Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 3.7.3, 3.4.26, and 3.0.59stable kernels. As is usual, they contain fixes throughout the tree.
In addition, Paul Gortmaker has released the 2.6.34.14 stable kernel with yet another set of fixes all over the tree. Users of 2.6.34 should note that there will be a limited number of further releases in that series (one or two more): “So you may want to start thinking about your upgrade plan.“…Read more at LWN
A new draft bill published today aims to increase privacy for mobile app users.
Led by U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), the bill aims to legally require app developers to publicize how they gather information and also let users request deletion of their stored data.
To create the draft language for the bill, Johnson and his Web-based initiative, AppRights, held meetings with members of the Internet community, public-interest groups, app developers, and other industry stakeholders. Dubbed “The Application Privacy, Protection, and Security Act of 2013,” or the APPS Act, the bill “addresses the public’s growing concern with data collection on mobile devices.”…Read more at CNET News
Canonical is nothing if not brave. From radically modifying the user interface of Ubuntu Desktop, to pushing into the television market, Canonical is driving Ubuntu far beyond its beginnings as just another Linux distro. With their latest push, an android and iPhone competitor, Ubuntu is skating to where they puck is going to be. But, which such a bold move, there are significant obstacles to overcome. The soon to be released Ubuntu Phone is paving the way that all smart phones will eventually go.
The first computers were gigantic, filling rooms and requiring constant care and maintenance. Over time, the components required to build the computers become smaller and cheaper, till eventually it was possible to put one on your desk. The computer stayed on the desk until the laptop computer, a smaller, more portable, but just as powerful machine, made it nearly obsolete. And then, the iPhone was released, followed shortly after by Android and the Palm WebOS, and the next step in computing was clear. What we did not immediately understand was if mobile computing was an accessory, or a replacement, for the traditional desktop machines…Read more at Ostatic
There are a lot of good old Linux commands to see what’s happening inside your system, with all the power and flexibility you need to zero in on just the information you want. Want to see who is sucking up the most resources on your computer? You can use the good old ps command. This example lists the top 7 hogs, excluding your own processes:
$ ps aux --sort=-%cpu | grep -m 8 -v `whoami` USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 1558 4.1 1.6 193620 68532 tty8 Rs+ 07:05 16:10 /usr/bin/X root 55 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:05 0:21 [kswapd0] root 7615 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 12:06 0:02 [kworker/2:0] root 1772 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:05 0:10 [flush-8:16] mysql 1262 0.0 4.5 549912 185232 ? Ssl 07:05 0:10 /usr/sbin/mysqld root 9478 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 12:54 0:00 [kworker/1:1] root 9832 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 13:25 0:00 [kworker/0:1]
You can modify this particular incantation to sort by any ps category, like this example that displays the seven biggest memory users (that are not you):
$ ps aux --sort=-%mem | grep -m 8 -v `whoami` USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND mysql 1262 0.0 4.5 549912 185232 ? Ssl 07:05 0:12 /usr/sbin/mysqld root 1558 4.0 1.7 197268 72352 tty8 Ss+ 07:05 18:10 /usr/bin/X root 1310 0.0 1.3 122728 53032 ? Ss 07:05 0:05 /usr/sbin/spamd root 1329 0.0 1.2 122728 52164 ? S 07:05 0:00 spamd child root 1328 0.0 1.2 122728 52140 ? S 07:05 0:00 spamd child root 3156 0.0 0.2 95320 10204 ? S 08:53 0:00 /usr/bin/python root 1559 0.0 0.2 311480 8156 ? Ss 07:05 0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
Or who has been running the longest:
$ ps aux --sort=-time | grep -m 8 -v `whoami` USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 1558 4.0 1.7 197268 72352 tty8 Ss+ 07:05 18:12 /usr/bin/X root 55 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:05 0:21 [kswapd0] mysql 1262 0.0 4.5 549912 185232 ? Ssl 07:05 0:12 /usr/sbin/mysqld root 1772 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:05 0:11 [flush-8:16] root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:05 0:05 [ksoftirqd/0] root 1310 0.0 1.3 122728 53032 ? Ss 07:05 0:05 /usr/sbin/spamd root 845 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 07:05 0:03 [jbd2/sdb3-8]
You might have noticed that to get 7 results, you need to use grep -m 8. I shall leave it as your homework to read man grep to learn why.
The ps command has some built-in sorting options. ps aux displays all running processes, and the users they belong to. You can view processes per user with the -U option:
$ ps -U carla
Or multiple users:
$ ps -U postfix -U mysql
Child processes? Piglet processes!
You can see all child processes:
$ ps -eo pid,args --forest [...] 397 /sbin/udevd --daemon 9900 _ /sbin/udevd --daemon 9901 _ /sbin/udevd --daemon 815 upstart-socket-bridge --daemon 881 smbd -F 896 _ smbd -F 884 /usr/sbin/sshd -D [...]
Or all child processes of a particular process:
$ ps -f --ppid 1559 UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD www-data 1576 1559 0 07:05 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start www-data 1577 1559 0 07:05 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start www-data 1578 1559 0 07:05 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start www-data 1579 1559 0 07:05 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start www-data 1580 1559 0 07:05 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start www-data 9526 1559 0 13:00 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
Please read man ps, man sort, and man grep to learn more.
As usual, the clones of the commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 are available free of charge. Meanwhile, a Red Hat employee has analysed the security fixes that were issued for RHEL 5.9…
GitHub, the code sharing site based around Linus Torvald’s distributed version control system Git, has announced that the service now has over three million registered users. The commercial service, which was founded in 2008, reached the one million user milestone in September 2011 and, less than a year later, in August 2012, the company reported reaching two million users. That GitHub has reached this third milestone in under half a year shows both its, and Git’s, rapidly rising popularity with developers.
A US Representative who sits on the House Judiciary Committee is proposing “Aaron’s Law”: a change to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to halt the overly broad interpretation of the act by prosecutors and a tribute to activist Aaron Swartz
This week Bright Computing announced that Tsinghua University in China is using the company’s software to manage its Hadoop-based cluster for climate modeling. The university selected Bright Cluster Manager because it provided a powerful solution for deploying, testing, provisioning, monitoring and managing its cluster while minimizing staffing requirements.
We needed a solution that would provide deep insights and better visibility into every aspect of our cluster. Bright’s highly intuitive interface gives us a complete view, including the ability to drill down to examine specific issues,” said Dr. Xue of the Center for Earth System Science…Read more at insideHPC
