An Introduction to Using Linux on Embedded Single-Board Computers

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July 26, 2018

Most of the more powerful compact form-factor single-board computers (SBCs) run one of the popular Linux distributions designed for use with these embedded boards. While there isn’t a specific version of the Linux kernel for embedded applications, the difference from a PC or desktop device running Linux is usually very small.

Typically being more reliant on Flash memory than having plenty of RAM and a hard disk – and in some cases also being ‘headless’, i.e. having no HDMI or video output – the distribution for embedded applications is tailored to available resources, rather than not being capable of running certain functions or commands. For the headless SBCs the only way to interact with them is through the Linux command line, so a good grounding in the basics of Linux is essential. Also, at a device and peripheral connectivity level, such as with GPIO interfaces and I2C functions, there are a number of Linux resources that are important to know. In this article we’ll cover some of the commands you are most likely to use when connecting up your embedded SBC to the real world. It is assumed that you have some basic Linux command line skills.

Before getting to work with the command line interface (CLI), let’s review some of the benefits of using Linux. Found running on anything from compact SBCs with embedded microcontrollers through to multi-core data-centre servers, Linux is an extremely efficient and scalable operating system (OS).

The Kubernetes Third-Year Anniversary Is Just the Beginning

By

The New Stack

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July 25, 2018

A vibrant development community continues to help make Kubernetes the profoundly successful open source project it has become. In just a few years after Kubernetes was created as an in-house project by Google, Kubernetes’ governance processes have also served to underpin the platform’s adoption as well. And a healthy community is at the heart of any successful source project.

At the same time, the open source community is not a “static asset.” To be permanently successful and to move forward, any open source project also needs a growing pool of contributors in order to survive. That’s why the Kubernetes community is working on multiple programs, focused on onboarding contributors, including the Kubernetes Mentoring initiative, Kubernetes Contributing guide and Office Hours, as well as “Meet our Contributors sessions”, Outreachy and even Google Summer of Code (GSoC), which is one of the most popular and well-known programs for the new contributors to the open source projects in the world. Some of the stand-out contributors have also garnered industry recognition.

Releases, Features and Roadmap

Kubernetes is a technology, first and foremost. And the project obviously couldn’t be so successful if the technology did not offer such a profound benefit to organizations.

The most important releases of Kubernetes occur four times per year, providing a new set of features each time. The patch releases (delivering security patches and bug fixes) take place even more often, keeping the codebase always up-to-date.

Top 10 Reasons to be at the Premier Open Source Event of the Year | Register Now to Save $150

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The Linux Foundation

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July 25, 2018

Here’s a sneak peek at why you need to be at Open Source Summit in Vancouver next month! But hurry – spots are going quickly. Secure your space and register by August 4 to save $150.

Awesome content: 250+ sessions on Linux systems, cloud native development, cloud infrastructure, AI, blockchain and open source program management & community leadership.
Deep Dive Labs & Tutorials: Including Hands-On with Cilium Network Security, Cloud-native Network Functions (CNF) Seminar, Istio Playground Lab, Practical Machine Learning Lab, First Tutorial on Container Orchestration plus many more – all included in one low registration price.
9 Co-located Events: Linux Security Summit, OpenChain Summit, Acumos AI Developer Mini-Summit, Cloud & Container Apprentice Linux Engineer tutorials, CHAOSSCon and much more!

Useful Tricks You Might Not Know About Git Stash

By

Dev.to

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July 25, 2018

If you have been using Git for a while you might have used Git stash. It’s one of the useful features in Git.

Here are some of the useful tricks I learned about Git stash last week.

Git stash save
Git stash list
Git stash apply
Git stash pop
Git stash show
Git stash branch
Git stash clear
Git stash drop

Git stash save

This command is like Git stash. But this command comes with various options. I will discuss some important options in this post.

