Linux Blimp

You can now use the Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) Command Line Interface (Amazon ECS-CLI) to create AWS secrets for your private registry credentials.

Previously, in order to use the ECS-CLI to run tasks that used images from a private registry, you had to first create AWS Secrets for your registry credentials.

Now you can provide the ECS-CLI with an input file that includes the the registry names and associated credentials, and the ECS-CLI will create the AWS Secrets as well as an IAM role for you that can be used by ECS to access the secrets.

To learn more about how ECS-CLI supports creating AWS secrets for private registry credentials, read our documentation.To see where ECS is available, visit our region table.

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Apache Kafka is a data streaming platform responsible for streaming data from a number of sources to a lot of targets

. The sources are also called producers. The data produced is needed by a completely different group called consumers for various purposes. Kafka is the layer that sits between the producers and consumers and aggregates the data into a usable pipeline. Also Kafka itself is a distributed platform, so the Kafka layer is composed of various servers running a kafka, these servers or nodes are hence known as Kafka

Brokers.

That overview is a bit in the abstract so let’s ground it in a real-world scenario, imagine you need to monitor several web servers. Each running its own website, and new logs are constantly being generated in each one of them every second of the day. On top of that there are a number of email servers that you need to monitor as well.

You may need to store that data for record keeping and billing purposes, which is a batch job that doesn’t require immediate attention. You might want to run analytics on the data to make decisions in real-time which requires accurate and immediate input of data. Suddenly you find yourself in the need for streamlining the data in a sensible way for all the various needs. Kafka acts as that layer of abstraction to which multiple sources can publish different streams of data and a given consumer can subscribe to the streams it finds relevant. Kafka will make sure that the data is well-ordered. It is the internals of Kafka that we need to understand before we get to the topic of Partitioning and Keys.

Kafka Topics are like tables of a database. Each topic consists of data from a particular source of a particular type. For example, your cluster’s health can be a topic consisting of CPU and memory utilization information. Similarly, incoming traffic to across the cluster can be another topic.

Kafka is designed to be horizontally scalable. That is to say, a single instance of Kafka consists of multiple Kafka brokers running across multiple nodes, each can handle streams of data parallel to the other. Even if a few of the nodes fail your data pipeline can continue to function. A particular topic can then be split into a number of partitions. This partitioning is one of the crucial factors behind the horizontal scalability of Kafka.

Multiple producers, data sources for a given topic, can write to that topic simultaneously because each writes to a different partition, at any given point. Now, usually data is assigned to a partition randomly, unless we provide it with a key.

Partitioning and Ordering

Just to recap, producers are writing data to a given topic. That topic is actually split into multiple partitions. And each partition lives independently of the others, even for a given topic. This can lead to a lot of confusion when the ordering to data matters. Maybe you need your data in a chronological order but having multiple partitions for your datastream doesn’t guarantee perfect ordering.

You can use only a single partition per topic, but that defeats the whole purpose of Kafka’s distributed architecture. So we need some other solution.

Keys for Partitions

Data from a producer are sent to partitions randomly, as we mentioned before. Messages being the actual chunks of data. What producers can do besides just sending messages is to add a key that goes along with it.

All the messages that come with the specific key will go to the same partition. So, for example, a user’s activity can be tracked chronologically if that user’s data is tagged with a key and so it always end up in one partition. Let’s call this partition p0 and the user u0.

Partition p0 will always pick up the u0 related messages because that key tie them together. But that doesn’t mean that p0 is only tied up with that. It can also take up messages from u1 and u2 if it has the capacity to do so. Similarly, other partitions can consume data from other users.

The point that a given user’s data isn’t spread across different partition ensuring chronological ordering for that user. However, the overall topic of user data, can still leverage the distributed architecture of Apache Kafka.

Conclusion

While distributed systems like Kafka solve some older problems like lack of scalability or having single a point of failure. They come with a set of problems that are unique to their own design. Anticipating these problems is an essential job of any system architect. Not only that, sometimes you really have to do a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the new problems are a worthy trade-off for getting rid of the older ones. Ordering and synchronization are just the tip of the iceberg.

Hopefully, articles like these and the official documentation can help you along the way.

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Google Chrome is the most widely used web browser in the world. It is fast, easy to use and secure browser built for the modern web.

Chrome is not an open source browser and it is not included in the CentOS repositories. It is based on Chromium, an open-source browser which is available in the EPEL repositories.

This tutorial teaches how to install Google Chrome web browser on CentOS 7. The same instructions apply for any RHEL based distribution, including Fedora and Scientific Linux.

