Linux Blimp

Today, we are releasing LVE Manager, lve-stats, lve-utils, and alt-python27-cllib packages to Production. As well as bug fixes (see changelog below) and additional improvements to the product, we’re adding a major feature announced earlier — CloudLinux Statistics.

We respect all laws and regulations, so, statistics collection does not fall under the GDPR. Please see our EULAs, website Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
You can find a complete list of metrics collected by CloudLinux here. We’d love to know what you think about it — you can send any feedback regarding CloudLinux Statistics or the GDPR to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

These statistics are the first step towards the CloudLinux Dashboard, a new feature coming soon. In the CloudLinux Dashboard, we will combine all statistics into one useful and effective dashboard, to simplify and facilitate administrators’ life, because “Who owns the information, rules the world”. Indeed!

If you do not want to share data at all, you as an administrator can deactivate the collection of CloudLinux usage statistics. Please find detailed opt-out instructions here.

To update, run the following command in a console:

yum update lvemanager lve-utils lve-stats alt-python27-cllib

Changelog:

lve-utils 3.0-21.15

• LU-910, LU-907, LU-904, LU-858, LU-868, LU-881, LU-861, LU-879, LU-887, LU-886, LU-883, LU-857, LU-862, LU-893, LU-924, LU-926, LU-942, LU-935, LU-955: tasks related to statistics collection implementation;
• LU-758: reseller with active limits but without custom config file for a notifier now inherits options from admin’s config correctly;
• removed unneeded CageFS build requirements;
• LU-864: added mailman to clsupergid group and configured proc_super_gid option for cPanel servers;
• LU-954: fixed setup_supergids error while cldeploy execution on CentOS6;
• LU-934: added an ability for administrator to switch CloudLinux usage statistics on/off. Please find the detailed instructions here.

lvemanager 4.0-25.12

• LVEMAN-1364, LU-862, LU-866, LU-867, LU-883, LU-922: tasks related to statistics collection implementation;
• WEB-996: options Notify Customers and Notify Reseller’s customers are now independent.

alt-python27-cllib 1.4-14.1

• LU-863: statistics collection implementation;
• LU-866: added drop_privileges context manager to allow drop privileges temporarily;
• PTCLLIB-131: removed get_governor_version error messages from stdout;
• LU-853: made an exclude for /var/cpanel/users/system.

lve-stats 2.9-4.1

• LU-879, LU-863, LU-868: tasks related to statistics collection implementation;
• LVES-814: added sorting by field when doing by fault;
• LVES-892: created the documentation for the cloudlinux-statistics and cloudlinux-top utilities;
• PTCLLIB-119: when MySQL Governor config is malformed, human-readable exception is displayed;
• LVES-901: added an ability to generate MySQL Governor statistic in script “generate_lvestats2db.py” (refactored, added dbgov support);
• LVES-899: fixed false resources exceeded alerts;
• LVES-902: investigated and fixed an issue when reseller $PID exists in /proc/lve/resellers, but is absent in ve.cfg;
• moved mail_helper from lve-stats 2 to python-cllib;
• LVES-904: lveinfo now displays reseller history of its LVEs;
• LVES-896: added support for html user_notify template in statsnotifier;
• LVES-909: fixed queries for MySQL Governor database statistics when working with central database for multiple servers;
• LVES-869: fixed missing values validation in statsnotifier config;
• LVES-887: fixed issues for stats-notifier when the actual behavior doesn’t match its settings;
• LVES-880: fixed an issue with Username = N/A for a Reseller with disabled Reseller Limits feature on the Statistics tab;
• LVES-885: hide DirectAdmin admin accounts in cloudlinux-top|statistics;
• LVES-891: fixed the parsing details info from the LiteSpeed;
• LVES-867: fixed the warnings from sqlalchemy (part-2);
• LVES-754: fixed a stats2 and LiteSpeed issue + memory leak;
• LVES-870: changed the service loading order on Cloud Linux 6: start after MySQL;
• LVES-879: optimized tests;
• LVES-874: improved prospector rules. Iteration #5;
• LVES-859: admin no longer gets notifications about reseller_with_limits_on’s users;
• LVES-851: rewrote service restart method using lock files;
• LVES-750: fixed a service crash in the case of LiteSpeed bad config.

