command prompt as shown in the following example.

sftp>!

[[email protected] ~]# exit
Shell exited with status 1
sftp>

As simple as it may look like, SFTP is a very powerful tool used for administering servers and managing file transfers between hosts. The utility can be used on both remote and local servers.

Read Also:

• How to Use SCP Command for A File/Directory Transfer in Linux

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Bitnami Drupal Module is a free and multiplatform software project, which has been designed from the offset to act as a module that can be used on top of a Bitnami LAMP, WAMP and MAMP stack, specially designed for the deployment of the Drupal application on desktop computers or laptops where the aforementioned stacks are installed.

What is Drupal?

In general, Drupal is used for community web portals, discussion websites, corporate websites, Intranet applications, personal websites or blogs, aficionado websites, e-commerce applications, resource directories, as well as social networking websites.

Installing Bitnami Drupal Module

Bitnami’s modules and stacks automate the setup of a web-based application on GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X operating systems. It is available for download as native installers for the 32-bit and 64-bit hardware platforms.

To install the Drupal application on top of a Bitnami LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Stack, Bitnami MAMP (Mac, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Stack or Bitnami WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP) Stack, you must download the package that corresponds to your computer’s arch, run it and follow the on-screen instructions.

Run Drupal in the cloud or virtualize it

Thanks to Bitnami, users will be able to run Drupal in the cloud with their hosting provider or by using a pre-built cloud image for the Windows Azure and Amazon EC2 cloud hosting providers. Virtual appliances for Drupal are also available on Bitnami’s website, based on the latest stable release of Ubuntu and designed to support the Oracle VirtualBox and VMware ESX, ESXi virtualization software.

The Bitnami Drupal Stack and Docker container

Besides the Bitnami Drupal Module reviewed here, Bitnami offers all-in-one native installers that greatly simplify the installation and hosting of the Drupal application on desktop computers and laptops. Bitnami Drupal Stack is available for download on Softpedia, free of charge. A Drupal Docker container will also be distributed on the project’s website.

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