Prerequisites

Before continuing with this tutorial, make sure you are logged in as a user with sudo privileges.

Installing Google Chrome on CentOS

Follow the steps listed below to install Google Chrome on your CentOS system:

1. Start by opening your terminal and download the latest Google Chrome .rpm package with following wget command:

   wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm

2. Once the file is downloaded, install Google Chrome on your CentOS 7 system by typing:

   sudo yum localinstall google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm

   The command above will prompt you to enter your user password and then it will install Chrome and all other required packages.

Starting Google Chrome

Now that you have Google Chrome installed on your CentOS system you can start it either from the command line by typing google-chrome & or by clicking on the Google Chrome icon (Applications -> Internet -> Google Chrome):

When you start Google Chrome for the first time, a window like the following will appear asking if you want to make Google Chrome your default browser and to send usage statistic and crash reports to Google:

Select according to your preference, and click OK to proceed.

Google Chrome will open and you’ll see the default Chrome welcome page.

At this point, you have Chrome installed on your CentOS machine. You can sign-in to Chrome with your Google Account to sync your bookmarks, history, passwords and other settings on all your devices.

Updating Google Chrome

During the installation process the official Google repository will be added to your system. You can use the cat command to verify the file contents:

cat /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo[google-chrome]
name=google-chrome
baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/x86_64
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub

This ensures that your Google Chrome installation will be updated automatically when a new version is released through your desktop standard Software Update tool.

Conclusion

In this tutorial we’ve shown you how to install Google Chrome on your CentOS 7 desktop machine. If you’ve previously used a different browser, like Firefox or Opera, you can import your bookmarks and settings into Chrome.

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Lanner’s “NCA-1515” secure network appliance is equipped with an Atom C3000 SoC, 2x mini-PCIe, M.2 with Nano-SIM, and up to 8x GbE ports with one-pair bypass and optional SFP.

Lanner has launched a security-oriented NCA-1515 network appliance with a variety of networking and storage options. The 231 x 200 x 44mm desktop appliance features an Intel Atom C3000 “Denverton” SoC and is designed for vCPE/uCPE and edge security applications.

Other desktop network appliances based on the Atom C3000 include Nexcom’s vDNA 1160, Advantech’s FWA-1012VC, Axiomtek’s NA362, and Aaeon’s FWS-7360 and FWS-2360.

NCA-1515, front and back
(click images to enlarge)

 

Unlike most of these competitors, the NCA-1515 lacks support for the higher-end 12- and 16-core Atom C3000 models, limiting you to the octa-core C3708, the quad-core C3508, and the dual-core C3308, with clock rates ranging between 1.5GHz and 2.0GHz. No OS support is listed, but Linux is almost certainly supported.

Like most of its rivals, the NCA-1515 supports Intel AES-NI and Intel QuickAssist Technology (Intel QAT), featuring accelerated symmetric encryption and authentication, asymmetric encryption, digital signatures, RSA, DH, ECC, and lossless data compression. Paired with the Atom C3000, QuickAssist “greatly boosts network responsiveness and security by distributing processing power to more critical applications and by offloading computationally intensive compression and encryption/decryption tasks,” says Lanner. The system also provides a secure boot mechanism, support for TPM 2.0, and a Kensington lock for physical device security.

Unlike the vDNA 1160, NA362, and FWS-7360, there are no 10GbE ports. All four models have a bank of 4x MAC- and copper-based Gigabit Ethernet ports. Two of these models feature one-pair bypass. One adds two more copper GbE and two more optical SFP GbE ports (with dedicated LEDs) via an Intel i350 server adapter PCIe board. The other adds only the pair of SFP ports.

The three configurations are:

• 6x GbE RJ45 with 1 pair Gen3 bypass; 2x GbE SFP
• 4x GbE RJ45 with 1 pair Gen3 bypass; 2x GbE SFP
• 4x GbE RJ45 without bypass

You can load up to 32GB of 2400/2133MHz DDR4 RAM with ECC, and there’s a standard allotment of 8GB eMMC. There’s also an option for adding a 2.5-inch SATA bay.

Simplified (left) and full detail views of the NCA-1515
(click images to enlarge)

 

There are plenty of options for wireless. You get dual mini-PCIe slots (PCIe/USB2.0), as well as an M.2 B-key 2242 slot that is linked to dual Nano-SIM slots for adding cellular capability.

The NCA-1515 is further equipped with 2x USB 2.0 ports, an RJ45 console port, and an LOM (Lights Out Management) remote access port with an OPMA (Open Platform Management Architecture) slot. A watchdog, RTC, and LEDs are also onboard.