Additional Release Notes

Modified default statsnotifier settings for Resellers depending on Hoster’s settings:

• Notify Hoster — has no effect on Resellers;
• Notify Reseller — corresponds with Resellers’ options Notify Customers and Notify me when I hit my limits;
• Notify Customers — has no effect on Resellers, affects only Hoster’s users;
• Notify Reseller’s customers — corresponds with Resellers’ option Notify Customers.

Source

Backing up is one of the most important things to remember. It’s a pretty basic concept that you have to have a backup of important data. Data loss can be devastating, especially if it was an important document or something precious. There are a number of ways to back up your data like creating a number of copies over a few handy storage devices.

In terms of backup, cloud backup is one of the safest ways to make sure that your data are safe and sound. There’re a number of available cloud services that allow cloud storage where you can save your important file and access it later on, anywhere in the world! However, putting every single file manually in the cloud would take the amount of time proportional to the size and number of files.

Why not allow CloudBerry to do the job for you? CloudBerry Backup is one of the best cross-platform software solutions that will allow you to automate backups to your favorite cloud storage service. Welcome to CloudBerry Lab!

What is CloudBerry Lab?

CloudBerry Lab is a software company that develops file management and online backup solutions that are able to integrate with 20+ cloud storage providers including the major ones like Amazon, Google, Azure, and Oracle etc. Also you can backup on your local HDD/Network devices.

CloudBerry Lab not only develops their backup solution. In fact, they also offer a number of other software solution for both personal/professional and enterprise level usage. Besides CloudBerry Backup, there are also

CloudBerry Explorer

(Windows client for managing files between the cloud storage and a computer folder),

CloudBerry Remote Assistant

(desktop sharing and remote control) and

CloudBerry Drive

(Windows app for mounting cloud storage on a PC or Windows Server) etc.

They offer their products in a freemium model. The “free” edition offers less utility than the “paid” version but should be more than enough for everyday usage.

Strength of CloudBerry Backup for Linux users

When we start talking about Linux users, there are a few things to keep in mind – the usage style (home/personal or professional/enterprise) and the Linux system the user is using. Linux is a platform that offers tremendous power for almost all the purposes, especially for the higher level of usage (servers and other enterprise-level implementation).

Working with a command line interface is a piece of cake for Linux masters. However, not all the people are comfortable working with CLI and obviously, not everyone is a Linux master. That’s why CloudBerry Backup can be very powerful for average to pro Linux users.

Are you a Linux boss preferring to work with the CLI? Don’t worry! CloudBerry Backup makes sure that it’s compatible with all types of users – noobs to legends. Accompanied by tons of powerful features and advantages, the tool is totally worth it.

However, this tool is highly suitable for commercial environments. The pricing can be a bit overkill for general, home users.

Features

When someone is running the Linux system, in cases, it’s like not having something great to accomplish that simple task. Well, CloudBerry bakes their software perfectly so that they suit the need of every user, including the Linux lovers.

Now, there are other backup solutions for Linux system. What makes CloudBerry stand up? Most of those backup systems require working in the CLI and other scripting tasks. That’s not suitable for most of the common users. CloudBerry Backup provides a great and simple way to work with backup – a simple, self-explanatory and elegant graphical UI.

There are also experts out there who prefer CLI rather than working with GUI. CloudBerry Backup also provides a full-fledged command line interface. There are also a number of other features like:

• Backup and restore scheduling
• Web interface
• Incremental backup – backup only those files that were modified.
• Block-level backup
• Strong encryption (256-bit AES)

However, it’s your duty to make sure that you own a cloud storage. CloudBerry only provides the software you need for making the backup process with protection and automation, not the cloud storage.

Pricing

As I mentioned earlier, CloudBerry offers their backup tool in a freemium model.

• Free – The first option is the “free” edition where the users can use for home/personal use only. There are also other feature handicaps like no encryption support, community support only and a limitation of manageable data (200GB).
• Personal – This plan supports all the pro features that CloudBerry offers like encryption support, data compression and customer support from CloudBerry. However, it’s still for home/personal use only while supporting 5TB of data managing.
  The price is $29.99 and if you want a discount, you should check out “Volume discount”.
• Server – Suitable for business usage. Provides all the features like “Personal” service, except for the allowance to use it in a commercial environment. Yet, there’s that 5TB data limitation.
  The price is $79.99. If you want a discount, you should check out the “Volume discount”.
• Ultimate – The best solution offered by CloudBerry Lab. It provides all the promised features like commercial usage, encryption, data compression, file system backup, and others. There’s no data limitation as well.
  The price is a bit higher, $149.99. However, if you want to have a discount, you should check out the “Volume discount”.

