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6 OpenSSL command options that every sysadmin should know

6 OpenSSL command options that every sysadmin should know

Look beyond generating certificate signing requests and see how OpenSSL commands can display practical information about certificates.
Anthony Critelli
Mon, 3/22/2021 at 10:22pm

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Image by Uwe Baumann from Pixabay

Transport layer security (TLS) is an important part of any security strategy, and applications beyond web servers increasingly take advantage of the protections offered by public-key cryptography. The OpenSSL toolkit is the fundamental utility that any systems administrator must know if they are responsible for maintaining TLS-protected applications. In this article, I demonstrate some of the most common commands that I use daily.

Topics:  
Linux  
Linux Administration  
Security  
Command line utilities  
Read More at Enable Sysadmin

Presto At Uber

In this special series on PrestoCon Day 2021 coverage, Swapnil Bhartiya at TFIR sat down with Girish Baliga, Engineering Manager of Data Infrastructure at Uber. Girish manages Pinot, Flink, and Presto teams at Uber. He is helping the team build a comprehensive self-service real-time analytics platform to power business-critical external-facing dashboards and metrics. Girish is also the Chairman of the Presto Linux Foundation Governing Board.

OpenPOWER Foundation Provides Microwatt for Fabrication on Skywater Open PDK Shuttle

The OpenPOWER based Microwatt cpu core has been selected to be included in the Efabless Open MPW Shuttle Program. Microwatt’s inclusion in the program represents a lower barrier to entry for chip manufacturing. It also demonstrates the ability to create fully designed, fabricated chips relying on a complete, end-to-end open source environment – including open governance, specifications, tooling, IP, hardware, software, and manufacturing.

Read more at OpenPOWER Foundation

Liquid Prep intelligent watering solution now hosted by the Linux Foundation as a Call for Code project

Over the past several decades farmers have been depending increasingly on groundwater to irrigate their crops due to climate change and reduced rainfall. Farmers, even in drought-prone areas, continue to need to grow water-intensive crops because these crops have a steady demand.

In 2019, as part of Call for Code, a team of IBMers came together and brainstormed on ideas they were passionate about – problems faced by farmers in developing countries due to more frequent drought conditions. The team designed an end-to-end solution that focuses on helping farmers gain insight into when to water their crops and help them optimize their water usage to grow healthy crops. This team, Liquid Prep, went on to win the IBM employee Call for Code Global Challenge.

Liquid Prep provides a mobile application that can obtain soil moisture data from a portable soil moisture sensor, fetch weather information from The Weather Company, and access crop data through a service deployed on the IBM Cloud. Their solution brings all this data together, analyzes it, and computes watering guidance to help the farmer decide whether to water their crops right now or conserve it for a better time.

To validate the Liquid Prep prototype, in December 2019, one of the team members traveled to India and interviewed several farmers in the village Nuggehalli, which is near the town Hirisave in the Hassan district of Karnataka, India. The interviews taught the team that the farmers did not have detailed information on when they should water their specific crops and by how much, as they didn’t know the specific needs on a plant-by-plant basis. They also just let the water run freely if the water was available from a nearby source, like a river or stream, and some were entirely dependent on rainfall. The farmers expressed a great interest in the described Liquid Prep solution as it could empower them to make more informed decisions that could improve yields.

A prototype is born

After winning the challenge the Liquid Prep team took on the opportunity to convert the concept to a more complete prototype through an IBM Service Corps engagement. The team was expanded with dedicated IBM volunteers from across the company and they were assigned to optimize Liquid Prep from August through October 2020. During this time the team developed the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the mobile solution.

The prototype consists of three primary components:

  • A hardware sensor to measure soil moisture
  • A highly visual and easy-to-use mobile web application, and
  • A back-end data service to power the app.

It works like this: the mobile web application gets soil moisture data from the soil moisture sensor. The app requests environmental conditions from The Weather Company and crop data from the plant database via the backend service deployed on the IBM Cloud. The app analyzes and computes a watering schedule to help the farmer decide if they should water their crops now or at a later time.