The system has a 12V DC input jack with power and reset buttons and, depending on the SKU, a 36W or 60W adapter. There’s a passive heatsink and system cooling fan that together support a 0 to 40°C range.

Further information

No pricing or availability information was provided for the NCA-1515. More information may be found on Lanner’s NCA-1515 product page.

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October 30, 2018

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December is coming, which means one of my favorite holidays, Christmas, is fairly imminent. While I enjoy spending time with family to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, I’d be lying if I said I don’t like getting presents. Heck, I really enjoy giving gifts too.

Not all Christmas gifts need to be physical — sometimes a Linux distribution can be equally rewarding! Case in point, today, we learn Linux Mint 19.1 — which is named “Tessa” — will be released around Christmastime. In addition, the Mint developers have launched an official Patreon account as a new way to get funding from users. More importantly, there are some significant upcoming improvements to the Cinnamon desktop environment.

“Following the many requests we received to look into an alternative to Paypal, we’re happy to announce Linux Mint is now on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/linux_mint. Our project received 33 pledges so far and we decided to use this service to help support Timeshift, a project which is very important to us and adds significant value to Linux Mint,” says Clement Lefebvre.

ALSO READ: IBM gobbles up open source and Linux darling Red Hat in $34 billion deal

Lefebvre further says, “Cinnamon 4.0 will look more modern thanks to a new panel layout. Whether you enjoy the new look or prefer the old one, we want everyone to feel at home in their operating system, so you’ll have the option to embrace the change or to click a button to make Cinnamon look just like it did before. The idea of a larger and darker panel had been in the roadmap for a while.”

To learn more about upcoming Linux Mint changes, you can read the official blog post here. Are you excited for a holiday season full of Linux Mint goodness? Please tell me your thoughts in the comments below

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Last updated October 18, 2018

A couple days ago, Lucas Holt announced the release of MidnightBSD 1.0. Let’s take a quick look at what is included in this new release.

What is MidnightBSD?

MidnightBSD is a fork of FreeBSD. Lucas created MightnightBSD to be an option for desktop users and for BSD newbies. He wanted to create something that would allow people to quickly get a desktop experience on BSD. He believed that other options had too much of a focus on the server market.

What is in MidnightBSD 1.0?

According to the release notes, most of the work in 1.0 went towards updating the base system, improving the package manager and updating tools. The new release is compatible with FreeBSD 10-Stable.

Mports (MidnightBSD’s package management system) has been upgraded to support installing multiple packages with one command. The mport upgrade command has been fixed. Mports now tracks deprecated and expired packages. A new package format was also introduced.

Other changes include:

• ZFS is now supported as a boot file system. Previously, ZFS could only be used for additional storage.
• Support for NVME SSDs
• AMD Ryzen and Radeon support have been improved.
• Intel, Broadcom, and other drivers updated.
• bhyve support has been ported from FreeBSD
• The sensors framework was removed because it was causing locking issues.
• Sudo was removed and replaced with doas from OpenBSD.
• Added support for Microsoft hyper-v

Before you upgrade…

If you are a current MidnightBSD user or are thinking of trying out the new release, it would be a good idea to wait. Lucas is currently rebuilding packages to support the new package format and tooling. He also plans to upgrade packages and ports for the desktop environment over the next couple of months. He is currently working on porting Firefox 52 ESR because it is the last release that does not require Rust. He also hopes to get a newer version of Chromium ported to MidnightBSD. I would recommend keeping an eye on the MidnightBSD Twitter feed.

What happened to 0.9?

You might notice that the previous release of MidnightBSD was 0.8.6. Now, you might be wondering “Why the jump to 1.0”? According to Lucas, he ran into several issues while developing 0.9. In fact, he restarted it several times. He ending up taking CURRENT in a different direction than the 0.9 branch and it became 1.0. Some packages also had an issue with the 0.* numbering system.

Help Needed

Currently, the MidnightBSD project is the work of pretty much one guy, Lucas Holt. This is the main reason why development has been slow. If you are interested in helping out, you can contact him on Twitter.

In the release announcement video. Lucas said that he had encountered problems with upstream projects accepting patches. They seem to think that MidnightBSD is too small. This often means that he has to port an application from scratch.

Thoughts

I have a thing for the underdog. Of all the BSDs that I have interacted with, that monicker fits MidnightBSD the most. One guy trying to create an easy desktop experience. Currently, there is only one other BSD trying to do something similar: Project Trident. I think that this is a real barrier to BSDs success. Linux succeeds because people can quickly and easily install it. Hopefully, MidnightBSD does that for BSD, but right now it has a long way to go.