Why CloudBerry?

CloudBerry Lab offers something that’s for the enterprise level usage. Keeping that in mind, there are pros.

• Easy to use.
• Powerful encryption.
• Block level backup ensures that only newer or updated files are backed up, instead of the whole directory full of gigabytes of data.
• Compression of data saves to cloud storage consumption.
• Various backup solution availability.
• Suitable pricing for enterprise-level usage.

How to install CloudBerry in Linux?

Now, it’s time to finally use the CloudBerry Backup solution. Ubuntu will be used for demonstration purposes. An important thing to note – CloudBerry Backup only offers 2 types of installation packages – DEB (which is for Ubuntu, Debian, and derivatives) and RPM (SUSE, openSUSE, Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora, and derivatives).

To start the installation process

Download CloudBerry

.

For Debian/Ubuntu 18.04/18.10/16.04/Linux Mint 19/18/17/and derivatives:Once you download the DEB file, navigate to folder you have saved the DEB package and run this command:For SUSE/openSUSE/and derivatives:Once you download the RPM file, navigate to folder you have saved the RPM package and run this command:For RedHat/CentOS/and derivatives:For Fedora and derivatives:

How to run Backup?

I’ll show you how you can backup with CloudBerry solution on your local system but don’t worry you have variety of cloud choices and similar to setup, if you are interested in. The process is same for all operating systems (Linux/Windows/Mac OS X).

The first time you launch the application, you have to register an account with CloudBerry. I’m using the “freeware” license. If you want to get the premium services, choose them accordingly.

Note that you may also need to enter additional credential(s)/key(s) for having access to your target cloud storage.

For starting a backup, you have to make a “plan” – a macro to run that you can even run later on. For creating a plan, go to File >> Create a Backup plan.

Now, you have to select the cloud storage solution you’re willing to use. For Demo, I’ll be using the local backup (File system).

Select a plan name. By default, the plan name is selected depending on the time and date you’re creating it. Don’t forget to check “Use block level backup” for saving up storage space.

It’s time to select what directories you want to make a backup.

You can also specify what type of files you want to backup or not. Note that you have to specify those files by their file extension like PNG, MP4, and MP3 etc.

You can select the encryption method and the password.

Select your data retention policy. For example, you may not need those backed up files, so you can select to delete them after the backup process completes.

Select how often should the backup run. You also have the power to automate backup!

You can also get a notification to your email or desktop whenever the backup completes.

Review the summary. Once you click finish then select backup plan you just created and select “Start” to start the backup process.

For

restoration

, click on “Restore” tab. Select the backup source. You can configure both auto restoration and one-time restoration.

You can also select which backup you want by selecting the backup time.

Select the folder(s) you want to restore.

Choose the location of restoring the backed up files. Then continue and finish creating restore plan.

Once restoration plan is complete. You’ll also note that there’s a restore plan on the left side. Select and just hit start button to execute the restore process.

Voila! CloudBerry Backup is fully functional and ready to fulfill your necessity!

Summary

CloudBerry Backup is a brilliant piece of software that offers really powerful features and tremendous control over the backup and restore process. If you’re in need of consistently backing up important data to other locations like cloud or storage devices, consider the tool for yourself.

Don’t forget to keep in mind its data limit. If you’re working with a heavy data flow, consider getting the “Ultimate” plan. Other than that, you have to be very careful to choose what price you’re willing to pay. Overall, CloudBerry Backup is a very satisfactory tool that will make your life more comfortable.

Source

Masalla icon theme

is a Vector graphics icons theme released to use in Linux Desktop. Basically this icon theme is mixture of different icons sets, it is offers more than 15000+ icons including wide range of applications, categories, devices, places/folders, status, mime-types, and more. It is compatible with most of the Linux desktop environments such as Unity, Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, Mate, Lxde, and others. For this icon theme most of the application icons available, still if you found any missing icon or bug in this set then report it.

Ambiance Blackout Colors

theme used in following screenshots. You can use

Unity Tweak Tool

,

Gnome-tweak-tool

or

Ubuntu-Tweak

to change themes/icons.