Partners

Liquid Prep has a developed a great working relationship with partners SmartCone Technologies, Inc., and Central New Mexico Community College. Students in the Deep Dive Coding Internet of Things (IoT) Bootcamp at CNM are designing, developing, and producing a robust IoT sensor and housing it in the shape of a stick that can be inserted into the soil and transfer the soil moisture data to the Liquid Prep mobile app via Bluetooth. The collaboration gives students important real-world experience before they enter the workforce.

“SmartCone is honored to be part of this project.  This is a perfect example of technology teams working together to help make the world a better place, “ said Jason Lee, Founder & CEO, SmartCone Technologies Inc.

Additionally, Liquid Prep will work together with J&H Nixon Farms, who largely grow soybeans and corn crops on about 2800 acres of agricultural land in Ottawa, Canada. They have offered Liquid Prep the opportunity to pilot test the prototype on several plots of land that have different soil conditions, which in turn can expand the breadth of recommendation options to a larger number of potential users.

Now available as open source

Liquid Prep is now available as an open source project hosted by the Linux Foundation. The goal of the project is to help farmers globally farm their crops with the least amount of water by taking advantage of real-time information that can help improve sustainability and build resiliency to climate change.

Participation is welcomed from software developers, designers, testers, agronomists/agri experts/soil experts, IoT engineers, researchers, students, farmers, and others that can help improve the quality and value of the solution for small farmers around the world. Key areas the team are interested in developing include localizing the mobile app, considering soil properties for the improvement of the watering advice, updating project documentation, software and hardware testing, more in-depth research, and adding more crop data to the database.

Get involved in Liquid Prep now at Call For Code

The post Liquid Prep intelligent watering solution now hosted by the Linux Foundation as a Call for Code project appeared first on Linux Foundation.

Creating a backup of data stored in a Linux virtual machine

Creating a backup of data stored in a Linux virtual machine

Learn how one sysadmin backs up data from one virtual machine to another in a different geographic zone.
Saksham Lamba
Sun, 3/21/2021 at 2:46pm

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Image by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pixabay

In this article, I cover what I’ve learned about backing up data stored in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) virtual machine (VM). During my first year of working with Linux, I had the idea of backing up data on a Linux VM deployed in the cloud.

Topics:  
Linux  
Linux Administration  
Backups  
Read More at Enable Sysadmin

A sysadmin’s favorite Linux history command line hack

When typing is necessary, it’s better to do it efficiently.
Read More at Enable Sysadmin

8 steps to developing an Ansible role in Linux

In this article, an existing Ansible playbook is used to deploy Vim and convert it to a role adding flexibility and reusability.
Read More at Enable Sysadmin

SEAPATH: A Software Driven Open Source Project for the Energy Sector

LF Energy recently announced a new project called, SEAPATH, or Software Enabled Automation Platform and Artifacts (THerein). It’s the second project by the foundation in its Digital Substation Automation Systems (DSAS) initiative. SEAPATH will provide a reference design and a real-time, open-source platform for grid operators to run virtualized automation and protection applications. In this interview, Dr. Shuli Goodman, Executive Director of LF Energy, and Lucian Balea, R&D Program Director and open source manager at RTE joined Swapnil Bhartiya to talk about the project.

Linux Foundation Support for Asian Communities

The Linux Foundation and its communities are deeply concerned about the rise in attacks against Asian Americans and condemn this violence. It is devastating to hear over and over again of the attacks and vitriol against Asian communities, which have increased substantially during the pandemic. 

We stand in support with all those that have experienced this hate, and to the families of those who have been killed as a result. Racism, intolerance and inequality have no place in the world, our country, the tech industry or in open source communities. 

We firmly believe that we are all at our best when we work together, treat each other with respect and equality and without hate or vitriol.

The post Linux Foundation Support for Asian Communities appeared first on Linux Foundation.

A brief introduction to Ansible Vault

Ansible Vault is an Ansible feature that helps you encrypt confidential information without compromising security.
Read More at Enable Sysadmin