Have you ever used MidnightBSD? If not, what is your favorite BSD? What other BSD topics should we cover? Let us know in the comments below.

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FreeBSD is an open source and server oriented operating system derived from BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution), the version of UNIX developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It offers advanced networking, performance, security and compatibility features today which are still missing in other operating systems, even some of the best commercial ones.

Distributed as installable or Live CDs for five architectures

The project is distributed as installable only CD ISO image that support the 32-bit/x86 compatible (including Pentium and Athlon), 64-bit/amd64 compatible (including Opteron, Athlon 64, and EM64T), IA-64 (ia64), PPC (PowerPC), and SPARC instruction set architectures.

It is also essential to mention that this operating system is not a Linux distribution, and it features several stable branches. While the 10.x branch delivers all the latest BSD technologies and it is considered the latest stable release, the 9.x and 8.x branches have been classified as legacy releases.

Boot options

The operating system provides users with a text-mode, minimal boot menu from where they can boot into the multi user or single user environments, drop to a shell prompt for system rescuing tasks, choose a stable or old kernel, as well as to reboot the machine.

Additionally, you can configure various boot options, such as support for ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface), safe mode, single user and verbose. After the system boots, you will be asked if want to install the distribution of use the live environment.

Bottom line

Summing up, FreeBSD is without no doubt an advanced operating system that powers some of the most modern desktop, server and embedded systems around the world. Thanks to its state-of-the-art security and advanced features, FreeBSD is used by a plethora of powerful companies to deliver modern services, as well as to respond to changing needs and demands.

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Choosing the right software-defined storage (SDS) solution for your business can’t be a snap decision—your choice will affect the way you manage data and how your organization grows for many years to come. It’s critical to ask some hard questions; namely, what is the value of undergoing a switch to this vendor’s SDS solution versus going with the other guys?

As the IT director of an enterprise company, you likely have a paramount priority in making the selection: getting the best ROI. And that objective relies on two factors: dependability of the supplier and reliability of the solution.

Our dependability drives your success

There are a lot of SDS solutions out there—but not all of them have a handle on what an enterprise needs. One option, for instance, is a free version of Ceph, today’s most popular open source distributed storage solution. It’s certainly an attractive price point at first glance, but you’ll end up spending a lot of additional time and money if you don’t have the DIY skills or highly specialized knowledge to solve all your own issues .

Your supplier should have a solid understanding of enterprise storage challenges and the ways organizations are managing the current explosion of business data. The real measure of a Ceph solution is the vendor’s capacity for enterprise support, as well as their investment in integration, certification, and management tools.

As the first supplier to bring Ceph-based (SDS) storage to virtually any operating system, SUSE is an industry leader in SDS solutions—which means we are also established, dependable and committed to enhancing SUSE Enterprise Storage as SDS technology evolves. When we first began offering SUSE Enterprise Storage, Ralf Flaxa, SUSE’s vice president of engineering at the time, said,

“SUSE’s leadership as the first to provide heterogeneous OS support is an indicator of our commitment to solving issues customers actually face. … SUSE Enterprise Storage provides the best of the Ceph project, tested and supported for enterprise customers.”[1]

Solution reliability boosts ROI, too

You look for a dependable SDS supplier because its solutions will be reliable—which also plays a big part in ROI. The more you can rely on your solution to make storage easier and more efficient, the better your overall ROI.

Our early adoption of SDS solutions means we’ve had more time to refine and improve SUSE Enterprise Storage. Powered by Ceph technology, SUSE Enterprise Storage is extensively scalable from storage appliance to cost-effective cloud solution. With each release, we’ve broadened its scope and use cases, and today it is the ideal solution for simplifying compliance and scaling the storage of archive, backup and large data file applications without limitations.

Enhanced ROI through savings of time and money

SUSE Enterprise Storage streamlines storage to reduce management and operational costs. You can realize significant CAPEX savings by using commodity off-the-shelf servers and disk drives that are at least 30 percent less expensive than average-capacity-optimized NAS solutions and at least 50 percent less expensive than average-capacity-optimized mid-range disk arrays.[2] SUSE Enterprise Storage helps you avoid vendor lock-in so you can choose the most economic hardware and maintain flexibility to repurpose if business priorities change.