>>>Available for Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic/18.10/16.04 Xenial/14.04 Trusty/Linux Mint 19/18/17/other Ubuntu derivatives
To install Masalla Icon Theme in Ubuntu/Linux Mint open Terminal (Press Ctrl+Alt+T) and copy the following commands in the Terminal:
If you are using KDE desktop then run following command too:

For Dark version

If you already used above command for KDE and now you want to move back to other desktop then run following command:

For Dark version

That’s it

Source

The #! characters form a magic number. We embed these magic number in any scripts under UNIX / Linux operating systems to tell the kernel what interpreter to execute, to read our script. Like Linux shell, Python, Perl and R interpreters. You might have noticed all Linux shell and Perl / python script starts with the below line:

#!/bin/bash

OR

#!/usr/bin/env python

OR

#!/usr/bin/env perl

OR

#!/usr/bin/env Rscript

Now we will write a program file for Python language. we can execute this program by calling the interpreter directly without adding shebang line like below.

python_script

import sys

def greeting(name):
sys.stdout.write(“Hello” + name + “n”)

name = “Omar”
greeting(name)

For executing the code, we will mention python before name of the file.

python python_script.py
Output
Hello Omar

Also we will write a program file for R language. we can execute this program by calling the interpreter directly without adding shebang line like below.

r_script

print(“hello world”)

For executing the code, we will mention Rscript before name of the file.

Rscript r_script.R
Output
“hello world”

How to make executable file

to make executable file we should add shebang line #!/usr/bin/python to the top of script and changing the mode of the file to be executable.

python_script

#!/usr/bin/python
import sys

def greeting(name):
sys.stdout.write(“Hello” + name + “n”)

name = “Omar”
greeting(name)

To make the file is executable, type the command below.

chmod +x python_script.py

Now we can just run the file and it will be interpreted by python.

./python_script.py
Output
Hello Omar

Large computer cluster

The path /usr/bin/python will probably work for most default systems but might not work on things like a large computer cluster. So we will use the program env to get the right interperter.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys

def greeting(name):
sys.stdout.write(“Hello” + name + “n”)

name = “Omar”
greeting(name)

We can do the same for any program like Rscript as well.

#!/usr/bin/env Rscript
print(“hello world”)

Read Also:

• 70 Shell Scripting Interview Questions & Answers

Source

As we all know, Apache is a free and open source cross-platform web server that is used to serve both static and dynamic web pages. on the web. In this article, we’ll focus on how you can start and restart Apache web server on Linux systems using the apache2 command.

On Ubuntu/Debian Linux

Let’s see how we can start, stop and restart apache2 web server in Ubuntu and Debian versions

Apache2 Restart/Start/Stop/

For Ubuntu and Debian Systemd users – Ubuntu 18.04,16.04 and Debian 9.x later use below commands.

Start Apache2 by running

# systemctl start apache2

Stop Apache2 by running

# systemctl stop apache2

Restart Apache2 by running

# systemctl restart apache2

To check Apache2 status on the terminal run

# systemctl status apache2

Sample Output

● apache2.service – LSB: Apache2 web server
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/apache2; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/apache2.service.d
└─apache2-systemd.conf
Active: active (running) since Tue 2018-09-11 12:49:03 UTC; 26s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
CGroup: /system.slice/apache2.service
├─28788 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
├─28791 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
└─28792 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

To verify whether the web server is indeed running, open your browser and enter your server’s IP address

http://server-ip-address/

You should be able to view Apache’s default page as shown below

For older versions of Ubuntu -14.10 and older and Debian older

Start Apache2 service by running

# sudo service apache2 start
or
# /etc/init.d/apache2 start
or
# sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

Stop Apache2 service by running

# sudo service apache2 stop
or
# /etc/init.d/ apache2 stop

Restart Apache2 service by running

# sudo service apache2 restart
or
# /etc/init.d/ apache2 restart
or
# sudo /etc/init.d/ apache2 restart

Sample Output

[ ok ] Restarting apache2 (via systemctl): apache2.service.

