How Do Groups Work on Linux?

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November 24, 2017

Hello! Last week, I thought I knew how users and groups worked on Linux. Here is what I thought:

Every process belongs to a user (like julia)
When a process tries to read a file owned by a group, Linux a) checks if the user julia can access the file, and b) checks which groups julia belongs to, and whether any of those groups owns & can access that file
If either of those is true (or if the ‘any’ bits are set right) then the process can access the file

So, for example, if a process is owned by the julia user and julia is in the awesome group, then the process would be allowed to read this file.

r--r--r-- 1 root awesome     6872 Sep 24 11:09 file.txt

Containers and Kubernetes: What’s Next?

By

The Enterprisers Project

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November 24, 2017

If you want a basic idea of where containers are headed in the near future, follow the money. There’s a lot of it: 451 Research projects that the overall market for containers will hit roughly $2.7 billion in 2020, a 3.5-fold increase from the $762 million spent on container-related technology in 2016.

There’s an obvious fundamental factor behind such big numbers: Rapidly increasing containerization. The parallel trend: As container adoption grows, so will container orchestration adoption.

As recent survey data from The New Stack indicates, container adoption is the most significant catalyst of orchestration adoption: 60 percent of respondents who’ve deployed containers broadly in production report they’re also using Kubernetes widely in production. Another 19 percent of respondents with broad container deployments in production were in the initial stages of broad Kubernetes adoption.

The Four Stages of DevOps Maturity

By

Forbes

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November 24, 2017

Like any new technology, methodology, process or paradigm shift, DevOps transformations go through various stages of maturity. Two years ago I wrote a post called The Four Stages of Cloud Competence and referenced Noel Burch’s four stages of learning to describe how enterprises were adopting (or not adopting) cloud computing.

1. Unconscious Incompetence

Individuals do not understand or know how to do something and do not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may even deny the usefulness of the skill. Before moving on to the next stage, individuals must recognize their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill. The length of time individuals spend in this stage depends on the strength of their stimulus to learn.

2. Conscious Incompetence

Though individuals do not understand or know how to do something, they do recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. At this stage, making mistakes can be integral to the learning process.

Open Source Cloud Skills and Certification Are Key for SysAdmins

By

Esther Shein

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November 24, 2017

System administrator is one of the most common positions employers are looking to fill among 53 percent of respondents to the 2017 Open Source Jobs Report. Consequently, sysadmins with skills in engineering can command higher salaries, as these positions are among the hardest to fill, the report finds.

Sysadmins are generally responsible for installing, supporting, and maintaining servers or other computer systems, and planning for and responding to service outages and other problems.

Overall, this year’s report finds the skills most in demand are open source cloud (47 percent), application development (44 percent), Big Data (43 percent) and both DevOps and security (42 percent).

The report also finds that 58 percent of hiring managers are planning to hire more open source professionals, and 67 percent say hiring of open source professionals will increase more than in other areas of the business. This represents a two-point increase over last year among employers who said open source hiring would be their top field of recruitment.

At the same time, 89 percent of hiring managers report it is difficult to find open source talent.

Why get certified

The desire for sysadmins is incentivizing hiring managers to offer formal training and/or certifications in the discipline in 53 percent of organizations, compared to 47 percent last year, the Open Source Jobs Report finds.

IT professionals interested in sysadmin positions should consider Linux certifications. Searches on several of the more well-known job posting sites reveal that the CompTIA Linux+ certification is the top certification for entry-level Linux sysadmin, while Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) and Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) are the main certifications for higher-level positions.

In 2016, a sysadmin commanded a salary of $79,583, a change of -0.8 percent from the previous year, according to Dice’s 2017 Tech Salary Survey. The systems architect position paid $125,946, a year-over-year change of -4.7 percent. Yet, the survey observes that “Highly skilled technology professionals remain in the most demand, especially those candidates proficient in the technologies needed to support industry transformation and growth.”

When it comes to open source skills, HBase (an open-source distributed database), ranked as one that garners among the highest pay for tech pros in the Dice survey. In the networking and database category, the OpenVMS operating system ranked as another high-paying skill.

The sysadmin role

One of a sysadmin’s responsibilities is to be available 24/7 when a problem occurs. The position calls for a mindset that is about “zero-blame, lean, iterative improvement in process or technology,’’ and one that is open to change, writes Paul English, a board member for the League of Professional System Administrators, a non-profit professional association for the advancement of the practice of system administration, in opensource.com. He adds that being a sysadmin means “it’s almost a foregone conclusion that you’ll work with open source software like Linux, BSD, and even open source Solaris.”

Today’s sysadmins will more often work with software rather than hardware, and should be prepared to write small scripts, according to English.

Outlook for 2018

Expect to see sysadmins among the tech professionals many employers in North America will be hiring in 2018, according to Robert Half’s 2018 Salary Guide for Technology Professionals. Increasingly, soft skills and leadership qualities are also highly valued.