The solution also makes it easy for your enterprise to adapt to changing business and data demands by automatically optimizing, upgrading or adding storage when you need it, without disruption. And it helps reduce downtime and keep performance high with self-managing and self-healing capabilities that automatically respond to fluctuating storage demands.

With less expensive components and easier, more automatic management, SUSE’s SDS solution delivers an excellent ROI with big savings in IT time and costs of management and maintenance. With better storage for less time and money, your enterprise can free up resources toward accelerating innovation and building the business in ways to keep it competitive for a long time.

[1] “SUSE Enterprise Storage 2 First to Bring Ceph-Based Storage to Any OS,” SUSE press release, November 3, 2015.

[2] “SUSE Enterprise Storage 3,” SUSE media presentation

 

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Six New Members, including State Farm Insurance & Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, Now Support Leading Enterprise Blockchain Project

SAN FRANCISCO – (October 30, 2018) – Hyperledger, an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies, today announced six more organizations have joined the community. The newest members represent the balance of blue chip, entrepreneurial and technology-focused organizations that are at the core of Hyperleder’s diverse ecosystem.

Hyperledger is a multi-project, multi-stakeholder effort that includes 10 business blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. These projects are the result of the hands-on work of contributors around the world who develop and maintain the code for the frameworks and tools as well as provide governance and organizational resources. To date, the community has made thousands of code contributions, adding up to millions of lines of code. This collective development effort most recently delivered the releases of Hyperledger Fabric 1.3.

“Our growing, diverse and active community is what powers Hyperledger,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director, Hyperledger. “Preparing for the first Hyperledger Global Forum has really brought the scope and scale of all this community has accomplished into focus. Everything from the advances to the core technology to the diverse use cases and the increasing success stories to community-led training and collaboration underscore Hyperledger’s growing momentum. The latest members bring even more energy and diversity to the table, helping advance enterprise blockchain adoption worldwide.”

Hyperledger enables organizations to build robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support their individual business transactions by creating enterprise-grade, open source distributed ledger frameworks and code bases. The latest general members to join the community are: CENCON BLOCKCHAIN GROUP, State Farm Insurance and Vered Information Technology.

Hyperledger supports an open community that values contributions and participation from various entities. As such, pre-approved non-profits, open source projects and government entities can join Hyperledger at no cost as associate members. Associate members joining this month include CPqD, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) and Information Technologies Institute, a member of Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH).

New member quotes:

CENCON BLOCKCHAIN GROUP

“Being a chainist and an innovator in blockchain, CENCON is honored to be a new member of Hyperledger and The Linux Foundation community, which has so many technology giants and industry leaders,” said Jacky XU, Founder and CEO of CENCON BLOCKCHAIN GROUP. “CENCON’s target customers are entity entrepreneurs with high values of brand, credit and fixed assets. With the support of Hyperledger, The Linux Foundation community and the power of blockchain technologies, CENCON is achieving its vision and mission to be greater through the ‘CENCON One Touch Blockchain System’ and the ‘CENCON New Trust Business Ecosystem.’”

State Farm

“State Farm believes the financial and insurance industries are poised for blockchain disruption. We are rapidly approaching a window of opportunity to help shape blockchain innovations,” says State Farm Innovation Executive Mike Fields. “Through strategic relationships with consortiums and other blockchain-related groups, State Farm is looking to collaborate and explore with organizations to learn and better understand what this type of technology can do for our organizations and customers.”

Vered Information Technologies

“We are pleased to join the Hyperledger community,” said Chen Heng, CEO of Bigtree Finance, a subsidiary of Vered Holdings Corporation. “Dedicated to the practice of blockchain technology, Bigtree Finance focuses on the industrialization of technology and commits itself to the in-depth integration of blockchain, big data, cloud computing and AI to provide Fintech service to supply chains all over the world. We have developed Biglock Blockchain Platform, a consortium blockchain for supply chain finance, and are applying this technology to ensure genuine trade data by verification so as to minimize the information asymmetry in transactions. Since the second half of 2017, we have successfully employed Biglock Blockchain Platform in many substantial business models and promoted it actively to many other industry segments. We look forward to dialogue and cooperation with the Hyperledger community to further promote the practice of ‘blockchain + supply chain finance’ in other sectors.”

Join industry peers in helping build and shape the ecosystem for blockchain technologies, use cases and applications. More information on joining Hyperledger as a member organization can be found here: https://www.hyperledger.org/members/join.

About Hyperledger

Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration including leaders in finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing and Technology. The Linux Foundation hosts Hyperledger under the foundation. To learn more, visit: https://www.hyperledger.org/.

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