Load Testing Round Up: 8 Tools You Can Use to Strengthen your Stack

By

ButterCMS

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July 25, 2018

Although often used interchangeably, performance testing and load testing are not exactly the same. Performance testing is the more general practice of testing an application’s responsiveness and stability under real-life scenarios.

Load testing is a specific subset of performance testing that is meant to determine the application’s quality of service when being used by a specific number of users simultaneously. Load testing software simulates numerous simultaneous uses throughout the application, allowing you to identify bottlenecks caused by throughfare or by massive concurrency.

Load testing may seem like an obvious practice but it can be overlooked. When you test your own application each day, it is easy to forget that what you see and what your users see may be very different. Any client-server application needs load testing in order to determine its limits and improve user experience.

Staging environments

Testing in a staging environment is key to performance testing of all stripes. Having one gives you a buffer between your development environment and the client’s production environment. This allows you to catch errors and slowdowns before you push to production, thus keeping your clients happy. There are many online tools that can help your team set up a staging environment for your site, including SiteGround and Vagrant. Use these software suites to create a staging environment that closely resembles real-use cases.

Open Source Certification: Preparing for the Exam

By

Sam Dean

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July 24, 2018

Open source is the new normal in tech today, with open components and platforms driving mission-critical processes at organizations everywhere. As open source has become more pervasive, it has also profoundly impacted the job market. Across industries the skills gap is widening, making it ever more difficult to hire people with much needed job skills. That’s why open source training and certification are more important than ever, and this series aims to help you learn more and achieve your own certification goals.

In the first article in the series, we explored why certification matters so much today. In the second article, we looked at the kinds of certifications that are making a difference. This story will focus on preparing for exams, what to expect during an exam, and how testing for open source certification differs from traditional types of testing.

Clyde Seepersad, General Manager of Training and Certification at The Linux Foundation, stated, “For many of you, if you take the exam, it may well be the first time that you’ve taken a performance-based exam and it is quite different from what you might have been used to with multiple choice, where the answer is on screen and you can identify it. In performance-based exams, you get what’s called a prompt.”

As a matter of fact, many Linux-focused certification exams literally prompt test takers at the command line. The idea is to demonstrate skills in real time in a live environment, and the best preparation for this kind of exam is practice, backed by training.

Know the requirements

“Get some training,” Seepersad emphasized. “Get some help to make sure that you’re going to do well. We sometimes find folks have very deep skills in certain areas, but then they’re light in other areas. If you go to the website for Linux Foundation training and certification, for the LFCS and the LFCE certifications, you can scroll down the page and see the details of the domains and tasks, which represent the knowledge areas you’re supposed to know.”

Once you’ve identified the skills you need, “really spend some time on those and try to identify whether you think there are areas where you have gaps. You can figure out what the right training or practice regimen is going to be to help you get prepared to take the exam,” Seepersad said.

Practice, practice, practice

“Practice is important, of course, for all exams,” he added. “We deliver the exams in a bit of a unique way — through your browser. We’re using a terminal emulator on your browser and you’re being proctored, so there’s a live human who is watching you via video cam, your screen is being recorded, and you’re having to work through the exam console using the browser window. You’re going to be asked to do something live on the system, and then at the end, we’re going to evaluate that system to see if you were successful in accomplishing the task“

What if you run out of time on your exam, or simply don’t pass because you couldn’t perform the required skills? “I like the phrase, exam insurance,” Seepersad said. “The way we take the stress out is by offering a ‘no questions asked’ retake. If you take either exam, LFCS, LFCE and you do not pass on your first attempt, you are automatically eligible to have a free second attempt.”

The Linux Foundation intentionally maintains separation between its training and certification programs and uses an independent proctoring solution to monitor candidates. It also requires that all certifications be renewed every two years, which gives potential employers confidence that skills are current and have been recently demonstrated.