Check Apache2 status run

# sudo service apache2 status
or
# /etc/init.d/ apache2 status
or
# sudo /etc/init.d/ apache2 status

Sample Output

● apache2.service – LSB: Apache2 web server
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/apache2; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/apache2.service.d
└─apache2-systemd.conf
Active: active (running) since Tue 2018-09-11 12:49:03 UTC; 26s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
CGroup: /system.slice/apache2.service
├─28788 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
├─28791 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
└─28792 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

On RHEL/CentOS

Apache2 Restart/Start/Stop

For newer versions of RHEL / CentOS (Versions 7.x and later)

Start Apache2 by running

# systemctl start httpd
or
# systemctl start httpd.service

Stop Apache2 by running

# systemctl stop httpd
or
# systemctl stop httpd.service

Restart Apache2 by running

# systemctl restart httpd
or
# systemctl restart httpd.service

To verify/check the status of Apache2

# systemctl status httpd

Sample Output

● httpd.service – The Apache HTTP Server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service; disabled; vendor prese t: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2018-09-11 17:33:28 UTC; 6min ago
Docs: man:httpd(8)
man:apachectl(8)
Main PID: 1450 (httpd)
Status: “Total requests: 0; Current requests/sec: 0; Current traffic: 0 B/s ec”
CGroup: /system.slice/httpd.service
├─1450 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─1451 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─1452 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─1453 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─1454 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
└─1455 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND

Sep 11 17:33:28 ip-172-31-16-67.us-east-2.compute.internal systemd[1]: Starti…
Sep 11 17:33:28 ip-172-31-16-67.us-east-2.compute.internal systemd[1]: Starte…
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.

For older versions (CentOS/RHEL (Red Hat) Linux version 4.x/5.x/6.x )

Start Apache2 by running

# service httpd start

Stop Apache2 by running

# service httpd stop

Restart Apache2 by running

# service httpd restart

To check the status of Apache web server

# service httpd status

sample output

● httpd.service – The Apache HTTP Server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2018-09-11 19:46:30 UTC; 1 weeks 1 days ago
Docs: man:httpd(8)
man:apachectl(8)
Process: 9118 ExecStop=/bin/kill -WINCH $ (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 22055 ExecReload=/usr/sbin/httpd $OPTIONS -k graceful (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 9122 (httpd)
Status: “Total requests: 0; Current requests/sec: 0; Current traffic: 0 B/sec”
CGroup: /system.slice/httpd.service
├─ 9122 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─22058 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─22059 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─22060 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─22061 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─22062 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
├─22149 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
└─27556 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND

Just like in Debian systems, you can verify that the web server is running by opening your browser and typing your server’s IP address

http://server-ip-address/

On Fedora

Apache2 Restart/Start/Stop

For Fedora Systems (22 and later)

Start Apache2 by running

# systemctl start httpd
or
# apachectl start

Stop Apache2 by running

# systemctl stop httpd
or
# apachectl -k stop

To restart Apache2 run

apachectl -k restart

To check Apache2 status

systemctl status httpd

To confirm that the server is up and running on a web browser, type the server’s IP

http://server-ip-address/

In this article, we focussed on How you can start, stop and restart Apache2 web server on Linux Systems such as Ubuntu/Debian and Redhat systems. We hope that this tutorial has been helpful.

Read Also:

• How to Convert and Use PKCS#12/PFX Certificate on Apache
• How to Install WordPress on FreeBSD 11 with Apache, PHP and MySQL
• How to Install LAMP Stack on Ubuntu 18.04

Source

• August 18th, 2018
• Philip Müller

Hi community,

Welcome to another stable update. So what do we have with this one?

• renewed most of our kernels, incl. the L1TF fixes
• we updated our Xorg-Server to 1.20.1
• mesa got updated to 18.1.6
• xf86-video-ati we used the latest git-snapshot to fix some graphical glitches
• Nvidia 304xx driver is dropped now.
• Virtualbox got updated to 5.2.18
• we backported a fix for kscreenlocker reducing the 100% CPU usage
• we reverted commit 6f130e8 in systemd, which improves network speed
• we pushed our rebuilds for python 3.7 and perl 5.28.
• LibreOffice is now at 6.0.6
• we added the latest MATE packages
• added some new Deepin packages
• Stefano updated our Adapta Themes
• we updated some of our Grub themes
• we fixed an issue with gpodder
• updated firefox and thunderbird
• updated dbus
• we updated firefox-dev and firefox-kde and jdk8 to their latest versions
• flameshot got a fix for zh_TW locale loading
• small fixes to pamac-cli
• the usual python/haskell rebuilds/updates

We hope with all these changes Manjaro to be more efficent for you all.