“Good listening and critical-thinking skills, which are essential to understanding and resolving customers’ issues and concerns, are important for almost any IT role today, but especially for help desk and desktop support professionals,’’ the report states.

This jibes with some of the essential skills needed at various stages of the sysadmin position, including strong analytical skills and an ability to solve problems quickly, according to The Linux Foundation.

Other skills sysadmins should have as they move up the ladder are: interest in structured approaches to system configuration management; experience in resolving security issues; experience with user identity management; ability to communicate in non-technical terms to non-technical people; and ability to modify system to meet new security requirements.

Download the full 2017 Open Source Jobs Report now.

Products Over Projects

By

Martin Fowler.com

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November 24, 2017

Software projects are a popular way of funding and organizing software development. Projects are funded on a case-by-case basis on the basis of benefits projected in a business case. They are organized in the form of one or more temporary teams whose members have durable reporting lines outside the project organization. They are staffed from a “pool of talent” whose members are considered fungible within lines of specialization. And usually, a software project team’s job is to build or enhance some system or application and move on.

However, projects are not the only way of funding and organizing software development. For instance, many companies that sell software as a product or a service do not fund or organize their core product/platform development in the form of projects. Instead, they run product development and support using near-permanent teams for as long as the product is sold in the market.

“Product-mode” is a way of working. It is a way of funding and organizing software development that differs significantly from the projects way of doing it. The differences are summarized below and elaborated in the rest of the article.

How to Test Website Loading Speed in Linux Terminal

By

Tecmint

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November 24, 2017

A website response time can have a great impact on user experience, and if you are a web developer, or simply a server administrator who is particularly responsible for organizing the pieces together, then you have to make it a point that users don’t feel frustrated while accessing your site – so there is really “need for speed”.

This guide will show you how to test a website response time from the Linux command line. Here, we will show how to check the time in seconds, it takes:

to perform name resolution.
for TCP connection to the server.
for the file transfer to begin.
for the first byte to be transferred.
for the complete operation.

Inspiring the Next Generation of Open Source

By

The Linux Foundation

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November 22, 2017

The Linux Foundation works through our projects, training and certification programs, events and more to bring people of all backgrounds into open source. We meet a lot of people, but find the drive and enthusiasm of some of our youngest community members to be especially infectious. In the past couple of months, we’ve invited 13-year-old algorithmist and cognitive developer Tanmay Bakshi, 11-year-old hacker and cybersecurity ambassador Reuben Paul, and 15-year-old programmer Keila Banks to speak at Linux Foundation conferences.

In 2014 when he was 12, Zachary Dupont wrote a letter to his hero Linus Torvalds. We arranged for Zach to meet Linus–a visit that helped clinch his love for Linux. This year, Zach came to Open Source Summit in Los Angeles to catch up with Linus and let us know what he’s been up to.

How Cloud Foundry Helps Developers Embrace Flexibility While Balancing Security

By

The New Stack

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November 22, 2017

The intersection of software development, security, and operations can be difficult for some businesses to traverse. Platforms such as Cloud Foundry aim to help organizations bridge the gap, while still focusing on security.

Snyk CEO and co-founder Guy Podjarny addressed the announcement of the architectural decisions seen by Cloud Foundry in the Cloud Foundry Container Runtime and Cloud Foundry’s continued focus on the BOSH platform in a discussion with TNS founder Alex Williams on today’s episode of The New Stack Makers.

“I think it’s good to embrace some flexibility. At the end of the day if you talk about empowering teams and organizations to choose the right tool for their job, then you want to empower them.

ONAP Rolls Out Amsterdam Release

By

SDx Central

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November 22, 2017

Less than nine months after AT&T and the Linux Foundation merged their open source projects to become the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), the group today rolled out its first code release, Amsterdam.

The highly anticipated release, which integrates AT&T’s ECOMP and the Linux Foundation’s Open-O code bases into a common open source orchestration platform, aims to automate the virtualization of network services.

“Some of the components originated from OpenECOMP, some came from Open-O; we removed code that was inefficient, and we’ve added new code,” said Mazin Gilbert, ONAP technical steering committee chair and VP of advanced technology at AT&T Labs. This includes new lifecycle management and multi-cloud interface features, as well as new closed-loop automation management code called CLAMP.

The Advantages of Open Source Tools

By

Jaxenter

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November 22, 2017

What is open source? How does open source benefit users? And how do we support open source initiatives? In this article, Kayla Matthews introduces the basics of open source as well as the importance and value of open source tools.

Open source software, applications, and projects are becoming more commonplace, at least more than they ever have been. That’s because major organizations and brands have now embraced the development philosophy.

Some of the more renowned examples of open source projects include WordPress, Android, FileZilla, Audacity, GIMP, VLC Media Player, Notepad++, Blender, and, of course, Ubuntu/Linux.

But just what is open source, and what’s the difference between it and closed source projects? What is the inherent value of open source tools and software, and are there benefits of it? What should you do if you’re an avid supporter of open source?