Free certification guide

Becoming a Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator or Engineer is no small feat, so the Foundation has created this free certification guide to help you with your preparation. In this guide, you’ll find:

Critical things to keep in mind on test day

An array of both free and paid study resources to help you be as prepared as possible
A few tips and tricks that could make the difference at exam time
A checklist of all the domains and competencies covered in the exam

With certification playing a more important role in securing a rewarding long-term career, careful planning and preparation are key. Stay tuned for the next article in this series that will answer frequently asked questions pertaining to open source certification and training.

Learn more about Linux training and certification.

11 Ways (Not) to Get Hacked

By

Kubernetes Blog

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July 24, 2018

Kubernetes security has come a long way since the project’s inception, but still contains some gotchas. Starting with the control plane, building up through workload and network security, and finishing with a projection into the future of security, here is a list of handy tips to help harden your clusters and increase their resilience if compromised.

Part One: The Control Plane

The control plane is Kubernetes’ brain. It has an overall view of every container and pod running on the cluster, can schedule new pods (which can include containers with root access to their parent node), and can read all the secrets stored in the cluster. This valuable cargo needs protecting from accidental leakage and malicious intent: when it’s accessed, when it’s at rest, and when it’s being transported across the network.

1. TLS Everywhere

TLS should be enabled for every component that supports it to prevent traffic sniffing, verify the identity of the server, and (for mutual TLS) verify the identity of the client.

Note that some components and installation methods may enable local ports over HTTP and administrators should familiarize themselves with the settings of each component to identify potentially unsecured traffic.

Source

This network diagram by Lucas Käldström demonstrates some of the places TLS should ideally be applied: between every component on the master, and between the Kubelet and API server. Kelsey Hightower‘s canonical Kubernetes The Hard Way provides detailed manual instructions, as does etcd’s security model documentation.

Google: Security Keys Neutralized Employee Phishing

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Krebs On Security

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July 24, 2018

Google has not had any of its 85,000+ employees successfully phished on their work-related accounts since early 2017, when it began requiring all employees to use physical Security Keys in place of passwords and one-time codes, the company told KrebsOnSecurity.

Security Keys are inexpensive USB-based devices that offer an alternative approach to two-factor authentication (2FA), which requires the user to log in to a Web site using something they know (the password) and something they have (e.g., a mobile device).

A Google spokesperson said Security Keys now form the basis of all account access at Google.

The basic idea behind two-factor authentication is that even if thieves manage to phish or steal your password, they still cannot log in to your account unless they also hack or possess that second factor.

IO500 List Showcases World’s Fastest Storage Systems for HPC

By

insideHPC

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July 24, 2018

In this video from ISC 2018, John Bent and Jay Lofstead describe how the IO500 benchmark measures storage performance in HPC environments. The second IO500 list was revealed at ISC 2018 in Frankfurt, Germany.

Following the success of the Top500 in collecting and analyzing historical trends in supercomputer technology and evolution, the IO500 was created in 2017 and published its first list at SC17. The need for such an initiative has long been known within High Performance Computing; however, defining appropriate benchmarks had long been challenging. Despite this challenge, the community, after long and spirited discussion, finally reached consensus on a suite of benchmarks and a metric for resolving the scores into a single ranking.

The multi-fold goals of the benchmark suite are as follows:

Maximizing simplicity in running the benchmark suite
Encouraging complexity in tuning for performance
Allowing submitters to highlight their “hero run” performance numbers
Forcing submitters to simultaneously report performance for challenging IO patterns.

5 Reasons You Should Switch From Windows To Linux Right Now

By

Linux Editorial Staff

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July 24, 2018

When I published the highlights of my journey switching from Windows to Linux on my everyday laptop, I was floored at the engagement it received across all corners of the web. I also voiced an admittedly wrong assumption within the article itself that it wouldn’t attract many eyeballs, and yet it became one of my most viewed pieces this year. From where I’m sitting, that tells me a ton of people are interested — are at least actively curious — about ditching Windows and making the jump to Linux. Read more at Forbes.