Our effort and all the needed information about the new security risk can be found here.

So please report back and give us feedback for given changes made to our repositories. Users of our 32-bit Distro should read this.

kind regards

Philip Müller
Manjaro Project Lead

Current supported Kernels

• linux316 3.16.57
• linux318 3.18.119 [EOL]
• linux41 4.1.52 [EOL]
• linux44 4.4.149
• linux49 4.9.121
• linux414 4.14.64
• linux415 4.15.18 [EOL]
• linux416 4.16.18 [EOL]
• linux417 4.17.16
• linux418 4.18.2
• linux419 4.19-rc0
• linux414-rt 4.14.52_rt34
• linux416-rt 4.16.18_rt11

Package Updates (Sat Aug 18 06:46:56 CEST 2018)

• community x86_64: 2965 new and 2912 removed package(s)
• core x86_64: 65 new and 64 removed package(s)
• extra x86_64: 1033 new and 1021 removed package(s)
• multilib x86_64: 22 new and 25 removed package(s)

Links

• Talk about this update-pack in our forum
• Download Manjaro 17.1.12
• We are always happy for some support via a small donation

Posted in: news · update

Source

Last updated October 4, 2018 By Avimanyu Bandyopadhyay Leave a Comment

Facebook already uses its own Open Source AI, PyTorch quite extensively in its own artificial intelligence projects. Recently, they have gone a league ahead by releasing a pre-release preview version 1.0.

For those who are not familiar, PyTorch is a Python-based library for Scientific Computing.

PyTorch harnesses the superior computational power of Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) for carrying out complex Tensor computations and implementing deep neural networks. So, it is used widely across the world by numerous researchers and developers.

This new ready-to-use Preview Release was announced at the PyTorch Developer Conference at The Midway, San Francisco, CA on Tuesday, October 2, 2018.

Highlights of PyTorch 1.0 Release Candidate

Some of the main new features in the release candidate are:

1. JIT

JIT is a set of compiler tools to bring research close to production. It includes a Python-based language called Torch Script and also ways to make existing code compatible with itself.

2. New torch.distributed library: “C10D”

“C10D” enables asynchronous operation on different backends with performance improvements on slower networks and more.

3. C++ frontend (experimental)

Though it has been specifically mentioned as an unstable API (expected in a pre-release), this is a pure C++ interface to the PyTorch backend that follows the API and architecture of the established Python frontend to enable research in high performance, low latency and C++ applications installed directly on hardware.

To know more, you can take a look at the complete update notes on GitHub.

The first stable version PyTorch 1.0 will be released in summer.

Installing PyTorch on Linux

To install PyTorch v1.0rc0, the developers recommend using conda while there also other ways to do that as shown on their local installation page where they have documented everything necessary in detail.

Prerequisites

• Linux
• Pip
• Python
• CUDA (For Nvidia GPU owners)

As we recently showed you how to install and use Pip, let’s get to know how we can install PyTorch with it.

Note that PyTorch has GPU and CPU-only variants. You should install the one that suits your hardware.

Installing old and stable version of PyTorch

If you want the stable release (version 0.4) for your GPU, use:

pip install torch torchvision

Use these two commands in succession for a CPU-only stable release:

pip install http://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu/torch-0.4.1-cp27-cp27mu-linux_x86_64.whl
pip install torchvision

Installing PyTorch 1.0 Release Candidate

You install PyTorch 1.0 RC GPU version with this command:

pip install torch_nightly -f https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/cu92/torch_nightly.html

If you do not have a GPU and would prefer a CPU-only version, use:

pip install torch_nightly -f https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/cpu/torch_nightly.html

Verifying your PyTorch installation

Startup the python console on a terminal with the following simple command:

python

Now enter the following sample code line by line to verify your installation:

from __future__ import print_function
import torch
x = torch.rand(5, 3)
print(x)

You should get an output like:

tensor([[0.3380, 0.3845, 0.3217],
[0.8337, 0.9050, 0.2650],
[0.2979, 0.7141, 0.9069],
[0.1449, 0.1132, 0.1375],
[0.4675, 0.3947, 0.1426]])

To check whether you can use PyTorch’s GPU capabilities, use the following sample code:

import torch
torch.cuda.is_available()

The resulting output should be:

True

Support for AMD GPUs for PyTorch is still under development, so complete test coverage is not yet provided as reported here, suggesting this resource in case you have an AMD GPU.

Lets now look into some research projects that extensively use PyTorch:

Ongoing Research Projects based on PyTorch

• Detectron: Facebook AI Research’s software system to intelligently detect and classify objects. It is based on Caffe2. Earlier this year, Caffe2 and PyTorch joined forces to create a Research + Production enabled PyTorch 1.0 we talk about.
• Unsupervised Sentiment Discovery: Such methods are extensively used with social media algorithms.
• vid2vid: Photorealistic video-to-video translation
• DeepRecommender (We covered how such systems work on our past Netflix AI article)

Nvidia, leading GPU manufacturer covered more on this with their own update on this recent development where you can also read about ongoing collaborative research endeavours.

How should we react to such PyTorch capabilities?

To think Facebook applies such amazingly innovative projects and more in its social media algorithms, should we appreciate all this or get alarmed? This is almost Skynet! This newly improved production-ready pre-release of PyTorch will certainly push things further ahead! Feel free to share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

About Avimanyu Bandyopadhyay

Avimanyu is a Doctoral Researcher on GPU-based Bioinformatics and a big-time Linux fan. He strongly believes in the significance of Linux and FOSS in Scientific Research. Deep Learning with GPUs is his new excitement! He is a very passionate video gamer (his other side) and loves playing games on Linux, Windows and PS4 while wishing that all Windows/Xbox One/PS4 exclusive games get support on Linux some day! Both his research and PC gaming are powered by his own home-built computer. He is also a former Ubisoft Star Player (2016) and mostly goes by the tag “avimanyu786” on web indexes.

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Last updated October 6, 2018 By Avimanyu Bandyopadhyay 19 Comments

LinuxBoot is an Open Source alternative to Proprietary UEFI firmware. It was released last year and is now being increasingly preferred by leading hardware manufacturers as default firmware. Last year, LinuxBoot was warmly welcomed into the Open Source family by The Linux Foundation.

This project was an initiative by Ron Minnich, author of LinuxBIOS and lead of coreboot at Google, in January 2017.

Google, Facebook, Horizon Computing Solutions, and Two Sigma collaborated together to develop the LinuxBoot project (formerly called NERF) for server machines based on Linux.

Its openness allows Server users to easily customize their own boot scripts, fix issues, build their own runtimes and reflash their firmware with their own keys. They do not need to wait for vendor updates.

Following is a video of Ubuntu Xenial booting for the first time with NERF BIOS:

Let’s talk about some other advantages by comparing it to UEFI in terms of Server hardware.

Advantages of LinuxBoot over UEFI

Here are some of the major advantages of LinuxBoot over UEFI:

Significantly
faster startup

It can boot up Server boards in less than twenty seconds, versus multiple minutes on UEFI.

Significantly
more flexible

LinuxBoot
can make use of any devices, filesystems and protocols that Linux
supports.

Potentially
more secure

Linux device drivers and filesystems have significantly more scrutiny than through UEFI.

We can argue that UEFI is partly open with EDK II and LinuxBoot is partly closed. But it has been addressed that even such EDK II code does not have the proper level of inspection and correctness as the Linux Kernel goes through, while there is a huge amount of other Closed Source components within UEFI development.

On the other hand, LinuxBoot has a significantly smaller amount of binaries with only a few hundred KB, compared to the 32 MB of UEFI binaries.

To be precise, LinuxBoot fits a whole lot better into the Trusted Computing Base, unlike UEFI.

LinuxBoot has a kexec based bootloader which does not support startup on Windows/non-Linux kernels, but that is insignificant since most clouds are Linux-based Servers.

LinuxBoot adoption

In 2011, the Open Compute Project was started by Facebook who open-sourced designs of some of their Servers, built to make its data centers more efficient. LinuxBoot has been tested on a few Open Compute Hardware listed as under:

• Winterfell
• Leopard
• Tioga Pass

More OCP hardware are described here in brief. The OCP Foundation runs a dedicated project on firmware through Open System Firmware.

Some other devices that support LinuxBoot are:

• QEMU emulated Q35 systems
• Intel S2600wf
• Dell R630

Last month end, Equus Compute Solutions announced the release of its WHITEBOX OPEN™ M2660 and M2760 Servers, as a part of their custom, cost-optimized Open-Hardware Servers and storage platforms. Both of them support LinuxBoot to customize the Server BIOS for flexibility, improved security, and create a blazingly fast booting experience.

What do you think of LinuxBoot?

LinuxBoot is quite well documented on GitHub. Do you like the features that set it apart from UEFI? Would you prefer using LinuxBoot rather than UEFI for starting up Servers, owing to the former’s open-ended development and future? Let us know in the comments below.

About Avimanyu Bandyopadhyay

Avimanyu is a Doctoral Researcher on GPU-based Bioinformatics and a big-time Linux fan. He strongly believes in the significance of Linux and FOSS in Scientific Research. Deep Learning with GPUs is his new excitement! He is a very passionate video gamer (his other side) and loves playing games on Linux, Windows and PS4 while wishing that all Windows/Xbox One/PS4 exclusive games get support on Linux some day! Both his research and PC gaming are powered by his own home-built computer. He is also a former Ubisoft Star Player (2016) and mostly goes by the tag “avimanyu786” on web indexes.

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Kodachi Linux is an open source and free distribution of Linux based on the award winning Debian GNU/Linux operating system and built around the modern GNOME desktop environment. It is an anonymous, secure and anti forensic OS.

Distributed as a 64-bit Live DVD

This custom Debian-based operating system can be downloaded from its official homepage or via Softpedia (see download link above) as a single Live DVD ISO image that has been engineered to support only 64-bit (x86_64) hardware platforms.

In order to use it, users must burn the ISO image onto a blank DVD disc using any CD/DVD burning software, or write it on a USB flash drive of 4G or higher capacity in order to boot it from the BIOS of a computer.

Boot options

The boot menu is quite complex and will allow the user to run the live environment with default boot options, with the nosmp and noapic options, with the smp and noapic options, with splash screen, or in failsafe mode.

In addition, you can drop to a shell prompt, perform a system memory diagnostic test, as well as to boot an existing operating system that is installed on the first disk drive.

Slick desktop environment powered by GNOME 3

Kodachi Linux’s desktop environment is pretty slick, powered by GNOME 3, as it uses no panels, but only a dock (application launcher) located on the bottom edge of the screen, as well as a bunch of system monitoring widgets.

From the dock you can start, stop or restart the VPN (Virtual Private Network) service incorporated into the distribution, as well as to connect to a Tor network that is more appropriate to your current location.

Bottom line

Using GNOME (with GNOME Shell) as its default desktop environment, Kodachi Linux provides a secure, anonymous and anti-forensic operating system that features a VPN connection, a Tor connection, and a DNScrypt service.

Linux Kodachi Linux distribution Operating system Kodachi VPN Security Linux

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lighttpd is an open source, totally free, secure, fast, compliant, and very flexible Web (HTTP) server software implemented in C and specifically engineered and optimized for high-performance GNU/Linux environments.

It’s a command-line program that comes with an advanced set of features, including FastCGI (load balanced), CGI (Common Gateway Interface), Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting, SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), etc.

It’s optimized for a large number of parallel connections

lighttpd is the perfect solution for Linux servers, where high performance AJAX applications are a must, because of its event-driven architecture, which has been optimized to support a large number of parallel connections (keep-alive).

Compared to other popular Web servers, such as Apache or Nginx, lighttpd has a small memory footprint, which means that it can be deployed on computers with old and semi-old hardware components, as well as an effective management of the CPU load.

Getting started with lighttpd

To install and use lighttpd on your GNU/Linux system, you have two options. First, open your favorite package manager and search for lighttpd in the main software repositories of your distribution, and install the package.

If lighttpd is not available in your Linux system’s repos, then you will have to download the latest version from Softpedia, where it’s distributed as a source tarball (tar archive), save the file on your computer, unpack its contents, open a terminal emulator and navigate to the location of the extracted archive file with the ‘cd’ command.

Then, you will be able to compile the software by executing the ‘make’ command in the terminal emulator, followed by the ‘make install’ command as root or with sudo to install it system wide and make it available to all users.

Command-line options

The program comes with a few command-line options, which can be viewed at a glance by running the ‘lighttpd –help’ command in a terminal. These include the ability to specify a configuration file and the location of the modules, test the config file, as well as to force the daemon to run in foreground.

Web server Internet server HTTP server Web Server HTTP High-performance

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